Library Links

"Content that might be of interest to Teacher-Librarians..."

19.1.12

Ça m'intéresse - clips d'une minute

La Minute de la Connaissance

"Science, culture, histoire, vie quotidienne... En une minute top chrono, les journalistes du magazine Ça m'intéresse vous racontent les histoires et les découvertes qui les ont le plus épatés. Abonnez-vous!!!"

(Avis: visionnez les clips avant de les montrer à la classe.)

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Tween Read - Michael Vey: Prisoner of Cell 25

A "Rick Riordan" Read-alike

"Chapters with intriguing titles, excellent writing, and engaging characters make this action-packed story a compulsively entertaining read . . . This first book of a planned series has a satisfying conclusion but leaves the reader determined to discover what the next book ... has in store. This is a book Rick Riordan's fans will want to read."    - VOYA               

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PixStop - The New NFB Stop-Motion Animation iPad App

Announcing - PixStop - Stop-Motion Animation App from NFB

The PixStop app makes it easier than ever for students to shoot their own stop-motion animation films on the iPad2, and allows the integration of a range of subjects into the curriculum. (The app is free - iPad2 only - for ages 10 and up.)

DOWNLOAD PixStop here:

If you like stop motion animation, check out this playlist at the NFB site:

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Felt Board Ideas

Here are some Felt Board links to explore

"Felt boards and felt pieces are fabulous early literacy tools as they encourage children to engage with story telling – whether it be with familiar stories, such as fairy tales, or stories completely of their own making."

Think of them as a low-tech Smartboards!

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"FingersPlay" Primary Song games - Preview site

Fingersplay!
A DVD resource of 23 original fingerplays for Children up to 8 years old.
Preview 5 of the songs/rhymes on this site:

"Learn them by heart and share them with children.Children love to watch the video because it features actors from two to ten years of age.
Developmental Areas and Concepts include:
Friendship, Animals, Food, Feelings, Big and Little, Prepositions, Body and Self, Gross Motor, Make Believe (and more)"

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"Library Blend" - a nice volunteer gift!

Murchies sells "Library Blend" tea.

"A Murchie's trademark blend of green and black tea chosen to honour the official opening of Vancouver's Library Square in May of 1995. This special blend has been a customer favorite for over 15 years!"

The small size - 10 teabags per box - goes for $4.25. Makes a nice, thoughtful, "theme" gift.

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DLTK's Preschool Crafts for Kids

Crafts for Kids

Use this site a jumpstarter for craft ideas. You may find a brainwave you can use on a particular theme. (Note: there are a number of ads on this site.)
"DLTK's Crafts for Kids features a variety of fun, printable children's crafts, coloring pages and more including projects for holidays, educational themes and some of favorite cartoon characters."

From the site:
"Paper Crafts are perfect for preschool and kindergarten children.  If you're new at crafting with young children, you might want to read the blurb I wrote as part of the frog paper craft."

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18.1.12

TaskBoard - 10K project

Quick task and notecard holder: Taskboard

Want to make some quick notes or generate a do-to list on the fly? Teachers or students can use this to make a checklist at the start of class, and then delete the cards as work is done. Use it to generate an anticipation guide, have students sort words into categories....lots of uses. Hashtags help you select groups of cards. Simply bookmark the link on the menu bar of your browser and use when need it. The data is stored on the local machine until the user hits the red "X", and clears all the cards.

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Finding Read-alikes using EBSCO NoveList

Generating annotated lists of read-alikes

Would you like to have an easy-to-locate, annotated list of read-alikes for novels that your teachers or students are reading that she can print out and distribute? Because our district subscibes to EBSCO, we have access to NoveList K-8 Plus, and this resource can help you do just that.

Here's how:
On any page in NoveList K-8 Plus, enter the title of a novel in the search bar, and then click on Search. On the search results page, click on the Title Read-alikes link. You can browse the resulting list, and even print the results for your staff. Look like a hero!!

There are also some great NoveList tutorials to help you get the most out of this database.  http://support.ebsco.com/novelist/tutorials.php

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I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony

Honouring librarians for service to communities, schools & campuses

The 2011 Carnegie Corporation of New York/ New York Times I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony, was held December 8 at The Times Center in New York City.

Starts with Caroline Kennedy's keynote address

The award program, administered by the American Library Association's Campaign for America's Libraries, honored ten librarians who were recognized for service to their communities, schools and campuses. More than 1,700 library patrons nominated a librarian.

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DX: Canadian High School Design Competition

The 2012 Sears "Canadian High School Design" Competition is here

Design Exchange is proud to announce the 17th Annual Sears Canadian High School Design Competition.  The aim of the competition is to promote the study and awareness of various design disciplines in schools across Canada.  The competition is open to all high school students, at the junior (grades 10 and below) and senior (grades 11 and above) levels.  Prizes will be awarded at the two levels, in each of the four categories – Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Architecture / Interior Design, and Graphic Design. (See past winners on the site as well.) Cash prizes of $500, $300 and $200 for the winners.

This year's challenges:
  • Industrial Design: Drinking Fountain
  • Fashion Design: Messenger or laptop bag
  • Architecture/Interior Design: Tree House
  • Graphic Design: Create the 2012 Competition Certificate
Deadline March 30, 2012

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Visit the Moon (and Mars)- with GoogleEarth

See the Moon close up!

This is an amazing resource for teachers presenting a space unit. Students can explore, view footage, hear audio commentary, view artifact locations, the list goes on. The intro page has a short video that explains what you can do. (There is also an option to explore Mars!) The guided tours are AMAZING!

"With Moon in Google Earth, you can:

  • Take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronauts
  • View 3D models of landed spacecraft
  • Zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts' footprints
  • Watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions
Simply launch Google Earth 5, and select Moon from the top toolbar to start exploring."

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The Google Art Project - MuseumView

Explore museums with Street View technology

The Google Art Project is a unique collaboration with some of the world's most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail. Explore museums with Street View technology: virtually move around the museum's galleries, selecting works of art that interest you, navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum and you explore. (You can even listen to audio on some works.)

In "Artwork View", discover featured artworks at high resolution and use the custom viewer to zoom into paintings. Expanding the info panel allows you to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.

Teachers and students: Create your own collection! The 'Create an Artwork Collection' feature allows you to save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

Watch this introductory video

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StreetView Roulette

Random "teleportation" around the globe

GlobeGenie, created by Joe McMichael, is nifty little hack that randomizes latitude and longitude coordinates and then looks for the closest StreetView location. While it's a great timewaster, it's also a serendipitous way to skip around the planet and see places you might not ordinarily choose to view. (Note: if you limit your search to Africa, there are not many places that Google has captured - expect many hits in South Africa.) You can also set it to flip every 10 or 20 seconds. (Some ads at the bottom of the page.)

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17.1.12

DNA game - Phylo

Contribute to mapping diseases within human DNA

"Phylo is a challenging flash game in which every puzzle completed contributes to mapping diseases within human DNA. Though it may appear to be just a game, Phylo is actually a framework for harnessing the computing power of mankind to solve a common problem; Multiple Sequence Alignments. A sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of D.N.A, R.N.A or protein to identify regions of similarity. From such an alignment, biologists may infer shared evolutionary origins, identify functionally important sites, and trace the source of certain genetic diseases."

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Help astronomers explore the Universe

Welcome to Galaxy Zoo,
where you can help astronomers explore the Universe.

How "gaming" can help science.
Hubble uses gorgeous imagery of hundreds of thousands of galaxies drawn from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope archive. To understand how these galaxies, and our own, formed we need your help to classify them according to their shapes — a task at which your brain is better than even the most advanced computer. If you're quick, you may even be the first person in history to see each of the galaxies you're asked to classify.

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Solve Puzzles for Science - the "foldit" game - High School

Protein Folding for Fun and Science

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research. This page describes the science behind Foldit and how your playing can help.
(Requires the download of the "game" and the creation of an account.)

[Wired article about this site]

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Learning Objects for Math K-12

Get help teaching math concepts

This list contains a range of over 700 learning objects, from video clips (à la Khan academy), Flash games, websites and downloadable apps. Arranged by Grade level, and then by learning outcome. Makes math fun!
(From the LearnNowBC site)

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LearnNowBC- la St Valentin -

Interactive French Lessons - la St Valentin

The link will download a zip file from the LNBC site. Activities include a conversation script, vocab words, expressions, and some games. There is also a quiz to self-test. This learning object would work well as a preview of the vocab, mid-unit practice or end of lesson review.

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Make your very own Heritage Minute

Calling all filmmakers/animators/teachers!

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, we're asking you to make your very own Heritage Minute! Only the content of the minute has to be historically accurate. It is the idea and the creativity behind the Minute that counts, not the production quality! The Heritage Minutes are only 60-seconds long. Deadline is March 31, 2012.

Prize? an iPad2 for the classroom.

Participants must be residents of Canada and registered students between the ages of 12 and 23. Submissions will be separated into two age categories: grade 7 to grade 10 and grade 11 to the undergraduate level. Contestants will be required to provide proof of age. (Guidelines)


Teacher Resource:

Some topics:

Learning Resources:

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Interactive 3D visualizations of artwork - iPad app

UVaM (University of Virginia Art Museum) App (free!)

"Experience highlights from the University of Virginia Art Museum with interactive 3D visualizations of ceramics and sculpture from the Ancient Mediterranean, South Asia, Africa, and Ancient Americas. Each object in this catalog can be rotated and enlarged using simple touch gestures. A detailed description written by UVaM curators accompanies each piece and chronicles its history and cultural context."

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Joe Fafard’s iconic sculptures - 3D exhibition

Sixty-nine scultures in 3D

Great for an art class, sculpture lesson or just presenting this Canadian artist!

Experience the full scope of this remarkable Saskatchewan artist's work for the first time! From caricatures and portraits of family and friends to sculptures of cows and horses, the Joe Fafard exhibition offers a range of the artist's social and artistic concerns. The exhibition features 69 sculptures, with loans from the artist and from institutional and private collections across Canada. The technology provides an experience of the artwork that is interactive, exciting, and engaging, with unparalleled image quality and detail. Site visitors can pan the galleries, select an artwork, view it from multiple angles, and, where available, listen to audio guide tracks (voice and music) or read their transcripts.  
(Voice tracks are available in French or English.)
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Eliza - Rogerian bot

A simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist

ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966. (Wikipedia)

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MindSnacks - learn a language on a mobile device

Games for Language Learning

Learn any one of 6 languages including English for ESL students.
These apps are for iPod Touch, iPad or iPhone - and they're free! Voted one of the best apps of 2011.

Here's the "blurb" for the French app:
"MindSnacks French features six exciting games designed to build essential French vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and conversation skills. Make your way through 50 levels of language content, playing games and completing fun challenges as you go. Every level features up to 25 French words and phrases to learn, each including pictures and matching audio clips from a native French speaker. The app also includes a unique learning algorithm that uses proven methods of memorization training to make sure you don't forget the material you learn as you progress through the app."

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What Makes a Game Good?

Design for Fun: What Makes a Game Good, and a Good Game?
(MIT Lecture - 43 min)

Drew Davidson likes to play with blocks in his sandbox, as he demonstrates in a show-and-tell to interactive media colleagues. In this case, the playground is an online game called Minecraft, a two-year-young internet sensation with millions of followers, developed single-handedly by a programmer named "Notch," (A.K.A. Markus Persson).

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the Gutenberg “Parenthesis” - MIT lecture

Oral Tradition and Digital Technologies
(Lecture - Video presentation)

Should we view the last 500 years or so of Western culture as a strange interlude, defined by printed page and other artifacts that once dominated the landscape but are now fading in relevance? In this forum, Thomas Pettitt makes the deliberately provocative case for a Gutenberg "Parenthesis" -- a period marked by the reign of the printing press and isolated from the largely oral culture that came before, and the digitally shaped culture emerging today. - The entire history of media, Pettitt suggests, has been merely "interrupted by the age of print."

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Pour aider les autres - Nicole Pageau - French clips

Nicole Pageau au Rwanda

Depuis cinq ans, une Québécoise tente à sa façon, avec ses maigres moyens, d'aider les rescapés du génocide au Rwanda. Nicole Pageau a tout laissé pour mettre sur pied un centre communautaire qui aide 150 femmes à retrouver leur confiance et leur dignité.

Entrevue avec Nicole à l'émission "Oniva"

Nicole Pageau

Article Cyberpresse:

Radio-Canada -

Organisme canadien d'aide pour les Rwandais

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16.1.12

Ways to Include Students in the Formative Assessment Process

Formative assessment: an on-going process
Larry Ferlazzo answers the question: How can we include students in the formative assessment process?

An award-winning English and Social Studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif., Larry Ferlazzo is the author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, and Building Parent Engagement In Schools.He also maintains the popular Websites of the Day blog.

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Doing Internet Research at the Elementary Level

Teaching the annual research unit.

Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach on Twitter) is an elementary computer teacher in Philadelphia. She writes about her approach to teaching Internet Research Skills starting in grade 3. She includes her step-by-step approach and some additional helpful links. (Unfortunately, her school does not have a library so she is unable to collborate with a TL.)

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Digital Learning Day - Resources

Resources and toolkits to go digital!

"Try one new thing - sample an online lesson, use mobile devices in class, start a wiki, use digital storytelling, start a project-based learning unit, but above all, challenge your teaching, learning, and pedagogy and see what digital technology can do for you and the students you serve! Check out our resources and toolkits and go digital!"

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Thinking about BYOT?

Bring Your Own Technology

How can you make it happen? What are some issues to think about? Is there a step by step guide out there somewhere? Take a look at what Forsyth County Schools are doing. [BYOT resources]

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Simple tutorials to help you discover how music works.

Dave's Conservatory: Learn about music for free!

A series of short videos (70 at last count) that address difference aspects of music, such as:

Organising Sound
Part 1 - What is Music?
Part 3 - Beat and Pulse
Part 5 - Rhythm
etc.

Reading Music
Part 1 - Getting Started
Part 4 - The Bass Clef
etc.

Conversations
Part 1 - David and Katy ask "What is music for?"
Part 3 - How has technology shaped the development of music? (Part 2)
etc.

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The Daily Create - spontaneous creativity

People producing art daily.

The Daily Creative is an exercise in the continual practice of spontaneous creativity through short exercises. Each "assignment" should take no more than 15-20 minutes. There are no registrations, no prizes, just a community of people producing art daily.

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Worldmapper - seeing the world differently

World maps and animations by topic

"Worldmapper is a collection of world maps and animations, where territories are re-sized according to the subject of interest. There are now nearly 700 maps. Maps 1-366 are also available as PDF posters. When you choose a map to view, there are links at the bottom to download a data file giving the values used for all 200 territories, a graph (usually a cumulative frequency one) of the data, and a top 10 or 20 table (and the original data used, and its source)."

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Moving Art Channel - Youtube

Louie Schwartzberg Videos - nature, stop motion, photography

"Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose notable career spans more than three decades and has created some of the most iconic and memorable film moments of our time. He is an innovator in the world of time-lapse, nature, aerial and "slice-of-life" photography - the only cinematographer in the world who has literally been shooting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week continuously for more than 30 years."

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Native Plants - Richmond Nature Park

First Nations Use of Bog Plants

This program gives students the opportunity to identify plants used by First Nations People and describes the manner in which people used bog plants. (Information on this webpage can be used to supplement a fieldtrip, or provide background to a classroom based unit.)

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The Native Voice: a unit of study for First Nations 12 & SS 10/11

Case Studies in CONTACT, COLONIALISM, and RESISTANCE

This programme was specifically designed as a unit of study for First Nations 12 students in the province of British Columbia. It also meets prescribed learning outcomes for Social Studies 10 and 11. The package contains four case studies, which can be used together or independently at the discretion of the educator. A timeline of BC settlement history and preliminary discussion activities precede the case studies. Each case study provides an overview supplemented with newspaper articles from the "Native Voice".

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Elementary-level lessons on First Nations

"The Learning Circle" Classroom Guides
The Learning Circle is designed to help meet Canadian educators' growing need for
elementary-level learning exercises on First Nations. It comprises a series of three classroom guides on First Nations in Canada. (See below for PDF links.)

The Learning Circle (ages 4-7) (parts 1 and 2)

The Learning Circle (ages 8-11)

The Learning Circle (age 12-14)

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15.1.12

UBC wrestles with appropriate use of Copyrighted Material

Understanding UBC's Copyright and Fair Dealing Guidelines

January 10, 2012, interview with Joy Kirchner, Scholarly Communications Coordinator and Coordinator for UBC's copyright education programming. 

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