Poster Session: Promote reading! Challenge your students through Book Trailers and Readers' Cup

Leanne McDougal

Leanne acknowledged that the idea for a Reader's Cup actually came fron South Australia originally.

Readers' Cup

• Runs it only in her school
• Groups of 4-5 students from Years 5 -7. She includes Year 5 students so they get experience in it ready for Year 6&7
  
• They read 5-6 books (including one picture book). Titles chosen need to be suitable for girls and boys. It could include a graphic novel or even a movie. Example of titles chosen - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 68 Teeth, Blueback, A Horse Called Elvis, Rowan of Rin.
  
• Creates a flyer to advertise for participants. They have 2 weeks then to form teams.
• Has 12 copies of books on the list for the Cup. Students can borrow only one at a time for one week. They have 6-8 weeks to read all the books.
  
• Teams meet and formulate questions to ask each other about the books.
• She formulates around 5 factual questions about the books (and records the page number where the answer can be found in case of dispute). Total number of questions is 25. They may be questions with multiple answers e.g. Give 2 of the reasons why ... . Has a PowerPoint presentation of the questions. Need a couple of extra questions in case of need for tie-break.
• Competition run at night 6:00 - 7:00 so parents can attend.
  
• Students write answers on paper which are then marked by judges. Two points given to each question. Students have 30 seconds to discuss answer in team then one person writes answer on paper. Hand up after every 5 questions. Announce total number of points per team at half way mark. Winning team is awarded a perpetual trophy cup (engraved with names of winning team) and each team member receives a medallion.
• The winning team goes on to join a state competition organised by the Queensland branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia.

Book Trailer (like a movie trailer but about a book)

• Lots of examples on Youtube
• Use Moviemaker or Photostory
• Choose book to make trailer about - a video advertisement for a book. Analyse the book - is it good, interesting, unique ...? Show what its about without giving away the ending
• 1-2 mins in length
• Need script in Word document. Not too much text as this is used in print or sound format to sell the book. What is exciting to hook people in?
  
• Storyboard - Find or make a small number of images to capture the essence of the story. Can scan pics, use claymation or Lego, act out and video, photos
• Find or make appropriate sound effects or music.
  
• Open Moviemaker - drag and drop images, create transitions. Students must cite where images are if they have been sourced from somewhere.
• Type in words, put in pictures and instrumental music (no words)
• Music - freeplaymusic.com, incompetech?, www.a1freesoundeffects.com
  
• Takes about a term
• Rubric assessment
• Students really enjoy making them.
  

Keynote: Invited guest or wedding crasher?: School librarians' involvement in national initiatives

Dr Nancy Everhart
President of the American Association of School Librarians
Associate Professor, Florida State University School of Library and Information Studies, USA

Nancy outlined changes taking place in education in several places

• Hong Kong - New Senior Secondary Curriculum - emphasis on learning to learn
• US - National Curriculum, Common Core Standards - in Language Arts, Maths (Science to come next), National Educational Technology Plan
• Norway - knowledge promotion, digital literacy for all
  

Teacher librarians need to be involved in initiatives such as these but are they invited guests in the process or do they have to be like wedding crashers? We need to show the key areas in which we are already supporting these initiatives.

Teacher librarians' power lies not only in the statutes in place and certification required but also the learning that takes place, the joy experienced in using the library, the legality and legitimacy of our work. Power comes from library programs which are both legal and legitimate. We must do what we say we do.

Teacher librarians must be working in close partnership designing stimulating learning experiences for students.
Access to resources must be 24/7.
Web presence is vital.
There must be an ability to retrieve materials housed outside the library.
Teacher librarians must co-teach with classroom teachers.
Strength comes from the legitimacy of our work and our leadership in ICT.

What might work in advocating?

• Formal communication - tell your story with clean lines, action proposed
• Comments and feedback
• Requests - suggest in a nice way that you'd like to be involved in the process to be undertaken
• Guerilla advocacy - rally, demonstration, email blitz
• Social media - Facebook page

Nancy's aim is for recognition of teacher librarians as indispensable in schools.

Crashing is action.

Joy Lawn - Frame by frame: Understanding the appeal of the graphic novel

Need to make sure that we are using correct terminology when talking about graphic novels and keep the vocabulary constant throughout the school.
Good resource to learn about them - Scott McCloud Making Comics (written and illustrated in a graphic novel format)
Also useful

• Michele Gorman Getting Graphic (expensive)
  
• Nat Gertler & Greg Holfeld Creating a Graphic Novel
  

Two distinct features of graphic novels

• Panels - the pictures on the page which can be rectangular or irregular
• Frames - the borders around the pictures (like picture frames)

Learning to read a graphic novel is different to reading normal text. Can give insight into how it feels to learn to read.

Shaun Tan's The Arrival has received worldwide acclaim and has legitimised the place of the graphic novel in literature.

What are graphic novels?
Many ways to describe as below but terms are still fluid

• type of comic
• sequential art - but that could be on a wall
• natural progression from comic but also a picture book
  
• something between a picture book and a comic
• fiction with panelling
• narrative art
• graphic narrative
• visual narrative (Shaun Tan's preferred term)
• frames are the key - graphic novels have frames

Appeal to the reluctant reader

• they're new
• visual format is appealing and captures audience
  
• they appear less dense
  
• trick them into reading

Like a movie the graphic novel uses elements such as storyboarding, close ups, point of view and camera angle.

Aspects to look at in a Graphic Novel
Formats

• Colour or b&w
• Words or wordless
• Speech and thought bubbles or not

Shots

• Establishing shots - often at start of book, quite a big picture
• Camera angle - bird's eye view, high view
• Distance - e.g. close-up, medium shot, long shot

Panels and panelling

• Size
• Splash panel or page (whole page), double spalsh (double page)
• Shape - rectangle, irregular

Frames

• Framed or frameless (vignettes)
• Frame breaking - when character is coming out of the frame
• Point of view - what or whose are you seeing

Some good examples of graphic novels
Lechner, John Sticky Burr
Watson, Andi Glister the family tree
Batman: The Story of the Dark Knight
Bampton, Clare Pop-up Dracula
Weisner, David Sector 7
Clarke, John Dennison Enough is Enough
Wooding, Chris Malice: You can't escape (Secondary level)
Jurevicius, Nathan Scarygirl
Yang, Gene Luen American Born Chinese
Phelan, Matt Storm in the Barn
Spiegelman, Art Maus (Sec level)
Gaiman, Neil Wolves in the Wall (Upper Primary/Sec level)
Ottley, Matt Requiem for a Beast (Sec level)
Weisner, David Tuesday
Weisner, David Flotsam
Weisner, David The Three Pigs
Hale, Shannon Rapunzel's Revenge
Hale, Shannon Calamity Jack
Williams, Marcia Oliver Twist and Other Great Dickens Stories
Colfer, Eoin & Donkin, Andrew Artemis Fowl
Myer, Stephenie Twilight

Joy also referred to multimodal texts and the concept of linguistic semiotics ( reading words) and visual semiotics (reading visuals like film, gaming, internet). She referred to the new literacies - visual, auditory, spatial and gestural.

Trade Session - Resources for use with IWB

This was a trade session by VideoPro so in the first part of the session the presenter showed a number of resources for purchase.

Handheld scanner which can be used to scan student work, book pages etc and then projected - 600dpi image produced. Costs $111

Livescribe - a pen that you write with and it can record sound as well as the image you are writing but has to be used with special paper. Can make a pen story or other recording which can then be played back on the IWB.

Flip cameras - several models one now available in HD with 2 hour recording capability

Free resources on Internet

• http://www.umapper.com/ - a site where you can create games over the top of a map (from Google e.g.)
• http://www.xtranormal.com/ - a site where you can type in a story and make it into a movie. Can use free characters and not publish. Costs money to publish.
• http://www.vuvox.com/ - a site where you can create media using your photographs.
• http://www.jamstudio.com/Studio/index.htm - a site on which you can create and record music. Have to pay if you want to download onto computer or CD.
  

More sites can be found at http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/which is where the above sites were discovered.

Keynote - Roy Lundin Memorial Address - Dr Michael Hough AM

Dr Hough is Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong.
A snapshot of Michael's presentation in note form. He certainly gave lots to think about! My favourite quote in regard to changes in education and ICTs "If you're thinking well ... I'm retiring in a couple of years then perhaps you could bring retirement forward."

• We need to think of ourselves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in our schools.
• There is far too much information out there for students to cope with. We need to teach them which bits to take notice of. They are not as good as they think they are! They are confident but careless users of ICT. Our young people need our assistance in using ICT.
  
• The Library could be the iCentre (although we may need to check with Apple as to whether they have a copyright on use of the i prefix) for ICT support and advice and the driver of ICT learning.
  
• We live in a Transparent Democracy. My School website is an example of this and we need to counsel our executives in regard to this. His feeling is that information on My School could be used by lawyers to sue in regard to students and learning opportunity in the future. Schools are not the only ones to feel the affects of greater scrutiny.
• We can't work harder - Australians are already working the longest hours in the Western world - but we need to work smarter.
• We have to work around the "Ideas Assassins" within our workplaces who generalize from a single case example - "We tried that at Oobergaldie School and it didn't work then so it won't work now!"
• We need to prepare students for the world they are learning in not the one that we did our learning in.
• Generally speaking in student's homes there is a trust of technology and a big take up whereas at school there is mistrust and a feeling of a need for control.
• Our students will be job makers rather than job takers - 3 passports to jobs Academic, Vocational (job experience e.g. Macdonalds) and Enterprise (e.g. Duke of Ed. Scouts etc.)
• We need to speak to our argument in regard to our role and needs for ICT with data.

Some recommended reading/viewing

• Martin Seligman - positive psychology expert
  
• Hugh Mackay - new book to be released in October 2010 -What makes us tick? The Ten desires that drive us
  
• Peter Senge - writer/businesss learning theorist
• Marc Prensky, 2001 Digital natives, digital immigrants
  
• Shift happens (Youtube)
• Visions of the Future - recently on ABC TV
  

Opening Session

Welcome to my blog on the SLAQ/IASL Conference 2010.

The conference theme is "School libraries in action: Diversity, challenge, resilience".

This blog is based on my perceptions of sessions that I attended reported as accurately as possible in order to share my learning with others. My sincere apologies to presenters if my perceptions of the material presented differ from the message they intended.

The morning began with the official opening by the Governor of Queensland, Her Excellency Penelope Wensley AO and a performance by the Queensland section of the Australian Girls' Choir. Brian Bahnisch (an icon of the t-l world in Queensland it would seem) launched a new publication "History of Teacher Librarianship in Queensland" which is available for purchase via SLAQ. From his overview it would seem that t-ls in Queensland have gone through the same kinds of issues as we have in SA and went through the same kind of fast track training in the early days of teacher librarianship as SA experienced.