Lending a hand

photo credit: Meredith_Farmer via photopin cc

It is always a privilege to be asked to present a session for other teachers. Last Thursday I had the opportunity to provide some training and guidance for library staff at another school. Their particular need for LibGuides training played to my expertise and I was delighted to lend a helping hand.

We have been using the LibGuides platform for a library web presence for 12 months now and are most impressed with functionality, flexibility and back end support. The presence of a strong community of librarians from around the world adds to its usefulness as resources are shared freely for others to use.

The statistics clearly show our library site is being well used with our Mathematics guide alone showing more than 1500 viewings this year.

Some guidelines to consider for your library if you are interested in using LibGuides are listed in an earlier post here. 

5 simple steps to a Scoop.it widget on your webpage or blog

Scoop.it widgets 
Many people are curating the best resources they can find using Scoop.it. You can use their expertise to display this dynamic content visually via a widget on your website or blog as shown with these 2 examples.

      


Scoop.it provides 2 alternatives for delivering content, an RSS feed and a widget. Once you are logged in choose Manage/ Export to find these options.
For the widget:
1. Choose shape - square or rectangular
2. The number of posts - default is 3 but I suggest 5
3. Select time to display, the widget above is set on 5 secs, the one on the right on 10
4. Use the slider to determine the width of the gadget.
5. Preview, adjust as desired then grab the code ready to paste to your website or blog.

How to grab other folk’s scoops using the widget 

Simply copy and edit the code below:
1. Replace the URL http://www.scoop.it/t/ebooksk12 with the address showing in the URL of the Scoop you want
2. Replace the title ebooks with the title you want displayed at the top of the widget

I have removed the first < from the code before the word iframe,  Insert it and remember to close the iframe at the end with < and /  to get your widget to work.

Code
iframe> align="left" frameborder="0" height="250" scrolling="no" src="http://www.scoop.it/t/ebooksk12/js?format=square&numberOfPosts=5&title=ebooks&speed=5&mode=normal&width=250" width="250"  iframe>

Notice that you can also adjust the size of the widget here too by altering the height and width numbers that currently are set at 250.

I've used Scoop.it widgets  here on our ipad page to display the wonderful resources that others are finding.

Have fun!

The Australian Teacher Librarian Team

Who's who in the field?

On a weekend when many folks in Australia are thinking of football; Rugby World Cup in NZ, AFL (Australian Rules Football) Grand Final in Melbourne and the Rugby League Grand Final in Sydney, another, not mutually exclusive, group of dedicated folks are winging their way to Sydney for the biennial gathering of those involved in, and passionate about school libraries in education. The ASLA2011 conference program offers a wide range of topics and promises an engaging three days.

This had me pondering on the strength of the Australian team - the Australian teacher librarian team. Judy O'Connell asks United we stand - or do we? and raises some concern that we could be our own worst enemy. I take the opportunity prompted this morning by a query from @henriettaMi for examples of Australian TLs who blog, to highlight some of our local Australian leading lights in the teacher- librarian field.

I have concentrated on those people currently working in schools as we are all aware of the huge contributions made to the field by the likes of Judy O'Connell, Lyn Hay, Karen Bonanno and Pru Mitchell to mention but a few.

Apologies in advance for omissions, it is a rich field and I am limited to those I have encountered in my own PLN.  If I have omitted your contribution to these particular fields, please let me know in the comments.

Scoop.it
A wealth of material is being curated by Australian TLs using Scoop.it If you have not yet explored this tool, check out these topics. These TLs are sharing their expertise and following many others that are worth investigating.

Marita Thomson Reader's Advisory for Secondary Schools
Jean Anning QR codes in K-12 education, Weird and Wonderful, Steampunk in K-12 education
Tania Sheko Apps for learning, What is a teacher librarian?
Sue Krust Teacher librarians and transliteracy
Di Laycock Graphic novels in the classroom
Judith Way Are you game?
My topic ebooks in K-12 schools


Some significant Australian TL blogs
There are many TLs blogging for their schools and reflecting on learning. Here's a taste of some of those.

Jenny Luca Lucacept - intercepting the web
Tania Sheko Brave new world Her other blogs are listed from this site
Stacey Taylor Librarians are go
Marita Thomson Developing readers one of various blogs
Karen Powers Big Bookcase
Leanne Windsor Learning to learn
Judith Way The Way forward previously the power behind SLAV's Bright ideas
Audrey Nay Teacher Talk  and other blogs

Australian K-12 LibGuides lights 

These TLs are curating content and providing lessons for their students via LibGuides. You can see their sites here.
Leanne Windsor, Petra Pollum and Alison Rout at the Illawarra Grammar School
Cathy Oxley and colleagues at Brisbane Grammar School
Tania Sheko and colleagues at Melbourne High School
Stacey Taylor and Jenny Uther at Monte Sant' Angelo
as well as my valued colleague at Trinity Grammar School, Alison Klein at our site The Arthur Holt Library.

Congratulations team! You are on a winning side.