More about Western Sydney Airport

Stage 3 students continue their investigations in geography (Humans shape places) into the plans to build a second Sydney airport at Badgery’s Creek.

Some links include:
westernsydneyairport.gov.au/

Interactive portal

Liverpool City Council – Planning

Liverpool City Council – Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

PANDORA!

What exciting news!

I received an email today from the National Library of Australia, proposing to add the online content of my “Booked Inn” weblog to the PANDORA Archive. The purpose of me granting the National Library a licence to archive my site permits the Library to retain and provide public online access to my blog – in perpetuity! A fantastic honour (and no more worrying about accidentally deleting the content)!

In December 1999, my first website, the Number 96 Home Page was selected for inclusion in the PANDORA Archive. It was the first of three Internet sites about Australian television programs so honoured (along with “The Panel” and “Good Guys, Bad Guys”, which were both current shows at the time). It still appears in the National Library’s online public access catalogue at purl.nla.gov.au/nla/pandora/number96, preserved as it was the day it was archived. There is also a link to the live site. Amusingly, the original sites of “The Panel” and “Good Guys, Bad Guys” vanished many years ago, while my trusty ol’ “96” site continues on!

I can’t wait for the “purl” (Permanent URL) to arrive so I can open Pandora’s box!

Waiting for the other tentacle to drop

Tree Octopus website
http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ website

If you’ve never used this website with students, please have a go when next studying endangered animals or persuasive texts. I had a great science and technology lesson about The Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus with Stage 3 today.

In preceding weeks, the students had already viewed selected Youtube video clips of rainforest animals, “The Dodo” episode of the TV program “Extinct”, and an array of fiction and non fiction books about endangered animals. We had already discussed concepts such as authority, reliability and publishing dates of the books and clips. Today, in groups, they were asked to explore the Tree Octopus site, reporting on ways the web composer had used persuasive images, design features and text.

For a disturbingly long time, no one questioned the factual content, authority or reliability of the site. It took some students a full 45 minutes to realise they were being fooled by a bogus website. A few remained confident right to the end. Some great dialogue ensued and I know this will be a memorable, cautionary experience which will support their ongoing research in the weeks to come!