Booked Inn

Happy New Year: 2012, the Year of Reading!

Here’s a great little Youtube video to start your year off with a book, er, bang:

The creators say that they spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore, 883 Queen Street West, Toronto.

Dear Ian

RE: John H Lee Memorial Award 2012

On behalf of SLA NSW [formerly ASLA (NSW)], we are delighted to announce that you have been selected as the recipient of the John H Lee Memorial Award for 2012.

This is a joint Charles Sturt University (School of Information Science)/School Library Association of New South Wales Award presented to an individual or team of educators who is/are able to demonstrate excellence in leadership in innovative and collaborative teaching practice through the integration of learning technologies.

We extend our congratulations to you on this outstanding achievement.

We would like to share in the excitement of this achievement by inviting you and your guest to a Celebration Ceremony to be held on March 10, 2012 at the State Library of NSW, Macquarie Street, Sydney. The Award Presentation will begin at 9.30am.

You are also welcome to stay on as our guest at the SLA NSW’s first Professional Learning Day of the year.

Once again, congratulations on becoming the John H Lee Memorial Award Recipient for 2012. We look forward to seeing you at the Awards Ceremony.

Yours faithfully,
Ms Nicole Deans
Chair, Awards Committee
SLANSW [School Library Association of New South Wales]

My name is Charles and I wanted to let you know that Booked Inn was selected to our Top 50 School Library Blogs, based on recommendations from other school library blogs and because we think your site is awesome for people interested in school libraries.

Here is our review of your blog:

“Sydney, Australia is home base to Booked Inn blogger Ian McLean, who finds YouTube brings a life cycle unit to life and helps students make global connections, while clips of rapping readers put a fresh twist on storybook classics; promoting 2012 as a National Year of Reading is a cause embraced by this librarian/teacher and kid-lit reviewer who shares the journey of a shoestring library makeover on this blog.”

We are a career site for teachers that provides helpful information for individuals interested in becoming a teacher or school librarian. We provide quality information that is researched and written by teachers and we are recommended as a trusted resource by universities, teachers, and teacher associations.

Best wishes,
Charles Sipe
Executive Editor
Teacher Certification Degrees
charles@project8labs.com

This very cute caped simian wonder was waiting for me in the school library on Monday…

… with this sign pinned to his cape:

By the way, I spotted these great robot pens at Officeworks this afternoon:

2012 is the National Year of Reading. This meeting, for teacher librarians and other interested parties, will be a think tank at Penrith City Library,
High Street Penrith (next to Westfield Penrith Plaza)
on Monday November 28 from 3:30pm to 5:00pm.

Not restricted to Penrith area educators, it will include info about:
- National Year of Reading
- the work of Judith Ridge (Westword and The Western Sydney Young People’s Literature Development Project) – Judy Ridge
- NSW DEC initiatives and support for NYR – Colleen Foley, School Libraries & Information Literacy
- Penrith City Library activities – Sarah Dean, public librarian
- Children’s Book Council activities – Jackie Hawkes, teacher-librarian (ret.)

AND

- time for teacher librarians to share brief ideas that encourage our readers to keep reading.

Cheers – Jackie Hawkes

Stage 3 is investigating codes in their Communications unit for science and technology: Learning all about reading hieroglyphics: an introduction.

Stage 3 students’ work in Global connections (HSIE) is being complemented by a Communications unit in science & technology. The website, History of communications: communications through the ages and into the next century, will prove to be extremely useful to support their learning.

Mr McLean’s Ericofon from the late 1960s

On Monday, I was fortunate and honoured to be the keynote speaker at a New England Region teacher-librarians’ professional learning day at Westdale Public School in Tamworth. My brief was to present “School library makeovers on a shoestring budget – and Adventures in Web 2.0″.

It was great to meet host TL Zoe Morris and all the TL attendees, but many thanks to Patrick Sullivan (aka sullypm) for introducing us to his Breakkie with a Teckkie page, which both promotes the Web 2.0 video conference series for NSW DEC teachers, and has hyperlinks to a huge range of amazing Web 2.0 tools.

I particularly liked (and am already using, or about to use):

Build your wild self avatar creator

Posterous spaces, which Pat demonstrated by uploading a picture he’d just taken of me delivering my presentation: HERE

Oxford owl: help your child’s learning with free tips and eBooks

and

Storybird collaborative storytelling.

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 are studying fables this term. We found this great short video, with accompanying song, on Youtube:

Song: “A Man, a Boy and a Donkey” – Children’s Music Video

And here’s an award-winning music video version, by Derek Sonic Thunders, of Craig Smith’s “Wonky donkey” picture book and song:

Wonkey donkey song unofficial music video

Last term’s Stage 1 book rappers are doing an extension activity with me during our Literacy time: investigating claymation (stop motion) video presentations using a kit from the local post office, “Make your own haunted house movie” by Nancy Hall (Hinkler Books, 2010). We have already storyboarded our Halloween story, but have now checked out a few claymation fable videos on Youtube:

The story of the boy who cried wolf – claymation

Bugs and books 2008

Flannel flowers by Sahel, Stage 1, 2010

Once again exploring TaLe, in the quest to find engaging learning objects for the IWB to support Stage 2 in their HSIE unit, “Who will buy?”, I found this:

Buds (Code X01DA), in which the students help a farmer to win an award for business innovation. Players must start out by farming fresh flowers and selling them. The students are encouraged to think creatively to find new market opportunities and meet demand. They decide when to use equipment to make different products, such as compost and pressed flowers.

We will begin exploring this new learning object today. If it’s half as successful as Fish market: explore trading, it should be great!