BC Books and other Blog Bites

BIG NEWS ABOUT BC BOOKS FOR VANCOUVER KIDS -- check your email on Monday.

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Let's practice visual literacy skills again! Do you know some or all of these people? Do you recognize where they are meeting? How about a little reflection now: Are you looking for a retirement project?

Here in the picture are most of the members of the UBC Infolit group, a group of specially-recruited retired TLs and others who work collaboratively with elementary teacher-candidates to prepare an extended resource-based inquiry unit that features specific instruction for information literacy. The group gathered on Thursday to celebrate another successful year with the project.

You will see Marlene Asselin in the picture. She showed us this cool "mashup" project submitted for a recent class in Web 2.0: Our School Libraries

Marlene presented with Ray Doiron at AERA in New York in March. Their presentation is captured in this wiki entitled New Literacies, New Libraries, New Learners. Sit down with a cup of coffee ... you'll have lots to ponder here as did the many who attended this noteworthy session.

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Alan Zisman sends this interesting 5-minute video clip: Internet Dangers for Kids ... and speaking of Alan, the Google for Educators workshop that David and Alan are co-presenting at Chief Maquinna is rapidly filling up. Sign up online for this Wednesday opportunity to build more tech tools into your teaching.

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According to my little blog-counter, last Friday there were 80 unique visitors to this blog; on Monday, there were 108 unique visitors. While not much happens in between, it is really fun to see the how the bar graph jumps on the day I post and on the first day back from a weekend. I find it all so fascinating ... especially the fact that many of the "hits" are not from Vancouver.

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Quotes from Kit Kreiger at his talk with John Young at the University Women's Club on Thursday evening in the first of a series of four talks entitled Access to Public Education:

Today we have teachers who know more [because of all the research that's available to inform their teaching] but who have less ability to teach [because of the accountability agenda that drives what happens in classrooms].

How astounding that the state of Texas should act for children before the province of BC!

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If you worked with student teachers in your school library, you are entitled to a UBC tuition waiver. Make sure you let your administrator know to request one in your name. The tuition waiver pays for you to take one undergraduate or graduate-level course. There are several of interest this summer, especially the one with James Henri and Sandra Lee. You cannot transfer the waiver. If you are still working at completing the TL diploma, don't miss out on this -- and they are worth twice as much when you are completing a masters.

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This week's TL Studio was probably the most fun one to date, thanks to Michele working with Lana from Tupper. We all donned headphones with mikes and began making jings about the five ways one can cut-and-paste with a computer. Jings allow creators to use "thinkaloud" descriptions to make little videos with sound about what they are demonstrating on the desktop. Ever the keener, I jumped ahead to create a jing about how to read an electronic newspaper, as well as how to print the Sudoko. Now what I didn't fully register is where I will find my cut-and-paste and electronic newspaper jings when I need to show them again ... Lana? Michele?

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Who Dared To Enter the Dragon’s Lair?

from Peggy Bochun

Dangling spiders, slithering snakes and bloodcurdling bats and rats were all part of the imaginative Dragon’s Lair in the Education Centre lobby during the month of February and beginning of March. The display, complete with a fire water breathing dragon, a goblet of dragon’s blood and an fountain full of dragon’s eggs was created by Chris Foxon from the Nursery and his grounds crew to celebrate literacy and the theme of dragon’s in literature. One of the dragons in the display, guarding a treasure chest filled with jewels, was even a celebrity that had starred alongside Ben Stiller in the movie “Night at the Museum”. Moira Ekdahl, library consultant for the VSB, assisted by collecting books from school libraries featuring magical dragons and created a bibliography for young readers. Staff and students viewing the display were invited to weave their way amongst creepy twisted boughs of dragon’s bain and enter the Dragon’s Lair Writing Challenge. The goal was to create a 250 word story using elements of the display in order to win a dragon T-shirt.

Thanks to TL Jan A for bringing Rosemarie and her class here for the display.

Pictured above are contest winner Rosemarie
with Peggy and Chief Dragonslayer Kelly!
Congratulations, Rosemarie.

Happy Rabbie Burns Day!

Lib/bloggin’ away …

Although I can’t imagine why, the title of this week’s blog is sung to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s song, the refrain for which is:

Slip sliding away, slip sliding away
You know the nearer your destination,
the more you slip sliding away …

This week's blog is a late Friday posting … lots of meetings this week as well as planning for meetings, scheduling and preparing for Pro D, and getting out to schools. Wednesday evening I attended Marlene Asselin and Keith McPherson’s Literacy for Today’s Youth session at the Burnaby Public Library, a Family Literacy event sponsored by the BC Coalition for School Libraries. This afternoon I was off to Maple Grove and Linda’s bright, inviting, and organized collection was a joy to behold. I checked up on Joanne there as well … she’s just fine, but who would doubt that!

If you haven’t seen the National School Library Day youtube clip in which Dave Cubberly speaks in the Legislature about his meeting with TL Aaron Mueller at Killarney, you can click onto it on the lefthand sidebar of this page. It brings tears to your eyes.

With feedback from Aaron, as well, I thought I had figured out how to implant comment options within a weekly entry so you don't have to scroll down to the very bottom but I didn't. I guess I need a one-on-one lesson, Aaron! Soon you will be able to comment on information within the sections. That is, it is my hope that you will soon be able to use the interactive feature of this social networking (Web 2.0) tool.

I have been checking out some really cool ways that blogs are used for teaching and will soon have some local blogs for you to use. Lana at Byng suggests that webpages have been replaced by blogs and wikis -- food for thought, my friends.

The biggest joy this week has been having a parent thank me for access to the free newspaper subscription ... her TL had sent the information home to parents in a newsletter about this resource and so she was now reading the news online. I told her to look at the other resources on the Databases page of Webcat but she knew this too. Way to go, Chris!

RESOURCES

From this week’s Webbits by Linda Hof from SFU: Google for Educators – The Best Features for Busy Teachers is an article by Sara King from Edutopia that identifies “user-friendly tools to you’re your [classes] inspired, inventive, and organized.”

Karen Lindsay, BCTLA VP, Advocacy, posts regularly and frequently to the BCTLA Forum. This week she draws out attention to these great resources:

• Docfish/Pageflakes: Karen writes, "Please share this page with your science teachers. I don't think I've ever seen anything so rich. It has also blown the doors off what I think a web page is. Enjoy. (Warning, the page loads slowly, even with cable, but it's worth the wait.)"
  
• “The IFLA/UNESCO Information Literacy Resources Directory has been redesigned and includes the just-published latest version of the State-of-the-Art report on Information Literacy in different countries.”
  
• Joe Landsberger’s Study Guides and Strategies in multiple languages.

HOT NEWS! FOR FRENCH IMMERSION SCHOOL LIBRARIES! World Book Kids (French) is due in mid-March: This news item comes from David this afternoon.

Email from Maryann Kempthorne: “I noticed this course …” and, well, she thought of you! (She hopes you are all well.) Please check out the schedule for web conferences and workshops offered by the “ei” (education institute) of The Partnership (Provincial and Territorial Library Associations of Canada). Let me know if I should be looking into scheduling us into any of these in the upcoming months.

For Secondary School Libraries, News about Freedom to Read Week: Click here for information about Freedom to Read Week Feb 24 to March 1. Thanks, Anne S., for bringing this to my attention. Kits have been ordered for the secondary schools.

Reminder -- I need DRAGON BOOKS for upcoming VSB Display (Note: opportunity here for student field trips).

EVENTS

Technology Day at Magee has big-name keynote speaker Alan November. Check out his weblog and website. There are 21 different workshops to delight both TLs and their colleagues. There are 7 TLs from Vancouver giving workshops and 2 from North Vancouver as well. These sessions are for teachers as well as TLs so encourage your colleagues to attend. Register online (see "Information Technology.") Although there are lots more to choose from, here are brief summaries of workshops provided by TLs:

Mary Locke and Gwen Ingham will work with Susan Atkey from the UBC Libraries to present a session about "the new learners," including teachers (and TLs) as
newcomers to learning about and within the more highly technical learning
environment.

Katharine Shipley and Frances Renzullo-Cuzzetto are presenting a session on electronic resources that are successful with French Immersion teaching. Look for information about a blog that is under development with electronic resources for using in French Immersion classrooms.

David Brear from Coquitlam -- yes, he's related to one of ours so he counts! -- will bring everyone up to date on the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

Virginia Lam and Ciara Kelly are doing an introduction to using electronic databases with both elementary and secondary students. These two TLs are the BIG users of the databases as resources to support inquiry so they will have lots to share about what works.

Sylvia Zubke is presenting with teacher Heidi Cyr on using Smartboards in classrooms and school libraries and again later you can see Sylvia with student William on social networking software.

Pat Parungao and I are doing our session on plagiarism – "Just Copy, Cut, and Paste: Phooey on Academic Integrity" - strategies for teachers and TLs on making it hard to do, not on how to do it!

North Vancouver TLs Lesley Edwards and Hazel Clark will show yograydonu how to enhance research through the use of MS Word, including new note-taking techniques such as highlighting, commenting, and creating tailormade graphic organizers. You may also want to check out how Lesley is using blogs as a means to build online assignments with appropriate resources. The example: Canadian poets.

Other sessions of interest: Raza Mirani from Gladstone on videostreaming; Diane Potts from UBC on the Multiliteracies; Drs. Wanda Cassidy and Margaret Jackson from SFU on the Cyberbullying research in Vancouver schools; Alan Zisman on using technology to create School Newspapers; Gerry Kent on Classroom Discussion using
technology; Alan November has a workshop for teachers and there are lots more
… see online registration for more information.

Register NOW for Literacy Day (see last week’s blog for more information) or go online to view Current Professional Development Opportunities. You can’t register online but you can go online to print out the form, than attach your cheque, and blue-bag it in to Pat Dymond ASAP.

Shari Graydon – she’s here to speak to Vancouver educators about on Feb 6, Room 400, VSB 4 pm to 5:30 pm. I sent out the electronic flyer this week. Please post/copy the flyer liberally, and promote/attend this event. Register online. [NOTE: Please encourage your colleagues, including counsellors, Home Ec and Planning 10 teachers, teachers involved with school-based social responsibility initiatives, Language Arts/English teachers, and others.] Or see Shari later the same evening at 7 pm at the Metrotown Burnaby Public Library, a free event sponsored by the BC Coalition for School Libraries.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Excerpted from Val H's Vancouver Retired Teachers' Association blog, sad news:

Karen Bailey (1942 - 2008) passed away peacefully on January 5 at VGH after a long and courageous battle with breast cancer. Born in Vancouver, Karen completed high school in Vancouver, graduated from Simon Fraser University, and later completed her library science training at UBC. Karen was an active member of VESTA who will be remembered as an amazing classroom teacher and teacher-librarian at several East Side Vancouver schools. After her retirement in 1999, Karen continued to be involved with children with special needs. No service will be held at her request, but donations may be made in Karen's memory to the BC Cancer
Agency or to the SPCA.