Reinventing education (not) and travelling

From eSchool News, an article entitled Reinventing Education which outlines how, in the USA schools are about to change the way they teach students by using more technology and using the technology more effectively. In the article, an educational strategist (sic) argues that in San Diego, schools will have “an engaging and personalised learning environment, mindfully designed to optimise teaching and learning through the interconnected use of visual and auditory media, mobile computing and formative assessment technologies across the curriculum”. Hmm – interesting e.g. “mindfully designed”? – the opposite being? OK – we’ve all used terminology, so people in glass houses … The key point here, however, is that this is not reinventing education per se, it is changing the way teachers teach and to some extent how students learn – and education in my book is much bigger than that.

At the weekend, I travelled from Tauranga, New Zealand to Auckland, New Zealand, to Sydney, Australia, to Dubai, UAE and then to Newcastle, UK where I landed. I was then driven to Dunbar in Scotland. So, a long haul. Travelling – which I like very much – is obviously a physical experience – on the plane, off the plane, on another plane, off… It’s also a mental experience and the way I cope with long journeys is to not be on a long journey but a series of short ones. This may sound like a North American business guru’s seminar – small steps, big achievements blah, blah but one aspect that is different with travelling is your concept of time. I try to forget about time as I travel and just accept that e.g. you’re going backwards in time as you travel west. My advice is always read when you can, sleep when you can and watch movies when you can, in the sure and certain knowledge that your aesthetic standards will drop dramatically – when you’re tired, you’ll watch films you wouldn’t normally watch.

E-books and shells

An article in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald attracted my attention. I read it in hard copy and am struggling to find it online. It’s by Brad Stone and discusses the availability of novels as e-books on devices such as Kindle and Reader and claims by both Amazon and Sony that people are actually reading more novels because of their availability as e-books. The article is rightly sceptical about claims from these companies about novels and their quotes appear selective. Novels in e-book form will increase certainly but books publishers are sceptical – as you might expect. One interesting aspect in the article is that e-book piracy may be on the rise and it quotes a reader IN Washington DC who claims to have linked her e-book reader to a friend’s account and gained access to the novels her friend paid for.

Walking on Mount Maunganui beach is a pleasure not just for the purity of the sand and the white, white waves contrasting with the blue sea, but also for the range of shells and colourful seaweed which you find there. The picture shows some of the shells you can find here. Exactly which sea creatures lived in these shells, I’m not sure, but they are beautiful to look at and to handle.

Shells on Mount Maunganui beach

Windows 7 and penny farthing bicycle

The ever up to date eSchool News reports that Windows 7 - launched on my birthday coincidentally – has been favourably received by schools. According to the report, it “simplifies tasks and improves functionality” which could mean just about anything. Improvements include much easier mobile access to resources and better use of memory. However, it also adds that most organisations running XP should plan to migrate in 120-18 months, which may or not be good news for some. This raises the question of who is controlling what we have on our computers – Microsoft or us? A good question to get your senior students to debate.

The photo below of a man cycling a penny farthing bike was taken in Tauranga, New Zealand where I am this week. Penny Farthing bicycles were invented by Penny Farthing, an 18th century inventor. She was a pioneer who didn’t give tuppence for what people thought and if anyone objected to her inventions, she said that they could go sing a song of sixpence. Some people thought that she wasn’t the full shilling but she claimed to be related to Florin – ce Nightingale and she would pound away at her invention. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Penny farthing bicycles were invented in the 19th century but there’s a dispute about who did what.

Penny farthing bicycle

Wikis and camelia

This week, some of my students have been completing a wiki as part of their 2nd assignment for my Information Environment subject. As I’ve noted before, there is a plethora of information on the web about wikis in schools and elsewhere. A good source is Classroom 2.0 which has a large section on wikis including a useful video (from YouTube) on a plain English guide to wikis. There are also quite a few good examples of wikis, including an award-winning site Welker’s Wikinomics. You can use this site whether you are interested in the subject content or not, as it’s a very good example of what can be done with a wiki, within the school context. My students are creating wiki pathfinders for groups of students and, for most of them, this is the first wiki they have created. Almost all students have found this an exhilarating experience – once it’s done.

It’s Spring in Australia and the flowers are starting to come out in profusion. Everywhere you look there is a new splash of colour. One of my favourite flowers, not easy to grow except in a greenhouse in Scotland, are camelias. There are many different varieties and I’m not capable of identifying the one in the picture below – the after-rain camelia, I’ll call it.

After-rain camelia

Study visit (2) and Sydney

An interesting visit to the library at the Australian Research Museum, partly to find out how the library manages the goals of providing a service to researchers (e.g. zoologists), housing key journal collections for posterity, subscribing to online journals – while facing restrictions in their budget each year. The library also has a rare book collections including some wonderfully illustrated books by John Gould, a nineteenth century businessman, ornithologist and artist. One of the features of this library – and there’s a notice saying that it wouldn’t happen today – is the presence of a number of stuffed animals – eagles, ostriches, peacocks and many other birds. The picture below shows a group of my students beneath a surprisingly quiet and well behaved peacock.

Students at the Australian Research Museum Library

One of the obvious delights of visiting Sydney is going down to Circular Quay to see the Opera House and the magnificent Sydney Harbour Bridge. No matter how many times you visit, you always seem to see both of these cultural icons slightly differently. From a hedonistic point of view, to get the best of both, sit at the Opera House with a glass of Australian wine e.g. a tasty Coonawarra, and watch the sun go down over the bridge. Put it on your list.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Study visit and possum

This week, I’m Sydney with a group of 45 students on a study visit i.e. taking large and smaller groups of students around different libraries. The group is a mixture of teacher librarianship students and library and information management students studying at Charles Sturt University. The visit gives students a chance to see libraries out with their own area. the first visit was to Ultimo TAFE  (further education college) library where the very enthusiastic and informative Beatriz and her staff gave my students an excellent insight into what can be done on a restricted budget to promote the services of the library and b e valued by users. A completely different type of library was at the Society of Australian Genealogists which has a staff of one librarian and a squad of eager volunteers. Some of the younger students on the visit had never seen a card catalogue and although this library doesn’t use the card catalogue any more, it’s still there.

Just before I left the Wagga Wagga campus, I looked out of my office window (in serious contemplation of course, on the mysteries of teacher librarianship) and there, in the tree, eating the new leaves, was a possum. In New Zealand, where there are many possums, they are regarded as pests. In Australia, possums are protected but are certainly not popular with some  people e.g. if a possum decides to make a nest in your attic, it can be very disruptive. However, they are regarded as big eyed, bushy tailed cute animals, so judge for yourself in the photo below. Possums usually only come out at night, so one in daylight is rare.

Possum in Wagga Wagga

Netbooks and the Murrumbidgee River

From the always readable eSchool News, a feature on whether Netbooks are the answer to having a cheaper (and better) way of providing school students with laptops. The article gives 2 alternative views of netbooks, one of which argues that netbooks, while not high end computing (which students don’t need), provide students with access to learning resources, online subject content and online assessments, and do this in an affordable way. The other article argues that netbooks are, in fact, not much cheaper than a good laptop, that they are smaller and difficult to type on and that they lack the power that students will need to view multimedia in the future. See what you think.

Now that I am back in Wagga Wagga, one of the pleasures is to walk along the Murrumbidgee River in the morning sun. Walking past the numerous gum trees (eucalyptus), with their bark having fallen off are smooth to the touch and are like abstract paintings with the patterns on the trunks. The sounds of various birds are also heard – the cackling of the sulphure crested cockatoos in particular, as well as other more gentle calls – and the reflections on the still water are ever changing. The photo below was taken at 8.30am.

By the Murrumbidgee

ISLM and Venice

This month has been designated as International School Library Month (ISLM) and teacher librarians/school librarians around the world are invited to plan an event of some kind to publicise their school library. On the website above, you’ll find downloadable bookmarks and posters, as well as suggestions for events in the school library. You are also invited to send in a report, with photos (reduce the size)  if possible, to Karen Bonanno. So, a good opportunity for some advocacy and also to see what other TLs are doing across the globe for ISLM. It doesn’t have to be a big event which takes a lot of time to organise. Give it a go, as you are urged to do by the coordinator, Rick Mulholland  .

I was asked at the ASLA conference last week if I had put anything on this blog about Venice, which I visited for the day after the IASL conference. Venice is one of those cities in Europe that could visit on numerous occasions and never see enough. It is full of stunning architecture – everywhere, not just in the famous St Mark’s Square. The best way to see Venice is to walk e.g. from the train station to St Mark’s Square, following the signs which take you along a maze of back streets, across some bridges over the canal system, including the Rialto Bridge, and past huge churches with famous paintings, but also colourful markets. Venice is a city of many colours as the photo below shows.

View from Rialto Bridge

ASLA conference (2) and Richard Woldendrop

I’m posting this at the ASLA conference and I’ve just been listening to an extremely good presentation by Mark Treadwell. He is one of these polymaths who gave a range of examples of how, in the last  5 years, there has been a paradigm shift in society with the emergence of the internet. He argued that learning is the key factor in our schools but that schools are not necessarily geared towards learning. He cited the new New Zealand curriculum which focuses on a new approach to learning, which, for example, gets students to think about their emotions. Mark emphasised that we need to take a new approach not only to schools but also to school libraries. Get on to his websites – and yes, he is selling books – but there is a wide range of superb ideas.

One of the visits (pre-conference of course) which was very worthwhile, was to the Art Galley of Western Australia . The current exhibition is by Richard Woldendorp. It is a series of photographs, taken from the air and the exhibition, according to the gallery, ‘established a fresh visual vocabulary for the Australian landscape’. The photographs are stunning and at first often look abstract, until you look closer and see, for example, trees on a sand dune. Absolutely stunning.

ASLA conference and Perth (Australia)

This week, I am at the ASLA Conference which is taking place at the convention centre in Perth. There are about 360 delegates at the conference. As usual with these conferences, there is a bewildering range of options when the concurrent sessions run. This morning, I attended a session on school library webpages – a topic I posted on recently. The presenter,Sharon McGuinness hosts Mrs Mac’s Webpage and talked about how the school library webpage can be a means of what she calls ‘active advocacy’ by providing support for staff, students and parents. It’s certainly worth a look. Sharon also gave some examples of very simple tools which can be used to create school library webpages. Worth a look are Yola - a drag and drop package; Wix which is a bit slow to load but is worth pursuing; and Weebly  which Sharon has used to very good effect.

Perth is a very attractive city, with the Swan River (see picture below) flowing through the city. It is also a very green city with a superb network of cycling, running and walking routes which are all off road. When you look the history of Perth, the city was “founded” in 1829 i.e. a British sea captain arrived in a large ship and took over, “ignoring the Aborigines who lived there”. One of the aspects of Perth that you realise when you are here for even a few days, that it is viewed as an ‘isolated’ city. However, this is a very east coast Australia view. It takes 5 hours to fly from Sydney to Perth – but the reverse is also true. So ‘isolation’ needs to be thought about.

Swan River Perth