New Online Databases for 2011

The ISC online database collection is constantly growing with five new databases being added this year. This makes for a very comprehensive range of "paid for"online resources that cater to the English, Science and Humanities curriculum.

These databases can be found using the following path: ISC VLA-Online databases link
They require the password "carter"


Global Issues in Context offers international viewpoints on a wide range of global issues,topics and current events.Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of highly relevant sources of social,political,environmental and cultural issuesIt also includes rich mulimedia.



Opposing Viewpoints in Context provides contextual information and opinions on hundred's of today's hottest social issues. Continously updated,it features news articles,topic reviews,full text magazines,academic journals,statistics,images,videos and audio files.





Science in Context provides contextual information on today's most significant science topics. It also features news articles, full text magazines,academic journals,images,videos and audio file.

Bloom's Literary Reference Online examines great writers,important works, well known characters, and influential movements and events in world literature.

Lastly,the Health and Wellness Resource Centre provides access to medical reference material including articles,journals,pamphlets and videos.

New Harvard Bibliography Generator

We have recently purchased a new online Harvard bibliography generator developed by the School Library Association of South Australia.It was chosen because it includes new technology sources such as YouTube, podcasts,wikis and blogs.It is also visually appealing,well designed and easy to navigate.
It has three levels -Junior, Middle and Senior with the Senior section being more sophisticated in appearance and more comprehensive in the range of resources cited.The Senior section also includes examples of in text referencing.
Our Year 8's and Year 9's have been formally introduced to this new tool and no doubt many other students have discovered it and are already making use of it.It certainly takes the difficulty out of acknowledging sources and teachers should now be expecting students to "cite it right"!

Horizon Report 2011

Last year in my blog I wrote about the Horizon Reports which focus on emerging technologies in the education sector.This internationally recognised series was established in 2002 and each year the report examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on teaching, learning and creative inquiry over the coming five years.
You might be interested in the 2011 Horizon report for higher education which has just been released.


Top trends are:
1 year or less - Electronic books and mobile technology
2-3 years - Augmented reality and game based
learning
4-5 years - Gesture based computing

However, of more interest to us will be The Horizon Report K-12 edition which is currently underway, and will be released early in 2011.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010

Joy, Annette and myself have just completed our 12 week online SLAV Personal Learning Network where we discovered a range of Web2.0 tools for

• Professional Learning
• Research
• Presentation
• Teaching and Learning

A Personal Learning Network is a collection of people with whom you engage with and share ideas online. They can be made up of colleagues,experts,students or like minded people. In this instance our PLN consisted of teacher libarians from Victoria.

It has been an amazing PD opportunity for us with many challenges and large learning curves occurring.It has filled our minds and conversations, invigorated us and definitely set us on a path to share our knowledge of these tools with other staff in the future. Below is Jane Hart's 100 Tools for learning list for 2010.Many of the ISC's favourites are high up on this list.Jane Hart is the CEO of the UK Centre for Learning and Performance Technology and she compiles this list yearly.It's based on 500 plus contributors top 10 lists of their favourite tools. Last year Jane's presentation on Slideshare was viwed over 90,000 times and I'm sure this year's will be as popular.Her Winners and Losers page is also worth looking at as it shows new tools that have made the list,those that have gone up or down and those that have completely dropped off the perch.

Over the next few weeks I will review the ISC's favourite tools so stay tuned!

Top100 Tools for Learning 2010

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

Year 7 Geography

ISC staff have collaborated with Year 7 Geography teachers this year to ensure that all Year 7's are familiar with using Inspiration and Moviemaker.In Geography this year their investigation of an Asian country required them to upload a movie,a mindmap and a PMI chart to their Geography VLA Discussion Board. This allowed them to then view and assess each others ' work.It was an inquiry project that involved many skills and steep learning curves for both students and their teachers.It was great to see students helping one another out and the excitement and satisfaction gained when students finally uploaded their tasks in the correct format.
Hopefully this cohort will now be encouraged to use Moviemaker as a presentation tool as like most programs lots of practice is needed before you become an expert.A tutorial on how to use Moviemaker can be found in the document section in the ISC VLA as well as below
Also below is a copy of the Year 7 Asia Assignment and a student movie.

eSmart Schools for Victoria

It was great to hear the Victorian Govenment's announcement yesterday that all schools in Victoria will be able to gain access to funding and support to become an eSmart school.The program has been developed by the Allanah and Madeleine Foundation and already trialled by a number of primary and secondary schools.It will now be rolled out to all schools which is good news for us in our own quest to teach our students to keep safe online and be responsible users of technology.I did hear that schools would receive $2000 to help them deliver the program.

In Full Bloom

In the Term 1 "In the Know" newsletter I wrote about the digital version of the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.It incorporates Web2.0 technologies that enrich the classroom as well as including the traditional classroom practices. Go to the Edorigami wiki which has detailed information about each level. Mike Fisher's wiki is also dedicated to the Digital Bloom's Taxonomy but is very much a work in progress.His original chart that identifies the tools that enhance learning is on the left but has evolved to the chart on the top right which allows tools to live on more than one realm of the hierarchy. The arrows indicate the fluidity of which the tools can move through the different levels.They are handy charts to refer to when discussing learning tools for the 21st century teacher.