No books in the library and Burj Khalifa

In some quarters, when the future of school libraries in discussed, there’s an elephant in the room that is ignored. Debate about the future of school libraries and TLs/SLs has gone on for generations, including discussions about what the ‘school library’ should be called. Now there is a major difference. Take away books from the school library and what is the role of the TL? Ask most people in a typical school and they will find it difficult to find a full time role, and this is mostly because most teachers and students find it difficult to conceptualise that a digital collection needs the same amount of work as a print collection, and maybe more. So we need to start discussing the future – the real, digital future – of school libraries, and working out what the TL’s (whatever s/he may be called in the future) role can and should be. A good place to start is Mal Lee’s article - see it as a challenge.

I have been travelling for the past 4 weeks, to New Zealand, Australia and Dubai, where my wife and I spent the last 2 days of the trip with our son Stuart and daughter in law Catherine. If you’ll pardon the pun, the highlight of the visit was going up the 124th floor (of 160 floors) of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building by quite a long way. From the observation deck, you get a superb view of Dubai, and there is a strange loss of perspective because what would normally seem skyscrapers in cities such as Sydney or London, appear to be quite small. I took photos but the ones on the website are better. Outside the Burj and the surrounding area, there is a large lake and on the hour and half hour, music plays and fountains rise in time to the music. Quite a spectacle, part of which is caught in the photo below.

Fountains at the Burj Khalifa

Teaching, Google and campus kangaroos

I’m alerted on the FutureLab site, to a new book on teaching by Ian Gilbert, entitled Why do I need a teacher when I have Google? The book certainly looks worth a look and has had excellent reviews. Gilbert poses some fundamental question about schools and about teaching. While the title may focus on Google and while the chapters have some eccentric titles (e.g. Is that an iron bar through your frontal lobes, or are you just pleased to see me), there is a very serious side to this book, which asks us to take a big picture view of the the future of schools and of teaching. Very relevant to teacher/school librarians.

I’m in Wagga Wagga for 2.5 weeks and working at the CSU campus. The campus itself is set in the countryside near to Wagga Wagga and the university buildings are set in an environment of many trees and extensive bush. One of hte features of the campus is its wildlife, with many species of birds, including the delightful laughing kookaburra. There are also quite a few kangaroos on the campus and even in summer, you can get quite close to them in parts of the campus. In the picture below, you can see the kangaroos in the long grasses which have grown this year because of the extensive rain that Wagga Wagga has experienced. In the past 10 years, this grass has been short and very brown.

Kangaroos on campus

Twurdy and Cathedral Cove

The blog is back after a 2 week break due to work pressure and then a short holiday. Some of my students this session have been using the search engine Twurdy with their students, as part of an assignment in which students develop a learning website, part of which is an e-pathfinder. Twurdy is powered by Google but its key distinguishing feature is its attempts to apply readability levels to the results it shows. The results are shaded differently and you can try to match the shading with the chart at the side of the results. One strange aspect is that Twurdy gives readability ratings in figures e.g. 529, but there is no explanation of what these figures actually mean. It has 3 different option including a Simple Twurdy for younger students. Anecdotally, the school students who have used Twurdy appear to like it. I think it needs a bit more sophistication in its presentation of readability.

On holiday last week in New Zealand’s North Island, I went to the Coromandel Peninsula and visited Cathedral Cove. There’s a walk of c30 minutes down to the cove and you have lovely views across the sea and out to a group of islands. the key feature of the cove is an open cave in the rock though which you can walk (if open) and through which you can see one of the large rock features near the cove which sit magnificently in the incoming tide. An idyllic spot and you can see photos of the cave on the link above. My photo of one of the large rocks is below. A must see if you’re in that area.

Cathedral Cove, NZ