LM_NET

I subscribed to the US equivalent of the NZ school library list serv - LM_NET (School Library Media & Network Communications), and while it was interesting to see what sort of messages and questions were being discussed, with 12,000 members it quickly became untenable, even with the digest version, with 50 - 80 messages a day !

Much of this information is also available on the LM_NET Web page http://lmnet.wordpress.com/

or in the LM_NET Archives which are searchable and organized by thread, date, subject or author and are available at the EduRef (formerly AskERIC) web site
http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/

I'm going to try the EL-Announce service with LM_NET Select (Education and Library Announcements) which is a moderated, thrice weekly, read only, compilation of selected messages posted to LM_NET... we'll see how it goes !
http://lm-net.info/join.html

Funny books

I love a book that makes me laugh.

Here is a link to a booklist, Leave 'em laughing by Alison Follos in the June 2009 School Library Journal. As she says in her introduction, "funny is a personal preference... It's about connection and appreciation, not judgement, and it's a rare find when a humorous title entertains us all equally."

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6660874.html

Michael Rosen and the Patrick Hardy Lecture

The wonderful author and poet Michael Rosen was Britain's Children's Laureate in 2008 /9. Here is the link to his website for the full text of his Patrick Hardy lecture - http://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/patrickhardy.html and there are other gems there too so it is worth exploring.

His Patrick Hardy Lecture talks about the relationship between education and books, a checklist of questions and suggestions about a school's "book culture", and a paean to the picture book and all that it offers to mind and ear and eye... "This is not just a matter of how we read, it’s why we read."

Here is an extract from the Lecture (slightly edited) :

So I’ve become more and more interested in looking at how schools do or don’t help create this book-loving culture. Here’s my checklist of questions to ask of a school, to see if it really is serious about books.

1. Does the school have in place any kind of home-school liaison where someone talks with individual parents about specific books, libraries, book departments, magazines, book clubs, book shows, that might interest this specific child and his or her carers?
   
2. Does the school hold book events all year round with writers, illustrators, story-tellers, librarians, book enthusiasts coming in and talking and performing for the children and parents?
3. Does the school not only invite in a syndicated book fair but also invites in local bookshops, specialist bookshops and has books available for borrowing or buying to support the visiting writers, speakers, performers and story-tellers?
4. Is there someone in the school trained and interested in running the school library and who is on hand to give advice to every teacher to help them with their class libraries?
5. Does the school run book clubs for teachers, parents and children?
6. Does the school give every parent information – perhaps in the form of an attractive pack – on the local library, the local bookshop? Does the school take children and parents to these venues?
7. Do the school and individual classes adopt an author or illustrator for the week, or month or term and investigate, explore and do creative work around that author and illustrator?
8. Do the children make books of their own? Are these readily available for everyone in the school and parents too? Does the school encourage parents to come in and make books with the children? Does the school celebrate and cherish these books as much as it celebrates its most important activities?
9. Does the school encourage children to pass books between each other by means of book swaps, prominently displayed reviews, assembly presentation of ‘this week’s good read’, book posters and the like?
10. Does the school seize every possible moment - eg visits to museums, visits from specialists of any kind, school trips – to support these events and activities with books, eliciting from all and sundry what their favourite books are or were when they were children?
11. Are there regular whole school projects (like, say Black History Month, or ‘The Sea’) where a topic or theme can be supported by books of all kinds, all genres and all ages? Is the school on these occasions inundated with books?
12. Are assemblies and classrooms frequently a place when children are encouraged to become fascinated by something – anything! – to do with a book or what’s in a book?
13. Are the head’s study and teachers’ desks places where special, intriguing, exciting, ever-changing, odd, old, weird books lurk?
14. Does the school keep and use book reviews of children’s books from Books for Keeps, Carousel, Times Educational Supplement, Child and Junior Education, The School Librarian, the broadsheet review pages and the internet?
15. Is there at least one time every week where children will have nothing else to do with a book other than to read it, listen to it, and chat about it in an open-ended way?

This series of points should not be a utopian wish-list. It should be addressed with exactly - yes, exactly – the same urgency and attention to detail that the whole panoply of reading strategies is given. For every sounding out of ‘per’ and ‘ther’ there is an equivalent attention to detail that can be given to any of these fifteen points.

And the obvious, mind-blowingly simple fact stares us in the face: in the very area where the book-loving culture begins, nursery, reception, years 1 and 2, there is, if you like, a world class range of ‘materials’ (!). No, I’m not referring to the Oxford Reading Tree or the Jolly Phonics books or any all-in-one, solve-all literacy pack. I’m talking about - the picture book.

There it sits like some massive inflorescence, budding and flowering and reproducing in all its delightful, complex and beautiful ways, all freighted with the same impulse – how to please, intrigue, and amuse young children and their carers and teachers. When we look at who makes these books, we are talking here about some of the best people to go through art school, some of the funniest, cleverest, most thoughtful people we have and I’m talking here about the whole team – whoever it is who makes up the words, makes the pictures, designs the books, edits, publishes and prints it.

They produce what is a complex art form, that passes on its meanings, makes its suggestions in ways that call on readers to make many, many creative leaps, many, many investigations, many, many connections between parts of pages, different pages, forwards and backwards through the book.

And it does this inviting, in many different ways: visually, orally, textually and in any combinations of all three. Eye and ear are constantly challenged to look and listen here, there and everywhere. The narrative, is in truth a multi-narrative: one moment told in words, next in pictures, simultaneously in both, sometimes complementing each other, sometimes in contrast with each other, sometimes, even in contradiction with each other. There are often more and more details to be found, there are rhythms to be remembered and re-found, there are shapes, patterns, tones, visual rhythms and compositions to be made sense of.

The strategies that we all adopt as older children and as adults in order to read, stick with and unlock stories are all to be found in picture books: plot and sub-plot, goodies and baddies, mysteries to be uncovered and guessed about, heroes on quests, heroes being tested, loss, compassion, achievement, solidarity, pain, intrigue, subversion, scheming, psychologising, resolution and much more.

What’s more, these books address a complex, multi-faceted audience. Picture books are not solely for or about children. They are artistic interventions into the many different kinds of relationships between children and adults. The reading-situation itself is nearly always one shared by at least one carer and at least one child, or at least one teacher and, nearly always, several children. The books are both for and about these relationships. In the books, parents comfort their children, or get the wrong end of the stick or are indifferent. Surrogate children in the form of animals and soft toys get lost or face tremendous ordeals. These open up moments of talk between adults and children as the book is read on many disparate occasions afterwards. How many times have I been asked by parents who’ve been asked by children, is there a mummy in ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’? Is that larger female figure a mummy or an older sister? Is the bear sad? Did he just want to play? These are the brilliant gaps left by Helen Oxenbury (nothing to do with me, I hasten to add), where talk between children and adults arises spontaneously. And these are serious questions from the child, and of course, about that child itself. The child who asks about the missing mummy is a child, who like all of us, wondered what life would be like without mummy. The child who asks, ‘Is the bear sad,?’ ‘Did he just want to play?’ is the child who at one time wanted to play or join in and couldn’t and was left out.

Meanwhile, adults who, as they read these books with their children, wonder about their own childhoods and wonder about their own parenting, caring and teaching. If you’ve ever been a carer of any kind, it’s impossible to read ‘Not Now Bernard’ without knowing that you’ve been a not-now-Bernard person. It does the work of a hundred guides on parenting, a hundred TV programmes on why you are an inadequate parent. ‘Peepo’ is not just a book. It’s a game and, if this doesn’t sound too dull – it’s not meant to! – it’s a social document. There are a hundred details of the way people used to lead their lives, and any number of unquantifiable feelings attached to those people and objects. This is the stuff that history books leaves out: what it felt like to look in a mirror at the moment that a family faced up to the fact that the man was going off to war. Imagine a whole school project on, let’s say, how we used to live, or World War Two. As the school gears up for visits to the local museum, visits by old people, children go home to quiz their grandparents, a host of books come into the school from Nina Bawden’s ‘Carrie’s War’, through Michael Forman’s ‘War Boy’, archives from the local library or town hall, so ‘Peepo’ can take its place amongst it all. Perhaps the year 1 children will perform it, which will be videoed and there’ll be copies of the book for them to buy so that they never need forget what it felt like to look through those holes and find the next picture. Grandparents can say how they remember their parents talking about bomb shelters and rationing...You would be hard pushed to find any other artistic form that has the power and potential to help create conversations like this.

This is something far too valuable to be let to go into decline or restricted to privileged reading situations.

All this is a what I’ll call the ‘literacy of literature’ not the ‘literacy’, per se. This is not just a matter of how we read, it’s why we read.

I suggest that the question, - why we read – should be addressed with just as much attention as schools are giving to the question of how we learn to read.

And so to point 16: I don’t think any meeting held by teachers to help parents understand what literacy is, should ever be without the presence in the room and the time to look at them, of such books as Trish Cooke’s and Helen Oxenbury’s ‘So Much’, Tony Ross’s ‘I Want My Potty’, Shirley Hughes’s ‘Dogger’, books by Anthony Browne, Penny Dunbar, Michael Foreman, Mick Inkpen, Lauren Child, Quentin Blake, Colin MacNaughton, Emma Chichester Clark and many, many more – apologies to those I’ve not mentioned.

17. There should be Beano annuals and football programmes open at the Junior Supporters pages, there should be books that tie in with TV shows and films.

18. Teachers could and should wrap up a meeting with parents with a read-aloud session, say, of a Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler masterpiece, with compulsory joining in!

19. Parents and grandparents should be encouraged to bring in and show off the books and magazines, no matter how humble, that they’ve kept since their childhoods.

Go to Michael's website to read the whole talk from this passionate advocate for children's books and reading. This "book culture" is what was missing from the ERO report on reading in Years 1 and 2... see earlier post in this blog...

Report : Keeping Young Australians Reading

Here is a link to an interesting new report out from the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria, Australia.

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about/information/publications/policies_reports/keeping-reading.html

From the website :
Keeping Young Australians Reading 2009 is an update of the 2001 report Young Australians Reading. Drawing on research involving young people, parents, teacher-librarians and youth literature experts, it reports on the youth literature landscape in Australia and how it has changed since 2001. It provides insightful and practical information for professionals encouraging young Australians to read for pleasure, and can be used to underpin proposals for increased funding in this area.

The report identifies:

• why it is important to keep young Australians reading
• what the barriers to reading for pleasure are
• how to overcome these barriers
• trends in young people's reading
• challenges for professionals

In summary (page 16):
How do we keep young Australians reading ?
Our research identified six key factors:

1. the ability to read;
   
2. the desire to read;
   
3. social acceptance of reading;
   
4. the time to read;
   
5. access to books,
   
6. and, most important of all, a reading culture at home and/or at school.

From the Executive Summary :
Issues for teachers and librarians

• Addressing the reading drop-off point between primary school and later secondary education
• The difficulty of attracting teenagers into public libraries
• Use of the public library, not just for book borrowing, but as a community living room and internet access point
• Reduction in the numbers of teacher-librarians, particularly in primary schools
• Administration filling what little time teachers and teacher-librarians have outside class-time
• The introduction of the new national curriculum
• Effects of new media and social networking on the young reader
• The need to keep pace with and embrace new technologies

Issues for young readers

• Finding time to read among all their other education, work and leisure commitments
• The increasing focus on exams and testing
• Greater peer acceptance of reading for pleasure
• Use of new media raising content expectations and affecting attention span
• Dependence on parents to buy ‘approved’ books
• Social networking and the desire to collaborate with others rather than spend time alone reading
• Web 2.0 and the push to customise, personalise, remix materials (without having to worry about copyright)
• For young people from diverse cultural backgrounds, finding relevant content
• Access to books and reading for economically disadvantaged young people
• Low literacy levels among Indigenous and very remote communities
• Finding the right book at the right time and having trusted adults to recommend books

Canadian Olympic games sites

Here is a fairly extensive list of websites for educators and their students about the upcoming winter Olympic games in Vancouver in February as well as resources which would be of use for any Olympic games event...
http://edselect.com/olympics.htm
For the first one on the list, the Canadian Olympic School programme, you need to register but it is free.

Oregon School Library Information System - research resources website

You may be interested in checking out this website I came across from the Oregon School Library Information System
http://elementary.oslis.org/learn-to-research

It is designed to help students plan, research, create and present information, and looks looks user-friendly and useful, with links to many other resources from the web.

Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry has long been a favourite author of mine, and I've just had a wonderful time exploring her website - http://www.loislowry.com/index.html

She published her first picture book last year, Crow Call, illustrated by the talented Bagram Ibatoulline (who did The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane by Kate di Camillo, amongst others). National Library has just got copies in and I've eagerly requested it.

Lois' biography is interesting, and also there is a wonderful collection of speeches she has given at various occasions which I've also enjoyed reading - read the one "How everything turns away"...

E-cast education

A subscription resource which may be of interest ?

http://www.e-cast.co.nz/education/login.php

From the website :
e-cast education is a powerful on-line teaching and learning tool that provides real-time and real-life teaching resources through recorded programmes, live streams and videos, available to be viewed and downloaded. All Schools have free access to Live-streaming Channels, a Library of educational videos and an educational video Shop.

e-cast education

A resource which may be of interest ?
http://www.e-cast.co.nz/education/login.php

From the website :
e-cast education is a powerful on-line teaching and learning tool that provides real-time and real-life teaching resources through recorded programmes, live streams and videos, available to be viewed and downloaded. All schools have free access to live-streaming channels, a library of educational videos and an educational video shop.

Evidence based practice and Library Media Connection

A National Library colleague, Linda Forbes, shared this great article from EPIC on evidence-based practice in the school library.

"Can you find the evidence-based practice in your school library?" in Library Media Connection, March 2007.

Go to EPIC, Masterfile Premier, and enter the title as a search. The article may be printed, downloaded or emailed for individual use. If you email the article to yourself, you can save the PDF into your files.

The journal that this article comes from is well worth checking out too - Library Media Connection
http://www.linworth.com/lmc/?page=featured_articles

Recent featured articles which are available on the web from Library Media Connection include :

• Literature circles in the library,
• Gary Hartzell's Tactics [for librarians] to build influence with teachers,
• Joyce Valenza's A few new things...

It is a treasure trove. Thanks Linda !

Publishing, reading and teens

So when people say that teenagers don't read books any more...

In an industry without a lot of good news to report, the one consistent bright spot has been publishing for teens. While adult trade sales are expected to fall 4% this year, juvenile and young adult sales are expected to increase 5.1%.

Although it's impossible to completely break out juvenile from young adult (YA), it is possible to look at expected growth rates for different categories. In the fiction/fantasy/sci-fi segment, where most sales in the YA category fall, we expect nearly 13% growth in 2009, reaching $744 million.

By 2013, sales in this segment are anticipated to hit $861 million, a 30.6% increase over 2008. Sure, lots of the growth in the teen category can be attributed to some phenomenally successful, blood-sucking bestsellers. And there is no doubt that there is a great deal of crossover readership from adult buyers. Nevertheless, this buying bubble is being fuelled by a teen demographic about which we know very little.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6703770.html
SOURCE: Publishers Weekly, 26 October 2009

Knowledge as a Public Good

Some food for thought...

Knowledge as a Public Good
One of the most durable arguments for Open Access is that knowledge is and ought to be a public good. Here I don’t want to restate or evaluate the whole argument, which is complex and has many threads. But I do want to pull at a few of those threads.

What is a public good? In the technical sense used by economists, a public good is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. A good is non-rivalrous when it’s undiminished by consumption. We can all consume it without depleting it or becoming “rivals”. Radio broadcasts are non-rivalrous; my reception doesn’t block yours or vice versa. A good is non-excludable when consumption is available to all, and attempts to prevent consumption are generally ineffective. Radio broadcasts are non-excludable for people with the right equipment in the right area. Breathable air is non-excludable for this purpose even though a variety of barriers, from pollution to suffocation, could stop people from consuming it.

Knowledge is non-rivalrous. Your knowledge of a fact or idea does not block mine, and mine does not block yours. Knowledge is also non-excludable. We can burn books, but not all knowledge is from books. We can raise the barriers to knowledge, through prices or punishments, but that only creates local exceptions for some people or some knowledge.

When knowledge is available to people able to learn it, from books, nature, friends, teachers, or their own senses and experience, attempts to stop them from learning it are generally unavailing.

http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/knowledge-public-good.shtml
SOURCE: Copyright & A2K Issues, 19 November 2009 (part 2)

ERO Report : Reading and Writing in Years 1 and 2

Here is a link to the newly published ERO report on Reading and Writing in Years 1 and 2, due to be sent to schools in Term 1 2010.

http://tiny.cc/EROreportReadingandWritingYears1and2

I was interested to see how the library fitted into effective teaching of reading and writing at Years 1 and 2 from ERO's perspective... I was disappointed.

The word library does not appear at all in the report.

The word libraries appears once in the report in the following sentence on page 18 :
Children had plentiful and appropriately levelled texts in their reading boxes, big books, poetry cards, reading games and in class and school libraries.

The word literature appears 4 times in the report, in each instance referring to professional reading about best teaching practice.

I can't believe that a report about reading and writing in the junior school does not mention the vital importance of ready access to a range of literature and engagement with stories for reading motivation and pleasure, teacher reading role models "readers are made by readers", well-resourced and well-used school libraries to enrich teaching practice, and the creation of a reading culture in the classroom and school...

Blogging and student writing

An article about using blogging as a forum for student writing :

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/dont-knock-blogging-ndash-its-the-answer-to-our-literacy-problems-1832593.html

Looking at pictures in picture books

Looking at pictures in picture books is an interesting little book by Jane Doonan, published by Thimble Press in 1993, celebrating "the pleasures, challenges and rewards of looking at pictures as part of the total experience of reading a picture book."

It is available free in it's entirety from the Thimble Press website as a downloadable pdf
http://www.thimblepress.biz/looking.htm

UK SLA latest Riveting Reads list : Everyone's reading (secondary level)

From the UK School Library Association website you can download a great booklist - Everyone’s Reading - which aims to provide information about titles which might attract and enthuse the whole range of pupils in secondary schools to read for pleasure.

The booklist is available online at http://www.everyonesreading.org.uk as a searchable database and also as a downloadable pdf version.

The 20 page introduction by Alec Williams is excellent - here is the start :

"Everyone’s Reading! Swim the whole length of this introduction – or dive in anywhere! Whichever place you start at, don’t forget to read the rest, afterwards...

• If you have some ready money and want to order from the booklist straight away... read Sections 2 and 3.
• If you want some general ideas about promoting reading for pleasure... read Sections 4 to 11.
• If you want some specific ideas on reaching target groups... read Sections 12 to 17 – but remember that these are less important than getting the overall ‘reading culture’ right!
• If you want to know about evaluation, and further help... read Sections 18 and 19.

Section 4 is called "What’s so good about reading?" and explores these ideas and more... Check it out !

• Reading is fun.
• Reading is unique.
• Reading makes you feel good.
• Reading helps you make sense of yourself.
• Reading connects children to each other.
• Reading is a creative act.
• Reading leads to learning.

Citzenship education resource

A resource I noticed advertised in the Education Gazette is a new website from the Department of Internal Affairs with teaching resources about NZ citizenship, developed in conjunction with Social Studies teachers.
Resources are targeted at Level 2 - Primary, or Level 5 - Secondary but could be adapted as suits...
http://education.citizenship.govt.nz

Student art

Schools are invited to send student art work to the Ministry of Education's Wellington offices and possibly the Beehive (eg Anne Tolley's office) for display. There is also an online student gallery to showcase the Ministry's collection of student art.
See this Gazette article for more information...
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/arts/student_gallery/moe_exhibition/index_e.php

LM_NET and new librarians

A post from LM_NET (USA) sharing advice for "new librarians"

http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/newbies.htm

Gecko Press greeting cards

The wonderful Gecko Press now has greeting cards available with illustrations from some of their books. The cards are $24 a pack of 6 plus p+p. My favourites are Donkeys reading, Gardening and Max's wagon...

Here is the link to their website
http://www.geckopress.co.nz/Books_3.aspx?CategoryId=83

On their website you can also sign up as a Friend of Gecko Press. I had already done that and, as a Friend, was sent a sample collection of the cards which was a lovely surprise gift! They also have postcards which you can request for a special promotion - Gecko Press was very supportive of our Northland Storylines event in 2009 with bookmarks and postcards.

Fiona Farrell and the writing process

NZ author Fiona Farrell said about her writing that the structural ideas come first to her before most other aspects and speculates that this is unusual... "It sometimes seems to me that novelists fall mostly into two categories. Some are fundamentally poets, and some are fundamentally journalists. They're either driven by the desire to play with language, or by a more journalistic focus on telling a story" she says, whereas she feels a closer connection with the way some artists describe their approach to their work, a physical process of arranging elements in space.

Enjoying emptiness - interview with Fiona Farrell by David Larsen, NZ Herald Canvas magazine, 30 March 2009 http://tiny.cc/FionaFarrell

Carol Ann Duffy - Poet Laureate, UK

Carol Ann Duffy is the current UK Poet Laureate, appointed in 2009, following on from Andrew Motion and Ted Hughes.

I love her poetry - for it's insight, playfulness, intelligence and emotion... Her latest book is New and collected poems for children, published in 2009 by Faber ISBN 9780571219681 - I heartily recommend it for every home and school library !

There are so many poems I love in this book, but here is one...

Don't be scared

The dark is only a blanket
for the moon to put on her bed.
The dark is a private cinema
for the movie dreams in your head.
The dark is a black dress
to show off the sequin stars.
The dark is the wooden hole
behind the strings of happy guitars.
The dark is a jeweller's velvet cloth
where children sleep like pearls.
The dark is a spool of film
to photograph boys and girls, so smile in your sleep in the dark.
Don't be scared.


Carol Ann Duffy's picture books are wonderful too - poetic, original, fairy-tale like... The lost happy endings, and The tear thief, both available to borrow from National Library.

I've also enjoyed her adult poetry - her book Rapture is about love - from beginning to end, and the witty The world's wife is a collection of poems from the point of view of wives of famous men -Mrs Midas, Mrs Aesop, Mrs Freud...

You may be interested in a UK website, free in 2010, called Sheer Poetry http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/
"Resources on poetry by the poets themselves... for primary teachers and students, secondary teachers and students, and for university level and the general poetry reader. Here you will find poems, articles, workshops, interviews and essays, question sessions and more, about and by Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage, and others."

Great Libraries of Learning - G8lol

The G8Libraries of Learning is a wonderful, challenging, thought-provoking brochure promoting change and essential development to ensure quality school libraries in the 21st century. It is published by the team at the Far North Queensland FNQ Learning Development Centre – ICT

Here is the link to the wiki : http://gr8-libraries-of-learning.wikispaces.com

I came across this at the amazing blog Hey Jude which has a post about it
http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/gr8-lol-great-libraries-of-learning/

I joined Scribd so that I could download a copy of it from her post.

Future Lab

Have you visited this website -http://www.futurelab.org.uk/ - it's slogan is "transforming the way people learn through innovative technology and practice".

The Women's Bookshop newsletter

The Women's Bookshop in Ponsonby, Auckland, offers a free bimonthly printed newsletter - well worth signing up for... Email books@womensbookshop.co.nz

The website is http://www.womensbookshop.co.nz/ with snippet reviews of the books which Carole Beu reviews on the radio as well as a list of "The TOP 50 WOMEN WRITERS OF THE LAST 50 YEARS! (1955 - 2005)" as voted by thousands of NZ readers nationwide.

Book : Igniting a passion for reading

Great new Stenhouse book available online
http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9180&r=eu10001