Group items tagged

Very good ABC new series of short films for junior secondary. 

EasyBib Wikipedia e-book

A simple look at the components of an HTML page tells a lot about the reliability of its contents. Problem is, distribution platforms don't bother looking at those signals. (Part of a series about my News Quality Scoring Project.)

Every day, the site has a different, interesting image that could be used as writing stimulus. Below the image, there are a series of activities that students could complete e.g. sick sentences, story starters, thought provoking questions.

22.03.13 | Bookseller Staff Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop has been named as the winner of Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. Philip Stone, The Bookseller charts editor and Diagram Prize administrator, said: "People might think the Diagram Prize is just a bit of fun, but it spotlights an undervalued art that can make or break a work of literature. Books such as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time all owe a sizeable part of their huge successes to their odd monikers." And then there's my favorite, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and others in Alan Bradley's series.

"Walk into any bookstore or library, and you'll find shelves and shelves of hugely popular novels and book series for kids. But research shows that as young readers get older, they are not moving to more complex books. High-schoolers are reading books written for younger kids, and teachers aren't assigning difficult classics as much as they once did."

This link doesn't work. Try: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/11/190669029/what-kids-are-reading-in-school-and-out

With more and more of the world's content online, it is critical that students understand how to effectively use web search to find quality sources appropriate to their task. We've created a series of lessons to help you guide your students to use search meaningfully in their schoolwork and beyond. On this page, you'll find Search Literacy lessons and A Google A Day classroom challenges. Our search literacy lessons help you meet the new Common Core State Standards and are broken down based on level of expertise in search: Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced.

I cannot wait to look through these in depth. I was just thinking my lessons needed a bit more umph! Thanks for sharing!

Karen Bonanno provides a series of advocacy activities that can help school library staff influence policy, advising that to bring about change requires consistent and persistent effort to shift perceptions. She advocates maintaining regular positive activity which can be supported by strategies such as identifying a memorable message, capturing killer statistics, gathering startling facts and statements and leveraging the network.

Includes Award Winners, Books Into Movies, Series, Crossovers, Vacation, and Buzzing

'Beginnings are important. They are your fishing lure, your bling, your spider's web, your black hole from which there is no return until series end. It is what a new reader will judge you on, an editor will judge you on, an agent will judge you on. Frankly anyone who can read, and is looking at your book will judge you on it. No pressure.'

"Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings-at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States. Integrating twenty-three different case studies-which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups-in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis."

A great overview of Lance's research into the effectiveness of libraries.  He answers the question: Do school libraries or librarians make a difference?  His answer (A HUGE YES!) is back by 14 years of remarkable research.  The point is proved.  But this information remains unknown to many principals and superintendents.  Anyone interested in 21st century teaching and learning will find this interview fascinating.