Saturday 8 September 2012

Justin Da'th - Children's author

Yesterday our lovely Teacher Librarian at GCCC did a fantastastic job of getting a very successful children's author Justin Da'th to come and chat to the children. I don't know what it is but I get so excited when I meet a successful author I get a little star struck and I'm not sure if I am asking intelligent questions. He was so charming and the children just loved him. Check out Justins Extreme adventure stories if you have time, he told us that they are looking at making them into a TV/ Film version and not an animated version either but with real characters - very exciting!

Sunday 2 September 2012

Libraries and Dementia

After 28 years of working in various libraries as a Library Technician that included Westmead Hospital NSW, The University of Western Sydney NSW, The Royal Blind Society NSW , Councils and Schools both Private and Public, in Qld & NSW. Currently I am curreently working at a lovely Christian School in Qld. My library skills and experiences are extensive and yes while I catalogue copious amounts of reading material. I also believe in thinking how best to make a great impact on the people coming to our library. As a library Para -professional a Library Technician not a Librarian- how do I help the public to get the most out of coming to a library?  what makes it a memoriable experience that people wish to keep coming back for?.

I have had wonderful opportunities to promote new and interesting ideas in Libraries that do not always revolve around reading. I firmly believe that Libraries play a vital role in the community they are established in and I also believe that while our collections ares valuable it is not always about The Book! - that may shock some of our library enthusiasts! I am an ideas person always have been and it is to the many Librarians I have worked with over the years credit, that they give many of my ideas a try.

I have supported and established reading groups for our very young, building up "Story Time" sessions in Council Libraries so that our little ones enjoy having the simple pleasure of a book read to them, finding the local Play groups and inviting them to specific story time sessions each week..  At the same time I Incorporated signing for the deaf - because I also thought what about the children who can't hear? why should they be excluded -can't they enjoy a story as well?. The signers loved it as students they had to build up their signing hours and what better way to do it! and I found it was not always the child who could not hear- but the parents who were hearing impaired also had the opportunity to participate in sharing the experience of having a story read to their child as well.

Working with our deaf and blind patrons is enormously challenging for Library Professionals and it was my pleasure to work with these wonderful people. It encouraged me to get a grant for one Public Library for a Poet - the technology enables a client to place the page of a book or a letter onto the machine where it is then read to them. How great to go and choose a book yourself and make the selection yourself, This simple act of empowerment -the ability for you to choose a book you would like in a sightless world where a lot of well meaning librarians think they know what stories you should like to read.

I encouraged dance groups - belly dancing in a library! as well as established a musical group of elderly gentleman now well known in the community!- to use an under utilised room attached to the Library, this lead to tai chi and sporting  groups using it as well. I encouraged and invited  the local High School  to display their year 12 Major Art Works, and encouraged local artists to also display their work weekly, monthly and annually. Meeting rooms were established and before long well over 1,000 people use this room attached to the Council library. These rooms are used for breast screening and for informational sessions on environmental issues in the area, which lead to major displays going up in the libraries.

My next aim would be to encourage Council Libraries to have a "Memory corner" for our aged with Dementia. The memory is a funny thing and now with my 81 year old dad suffering dementia. I know that while our young benefit from having stories read to them - so do our elderly. Why not just for fun invite professional actors to do the reading, after all they do it for our talking books for our visually impaired- how much more stimulating would it be for our elderly.

I am no longer working in Councils, I currently work in a wonderful school Prep to Year 12, where I have started making the Life of our one and only live plant called Dewey come alive and go on adventures throughout the year. Recently he dressed as Jack and the beanstalk for Book week. Every child that borrows I carefully examine their choices - look at them appraisingly then say  - Let me know if you  enjoy this one - great choice!!. (The smile on the face is the reward I get - all ages from prep to Year 12).

I never know where my career may lead me as a Library Technician or which Library I get to share my experience and skills, but I do know that Libraries are an ever changing evolving place where like minded minds meet and journeys begin from the pages of lessons learned.



Saturday 18 August 2012

E.books - great article

As a Published author in 2008 through Traffords in Canada, I learned the difficulties and also the ease of Publishing your work through Companies such as Traffords. Here is a great Link - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/technology/personaltech/ins-and-outs-of-publishing-your-book-via-the-web.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

I hope it is helpful to more aspiring authors.

Monday 6 August 2012

smmry.com -

When using a program such as TV4 education you often have Pdfs that you upload onto your library system that need to be sorted, to inform teachers that these Pdfs are available on catalogue using a brief outline such as smmry.com offers is time saving.

Friday 3 August 2012

Diigo - Library

Adding sites to my Diigo Site: I can definitely see why this site is a handy way to store your interests .
Here is one sight I saved first http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwTJU8ga1zQ&feature=related
Great site to use.

Monday 30 July 2012

Creative writing

When I was researching some sites I came across http://www.seussville.com
Great site to use and would recommend it for boys who may be disengaged from the creative writing processes of the class room.

A little story -

I had fun using this create a story site -few problems with editing but on the whole a quick and easy tool to use for story writing. This little story I wrote aimed at Prep : title "Plop the Raindrop"

http://www.storyjumper.com/book/edit/6285272.

Condensing resources and managing time

Topic Marks - Top Marks for trying!

It is always the way in this ever changing era of technology that as soon as you source a great site to help you to manage time it folds. And so was the case with a great Little site called Topicmarks - I would have thought something this easy would have been heavily utilised however it will unfortunately stop July 25th 2012.


Become the New Rupert Murdoch!

I have always thought that it should be easy to create an on line Newspaper with articles and information that you are specifically interested in. But not being a Journalist myself it seems a huge task sorting the right amount of relevant information required. How great that Paper. Li has created a simple way to link your ideas and others together. I have linked my sight to twitter however you could do it to Face book as well. Here is what my simple paper looks like and I look forward to updates as I link sites to them.    http://paper.li/hopsonk/1343695705

Other sites that I looked at were Strawberry Jam which in my case was a bit sticky! wouldn't let me log on -I did try several times, Myebook and Wibbitz. All great sites and for the budding entrepreneur to help promote your own published material I can see great benefits, for linking your own existing websites to them. My own experiences with these sites and something to watch out for is the hidden costs that sometimes you find later down the track, even though it is advertised as Free etc sometimes these extra costs come in later and in your excitement to use them you may not read the fine print - always a user beware policy should be applied.


What I use.

For the time poor I believe that email summaries are a great way to quickly evaluate the relevance of a site or in my work a program - one site that I use in my work is a site called TV4eduation.http://www.tv4education.com/  this site lists programs and gives a very brief synopsis as well as a visual still slide show of program content. To help evaluate this site further another site that supports TV program content and gives you just that little more information is called Enhance TV  http://www.enhancetv.com.au/

Vtv is linked with my Twitter account and Facebook site this allows me to further get a brief outline of the newest educational programs that has just been aired. It allows me time to view and make an informed choice as to what programs I would refer to the Teacher Librarian to consider downloading for our catalogue.


Saturday 28 July 2012

Creating with PicLits

I designed this poster with PicLits

http://www.piclits.com/viewpoem.aspx?PoemId=170945


This was a cartoon I enjoyed creating with another site: makebeliefscomix.com

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=5645289C754707

Top search results not ending in oogle

To be very honest I am quite comfortable typing in google for a  quick answer  to a question, in a time pressed world it is just so easy. However it does make sense to also remember there are many search engines out there to help us find and source information more accurately and to stop that time wasting -"Surfing"of the net that a lot of us do when we don't get the answer to our question.

So- "Surfs Up" - As a Library Technician I would happily show users of the Internet especially in Public Libraries how to search efficiently and yes in schools I show High School students as well. Over the years a lot of the sites I used have now completely gone, however there are still a few old favourites such as Dog Pile www.dogpile.com  that I still use.

While looking at Dewey Digger www.deweydigger.com  I have to say I saved this to my Face book page as I know a lot of my fellow library workers use Linked In and perhaps have not see their front page- Great to use on an Interactive white board for a  visual display to remind students what the Dewey Classifications are!

I have used Wolfram Mathematica -  wolfram mathematica.com on many occasions for that difficult mathematical problem - great for High school and University students doing calculus etc.

I enjoy surfing the web looking for that great site and while each site has their strengths not all of them answer that difficult question you are looking for. I also use the Ask.com site but for even greater help Librarians can be contacted through Ask a Librarian sites in Public, State and  National Libraries.www.sl.nsw.gov.au/services/ask

We seem to have come full circle, using our computers we go online and ask our professionals such as our Librarians and Library Technicians in Libraries all over the world. For personal help in answering our questions and happily waiting for an answer, there is a certain amount of irony to that. .
  

Flickr

Signing up for Flickr was easy and yes I could upload a photo and search it using the map - However as I have found with this site the next time you go in you cannot easily find yourself again. This could be because of network problems with living in an area such as Bribie Island. In any case I can see the value of quickly uploading your photographs and mapping them - Great for Real Estate sites. 

Picture Pop : The Image Culture


When it comes to choosing images to support my work as a Library Technician in a Prep to High School range, sometimes the choices can be overwhelming. However there are a few simple sites that I enjoy using such as Penguin Books Australia a nice source of images and videos http://www.penguin.com.au,

However I have enjoyed creating a very simple album with Picmonkey -www.picmonkey.com  a site I have not used before and found it a very simple program for designing a simple album.  I would use it for when a specific theme is asked for in pictures such as when I have an Easter Program for Prep. I could then use my favourite Bunnie pictures for example as seen above.   

The other site I would use is taggalaxy.de  I really enjoyed the visuals and a huge amount of choice. for ease of visual choice I would also use morguefile.com for free photos.



Sourcing video content:

On Looking at various useful sites for Visual content to aid with education I looked at three.
The first I chose because I am always interested in sourcing great content on cooking techniques for Teachers in High School teaching Home Science. The site that Harvard University has devised for sharing lectures- http://www.youtube.com Harvard Science and Cooking series: The many faces of chocolate/Lecture 3 2011 speaker Ramon Marato.  While the content is informative it is a higher level than for High School students and is designed for University students. When it first commences you see there are a lot of acknowledgements to various groups for their contributions to the making of the lecture which makes it a little dry before you get to the science of making a great eating chocolate.
The second Video site: Khan academy http://khanacademy.org "Why dividing by Zero is undefined: Thinking about why dividing by zero is left undefined. I really enjoyed the visual presentation of this site and could see this as a useful site teaching Higher School Mathematics. Why? simply the clear communication of the presenter and the great way the old "Black Board" comes alive writing as you watch!
Finally the EDU site entitled: The Olympic Altitude Advantage -  http://www.youtube.com/education
I really enjoyed this site and would probably refer teachers who were not familiar with it to have a look at the program content. I also like how you can post a comment and tweet it as well. A very clear and concise site very informative and suitable for High school students.

Twitter versus Face Book

When ever first started to use twitter I always find that you could so easily get confused with sending a twit message to a comment you have read. I also find it really exciting when someone who is quite famous starts to follow you - Not me necessarily but I do have a couple of twitter accounts and one of them is followed by Sir Richard Branson! here is my twitter account  Kathryn Hopson @ twitter.com
I always find it really interesting when people from your past find you - for example an old boss of mine who is a Librarian in the State Library has just asked me to allow her to follow me on twitter - how nice.

         

Monday 23 July 2012

Choosing between Prezi and slideRocket

When I chose to use slide rocket it was because of the ease of the use of the function buttons,  although clicking on the back arrow did take you completely out of what you were doing, however it instantly saves! bonus!. I have to say if I was a primary school teacher I would look at Prezi- although all that movement and imbedding items is a difficult one to focus on, but with practise you could achieve great results. 

Here is a brief presentation on My book

This is the site called SlideRocket  - creating a brief presentation on my book Published in 2008

<iframe src="http://app.sliderocket.com:80/app/fullplayer.aspx?id=F4538C7B-E2B4-316E-2610-B75514A29EFD" width="500" height="401" scrolling=no frameBorder="0"></iframe>

Learning mathematics today

Dyscalculia affects 4-7% of the world population, recognised for decades by the World Health Organisation - WHO and the DSM - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disabilities. Yet in Australian schools today, while we recognise a child may not be able to read and can be diagnosed as Dyslexic, there is no specific testing for children who cannot grasp mathematical concepts easily. The term Dyscalculia is not well known or even recognised by our educators. https://sites.google.com/site/mathdyslexia/

A well known quote by Albert Einstein sums up a lot of how a Dyscalculia sufferers feel it comes from Famous Quote on Quotations Book - "Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count." - by Einstein, Albert
Albert Einstein himself many believe suffered from Dyslexia and Dyscalculia.