Technobooks… technology & books link to a world of information

We have celebrated Education Week this year with a Book Fair in the Library.

Children from Prep to year 6 have produced ‘Paper Bag Book Reports’ Year 6 students show their book bags.

 Education week celebrations will come to an end on Friday with a series of Show Cases highlighting all children’s Paper Bag Book Reports which parents have been invited to attend. To finish off the event, parents and staff will join for morning tea in the college library.

Year 7 – Tomorrow when the war began, John Marsden – Finding Isabella, Alison Robertson

Year 8 – The gathering, Isobelle Carmody – plus selection of titles by various authors

Year 9 – Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta

Year 10 – The curious incident of the dog in the night time, Mark Haddon

Tahnk you to Magazines4students, a company the library orders with annually have provided us with a prize of 50 x 2.0GB USBs for being one of the first schools to place an order in 2009. To try and share them amongst as many students as possible it has been decided to have a weekly ICT Award. This award will recognise excellence, hard work, good results and breakthroughs in students ICT pursuits. Students from the year 3/4 class right up to and including year 12 will be eligible for the award.

To begin the awards this week, we have two recipients: Carly and Hannah for ‘Excellence in ICT – International finalists in the ‘netgened project’ video competition’.

Watch the school blogs and college newsletter for the weekly recipients of the award.

Did you know….

Our Library is also your Community Library!

Visit the library… become a member, it’s free… borrow books… use computers… internet access… photocopy… print… professional library services…

Picture Books

The three billy goats Gruff : Retold by Magee, Wes ; Burnett, Julian

The three little pigs : Retold by Walter, Anne ; Postgate, Daniel

How to lose all your friends : Carlson, Nancy

King of the playground : Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds ; Malone, Nola Langner

The recess Queen : O’Neill, Alexis ; Huliska-Beith, Laura

We honestly can look after your dog : Child, Lauren

My wobbly tooth must not ever never fall out : Child, Lauren ; Hall, Samantha

My mother’s eyes : the story of a boy soldier : Wilson, Mark

The terrible plop : Dubosarsky, Ursula ; Joyner, Andrew

The smallest bilby and the Easter games : Hilton, Nette ; Whatley, Bruce

The firefighters : Whiting, Sue ; Rawlins, Donna

Jasper McFlea will not eat his tea : Fox, Lee ; Vane, Mitch

My footy scrapbook : Sanders, Jay

A child’s garden : Foreman, Michael, Alexis ; Huliska-Beith, Laura

Junior Fiction

The adventures of Nanny Piggins : Spratt, R.A.

Darius Bell and the glitter pool : Hirsch, Odo

The remarkable secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen : Abela, Deborah

A certain music : Walters, Celeste ; Spudvilas, Anne

The land of Kur : Morgan, Sally et.al.

In Australia, where we live, World Book Day isn’t really that well known.

In our schools we have events such as School Libraries Day, Children’s Book Week, Literacy Week, Education Week, Numeracy Week etc, etc.

So today on World Book Day, stop for 5 minutes and read a book, share it with someone else and enjoy the music of words and the places the narrative takes you…

Take a look at the following link from the UK World Book Day site  http://www.worldbookday.com/for_schools_and_children.asp

As I am blogging today we have all students in the school spread across five classrooms as well as the library participating in a live classroom link up with Jean Pennycook, teacher and author in Antarctica. The live classroom is also active in Perth, Aust. with Geoff and is hosted by Lorraine at Jackson School in USA. It doesn’t stop there, we are live with Rob at Adelaide Uni, Vinny in Taiwan, Gabrielle in Argentina and Lorraine, Alfred and Breanna in Boston USA. Some of these participants are in their workplace or school, others are in their own homes. This is an amazing activity with students and teachers totally captivated with the information Jean is providing. The students have so many questions about the penguins Jean is researching as well as Antarctica. They have been online for almost an hour and there are still so many questions still being asked. Check out Jean’s web site http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/expedition3/crew-pennycook.html

My gorgeous Auntie Daph celebrated her 100^th birthday on Monday 10^th November, 2008. Family, relatives and friends joined Daph the Saturday before the big day for a great afternoon of celebration.

Can you imagine the events in history someone who is 100 years old would have witnessed?  Daph would have been 10 when the Great War ended and in her twenties during the depression years. She mentioned in her birthday speech that ‘the family never went without food during those times because they lived on a farm’.  Daph would have been in her thirties at the end of World War II. All of this happened before she was 40. How many changes of government and new prime ministers would there have been in Australia during that time? She would have also seen three British Commonwealth Kings and one Queen; King George V, King Edward VIII, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II.

Daph is a fantastic Aunt to our families and sister and friend to my mum. She’s a fun loving person who has lived her 100 years fully. On her eightieth birthday she had a ride in a hot air balloon and to celebrate her ninetieth she was treated to a helicopter ride. She really wanted to ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle on her 100^th but unfortunately she is now a little frail for that.

Here’s cheers to a fanatic person, Daph, 100 years young.

Yet another collaborative ICT activity in at our school this week. It involved year seven students and a group of clients from  Lyndoch Aged Care on a day outing. The students prepared their ‘voicethread’ programs and compiled lists of questions and prompts in a 50 minute session prior to the visitors arriving.  In preparation for the whole group activity that started the session we set up an online ‘tokbox’ to make a live video recording. After that was complete the students then moved off in small groups with their special visitors to interview them and make ‘voicethread’ recordings. The second part of this activity, the actual making of the voicethreads that included the interview recording and uploading photos only took a very busy 50 minute session. Well done to the students and the teachers involved. View the completed voicethreads at http://techno7.globalstudent.org.au/lyndoch-day-trippers  

This week our year six students together with several staff members participated in a ‘live blogging’ session with students and teachers from Richmond PS, Premier Brumby and Education Minister Bronwyn Pike. This was part of the launch of the new broadband connections for schools. It was a very exciting experience for the schools and the students involved. Even though we have had ‘live blogging’ sessions in our school previously, I had not witnessed it personally. It is very fast paced and a lot of information is transmitted in a very short time. Quite different to the live Skype video exchanges we have had with classrooms in other countries. Follow this link to view the ‘live blog’ http://hawkesdale.globalstudent.org.au