What's New?

• eduTecher: It's a lovely uncluttered site with links, tools, and ideas for teachers who are integrating technology with teaching and learning.
  
  
• Readability: This is an amazing tool from Arc90 Labs -- once installed on your favourites bar on your computer, you can use it to "declutter" any page of online text you like so that reading it is less likely to be subject to the distractions of ads, pictures, and other parallel or inset bits.
  
  
• For more like the above sites, you need to get into Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators from Discovery School. One dimension of her rich website is the SOS Sites of the Week, of which the above sites are the two most recent. She archives these so go here to check back on what she has found. This isn't the first time I have mentioned this site!

• From EducationWorld: Why not share this "toolbox" with your administrator? Administrator's Desk offers lots of timely ideas for thinking about their practice, especially with using technology, including blogging the newsletter.
  
  
• Great TL Cafe at Moberly this week. Thanks, Kam and Gwen, for the organizing and supporting the new(er) TLs. The group moved on to the Elephant Walk for an in-depth look at school libraries in Vancouver.
  


• Andy Hargreaves ( co-author with Dennis Shirley of The Fourth Way) was back in Coquitlam to work with their educators; a number of us from Vancouver were invited to join them. Things work differently in Coquitlam. It's so nice to see Tom in the middle of such a lively learning community, and nice for the morning to be free to think about the great possibilities for education, given the severity and constraints we are facing.
  


• Next week, a group of Vancouver elementary and secondary teachers and TLs will convene at the Ed Centre for a discussion of e-textbooks and e-resources. We have been doing some reading:
  


• Plans are under way for the year-end VTLA dinner. Hope to see lots of our group there, as usual. This is always a fun evening.
  


• Have you signed up for the May Update sessions? 89 have. These Update sessions are the way we keep current on the rapidly changing nature of the work we doo. They are starting this second week of May with sessions for our Annex and for French Immersion TLs. We are bringing customized materials and do need to know which one you will be attending.



• The last TL Studio II (now called Digitally Yours) is to be held at Gladstone next week. The focus, building a simple website for your library. This focus has come in response to demand at the TL Cafe and will feature Weebly, used by Kam for the Fleming library webpage and some additional Web 2.0 tools, including shutterfly which is the one Ciara uses for Kingsford-Smith's library webpage. We are going to have to cancel the last TL Studio session scheduled for May 26 at Kerrisdale due to a conflict, so we do hope to see everyone at Gladstone on Wednesday this week for it too will be the last session of the year.
  
  
• And while we are on the subject of school library websites, take a look at what Joyce Valenza has to say and show you about school library websites. In her Neverendingsearch blog entitled "School Library Websites Part 1" for SLJ, she explores the instructional capacity of school library websites and suggests that TLs are the instructional CIOs (Chief Information Officers) of their schools.
  


• Do you want to be a "tribe" with a micro-mag? Check out Seth Godin's blog entry. I attended an online conference with Godin this week on the future of education. I am no clearer about what that might look like. It was pretty "quick" stuff recommended by our own MK -- that is, it made me feel slow!

Blogworthy ...

EVENTS

• Further to the "Up Mary-scope" blog (see below) photos from last week, I have now identified in the captions the venerable people with whom Our Mary was conversing about literacy and school libraries. By following her around with my camera, I was lucky to meet them all too. Check out as well the answers now inserted into the questions in the Serendipity blog from last week so that now you can identify the quotes and personal factoids.
  
• Next week is TL Studio at Kerrisdale on Wednesday. Ithink we should try social bookmarking and Michele wants to show you Scratch. I promise the coffee will be de-caf as the experience alone is enough to get one wired! That's wired ... not weird!
  
• Are you wondering how Val H is doing? You can check out her latest blog entry. Or if you want to see if she has slowed down, how about this great collection of BC history and 150-year Anniversary websites which Val has created for the BCTLA website. I would suggest bookmarking this page. She is using a social bookmarking tool (it's Web 2.0 because a group could build a list together) called diigo which I confess to showing her. Val now accuses me of causing her to lose many hours of sleep. Here's my diigo collection-in-progress with lists, called TLBookmarks.
  
• Announcement: 2008 BC Book Prizes Winners! -- Finalists -- Author Tour includes Gladstone! Check out the Soiree, VPL Fair, Local Events, including an evening with Joy Kogawa at her heritage home in Marpole, and of course the Gala, all part of BC Book and Magazine Week, April 19-26. Mark your calendar.
  
• Annual District Purchases: Note that all shortlisted books for the BC Book Prizes will be included as items for your choice with 2007/8 District funds. We have expanded the choices of for BC Books to include current and past items in the various BC Book Publishers' catalogues, and more titles as well. You will receive lists of BC books to choose from both ULS and Kidsbooks, in conjunction with the current BC Books for BC Schools catalogue. Our goal is to ensure that Vancouver's children are raised on a fare of BC writers and with opportunities to build knowledge of their own landscape, history, heritage, literature, and culture, that they are immersed in a rich array of resources that describe their own experiences. We are also providing support for local and Canadian publishing.
  

RESOURCES

• Here's a great resource from the BCTLA Forum: The Encyclopedia of Life.
  
• Webbits this week highlights the VIRTUAL MUSEUM OF NEW FRANCE and invites you and your students to "celebrate the 400th anniversary of Quebec City with a visit to the Virtual Museum of New France .... virtual exhibitions, collections of artifacts, ancient images and maps, chronologies, educational games, glossaries, genealogical data, and suggestions for tourists interested in following in the footsteps of their ancestors."
  
• International Children's Digital Library: The mission of the International Children’s Digital Library is to excite and inspire the world's children to become members of the global community – children who understand the value of tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas - by making the best in children's literature available online. Check out some facts about the ICDL, especially that it is searchable, free, and available currently in 9 languages.
  
• Professional Reading: Are you feeling the need to keep up with directions in the field? Try Literacy, Libraries and Learning: Using books and online resources to promote reading, writing, and research (eds: Marlene Asselin/Ray Doiron. Markham, ON: Pembroke, 2003). I got my copy at the UBC bookstore -- it's a textbook, of course --but top-notch assistant Diane has found it is cheaper to use Amazon or Chapters online, and probably cheaper still from ULS. So far, I've read the Intro which tackles the outdated notion that the school library "provisions" the classroom or the TL teaches "library skills" in order to give the classroom teacher a "prep". It then examines the changed nature of the relationship in terms of literacy programs.
  
  There is an essential role for the TL who is needed to help navigate the new learning environment, in particular, the new and dynamic array of learning resources, and who is an instructional leader often with the key to ways to integrate these new resources into both teaching and learning. Further, Ray and Marlene point out that literature-based programs need access to "a greater and richer collection of resources than a single classroom could possibly have." Connecting just the right resources to the needs of instruction calls for building the connections between classroom teachers and TLs.
  
  School libraries offer opportunities for sharing both the rich, diverse, inclusive, and dynamic collections and the expertise of TLs in integrating technology across the curriculum by supporting teachers and students, by "scaffolding" the learning, and by being there to lead the way. Marlene and Ray have gathered the evidence, explored the territory, and examined the tools that are useful to the partnership of teachers and teacher-librarians as they make literacy and reading a priority. This book is a great item for your personal professional reading.

More next week ....

February is Black History Month

Here are two great Black History resources for high-school students:

Library and Archives Canada presents Under a Northern Star, a virtual exhibition of accounts of early Canadian settlers whose lives represent true and successful challenges to racism and slavery. Dr Afua Cooper from the U of T introduces the exhibition: "What is brilliant about these collections is that each one speaks to the historical experience of African Canadians in different parts of the country at different time periods. Moreover, each one tells a story of the important contributions Blacks made to Canada as pioneers, enslaved persons, explorers, citizens and settlers."

BC's Amazing Black Pioneer: Crawford Kilian's book Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia tells the stories of Black settlers in British Columbia. Kilian has been revising the book for a new edition. In this The Tyee article he discusses Mifflin Gibbs: "Abolitionist agitator and a worker on the underground railway in Philadelphia. Shoeshine boy, boot merchant, and newspaper publisher in gold-rush San Francisco. First competitor with the Hudson's Bay Company in gold-rush Victoria. Builder of B.C.'s first railway, in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Victoria city councillor and acting mayor. Member of the Yale Conference that framed the terms of B.C.'s entry into Confederation. America's first elected black judge, in Little Rock, Arkansas. U.S. consul in Madagascar in his 70s, and founder of a bank on his return. He died rich in 1915, aged 94." Look for excerpts from the revised edition in upcoming issues of The Tyee and check Kilian's Pioneers blog.


MORE RESOURCES

Google for Educators

The 2Learn.ca Education Society -- Alliance of Alberta Education, Alberta Teachers' Federation, U of A Faculty of Education, Telus

eScrapbooking -- Here are some great electronic, educational, experiential, engaging strategies that combine photos, memorabilia, poetry, narrative, quotes, stories, and more. Sample projects included on the site.

Ever read Mental Floss? Try this online blog, Fun with Venn and Euler

HOT TOPICS

CLA Copyright Press Conference - This 8-minute video press conference features Don Butcher, Executive Director, Canadian Library Association, who speaks up for the rights of average Canadian users which are ignored by the proposed new copyright legislation influenced by the Hollywood lobbyists and the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

AUTHORS

Writer/Illustrator Ian Wallace will be in town and is available for full or half days of readings on May 6, 7, and 8. Contact Meredyth or me for more information.

Julie Burtinshaw: In an email earlier this week, Rennie wrote, "If you would like a name for a terrific upper intermediate, early high school author visit, try out Julie Burtinshaw, a local author/presenter. She is very interactive with the students and well prepared. Some titles by her: Adrift, Dead Reckoning, The Freedom of Jenny, and a new one coming out for high school students called The Perfect Cut. You can contact her at burtinshawtrue@gmail.com or #604-878-7144." Or try her blog. Karen C adds, "The Freedom of Jenny ... is based on the migration of an African American family to California, then Victoria and then the Gulf Islands prior to and into the Civil War."

EVENTS

Serendipity 2008 First Nations Writers at the Longhouse

A Celebration of First Nations Writers and Illustrators of Children's Books

Saturday, February 23, 2008. 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

First Nations Longhouse, 1985 WEST MALL , UBC.

Registration, coffee and book sales 7:30-8:30 a.m. Program begins at 8:30 a.m.

For more information go to VCLR website -- http://www.library.ubc.ca/edlib/table/index.htm

This year, come to hear Leo Yerxa, author and illustrator of Last Leaf, First Snowflake to Fall , A Fish Tale, and Ancient Thunder; Richard Van Camp, author of A Man Called Raven and What's the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses?; Diane Silvey, author of The Kids Book of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada; Julie Flett, illustrator of Zoe and the Fawn and The Moccasins; Earl Einarson, author of The Moccasins; and Nicola I. Campbell, author of Shi-Shi-Etko.

TL Studio

Monday February 18 - Come jing and blog with us! Online registration -- or just come.

VPL "Speak Up 2008 Series: My Virtual World"

Tuesdays Feb. 19, 26, March 4, 11 at 7:00pm, VPL Central Branch.

The "Speak Up" website is not yet functioning, but you can find details by looking at the VPL Current Events Calendar. Here are the topics: Feb. 19: On-line Privacy; Feb. 26: Gaming; Mar. 4: Information Online; Mar. 11: Social impacts of our Virtual World.

TOC Training for Horizon and Library Operations - March 4 and 5 (2 parts)

Tell TOCs to sign up now online for this two-part training: Mar 4, Room 100 (Lab), VSB - Horizon Training; Mar 5, Moberly School Library - Library Operations.

They will need to attend both to get priority call-out for school libraries. Thanks, Denise and Gwen, for agreeing to present with David and me.

Spring Weeding - Feb 28, March 6 (2 parts)

See you at Dickens for two workshops, Thursday, February 28, and a week later on Thursday, March 6. Online registration.