Sustainable House Day provides people with the opportunity to visit homes where owners have put sustainable living into practice.

The Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative – WA (AuSSI – WA) website provides a framework that supports schools in the development of a whole-school approach to Education for Sustainability.

DETWA teachers can access the following  TLF  Learning Object exploring energy efficient housing via the DET Portal:

• Energy Efficient House

The CMIS webpages for  Sustainable Development and  Sustainable Schools provide links to a wealth of resources to support units of work on this theme.

Sites to check out include:

• Digital Booktalk

This information-rich site which was developed by Drs. Robert Kenny and Glenda Gunter at the the University of Central Florida includes video book trailers produced by both K-12 students and students of the Uniuversity. Free registration will give users access to contributors blogs and help forums. The UB Director link provides curricula and plans to help teachers implement a Booktalk project in their classroom. This site is highly recommended as a starting point for teachers beginning to explore digital booktalking.

• Reading – Active-and-Engaging

Rhonda Powling, Head of Library at Whitefriars College and Information Services and School Library Association of Victoria President has created a wiki –  which outlines her rationale for creating booktrailers, records her experiences involving students in the process and provides access to student generated content. The Storyboarding page outlines a lesson plan used to prepare students to create their own booktrailers. The assessment rubric measures student achievement against nine criteria.

• Tech & Learning blogpost: December 1st 2007

According to Mark Greary ‘making a Book Trailer is fairly simple. Just follow these steps.’ His simple explanation to creating a book trailer using Microsoft’s free Photo Story 3 leads users through a step-by-step process complete with clear screen shots and jargon-free instructions. More detailed instructions for using Photo Story 3 are available online.

Youtube provides access to online booktrailers from a variety of sources. A collection of links to booktrailers targeting Young Adult readers is available via the CMIS Evaluation del.icio.us account. Included are links to booktrailers  for the following titles reviewed in this issue of Fiction Focus:

• Graceling by Kristen Cashore
• Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan
• 3 Willows: A sisterhood grows by Ann Brashares
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

YouTube videos of these book trailers can also be viewed using the CMIS VodPod widget in the sidebar of this blog or by visiting the CMIS Tech Focus VodPod page.

The National Library of Australia’s Digital Collections gives users access to more than 130 000 images including books, journals, maps, music, pictures, manuscripts and oral histories.

The SBDS prototype will be a new discovery service focussed on Australia, Australians, and items found in Australian collecting institutions. It will provide a single point of access to resources currently discoverable via the Library’s multiple discovery services, and to digitised material freely available online anywhere in the world.

This prototype is an exploration of ideas and techniques aimed at making information easier to find and showing it within a useful context. This development of this prototype will be strongly influenced by user feedback.  Please give your comments and suggestions on how to improve it.

from the SBDS website.

Educators will find useful Internet Gateways on the CMIS website.

Useful resources to support teachers and students entering this competiton or undertaking media studies units can be found on the CMIS Media Production and Analysis page.

In June 2005 U.S. Librarian of Congress James Billington proposed establishing an Internet-based, easily accessible collection of the world’s cultural riches  to highlight the achievements of all countries and cultures.

On April  20th 2009 The World Digital Library site was launched.

from the WDL site…

The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

Items on the WDL may easily be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or can be located by an open-ended search, in several languages. Special features include interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities. Item-level descriptions and interviews with curators about featured items provide additional information.

Educators will find listings of more digital resources suited to educational use on the CMIS Internet Gateways page and in our previous WoW Websites blog posts.

(Scroll down the page to see our earlier posts.)

Use the CMIS Resource Bank TOPIC SEARCH page to locate CMIS recommended websites. Use ‘website’ as your keyword search term and refine your search by Phase of Development, Learning Area and Outcome.

Date: Saturday 14 March 2009 Time: 9.00 am to 12.00 pm Venue: St Andrew’s Grammar Address: 4 Hellenic Drive Dianella WA 6059 Cost: FREE

Session will include:

• Value adding and The Value Adding Quest.
• Links between Technology and Enterprise, Value Adding, Sustainability and the Sustainable Schools Project.
• Linking your current curriculum to the requirements of the Quest.
• Ideas from Technology and Enterprise teachers who have entered the Quest or are on the VAQ Committee.
• Opportunities for further learning.

To secure your place, visit the website, complete the registration form below and fax to Maria Biscotto on 9450 3157 or e-mail information to vquest@iinet.net.au by Monday 9th March 2009.

Want to get the most from ABS data?

Want to know what is available from ABS website?

Want to have up-to-date, accurate data for your classroom?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics is offering free professional learning sessions to be held in Australian capital cities during March and April this year.

Perth sessions will be held at Exchange Plaza Sherwood Crt on March 27th [for Teacher Librarians] and April 3rd [for Economics/Business etc]

View the flyer for full details

Image by Pink Sherbert Photography

Tuesday February 10th 2009 is Safer Internet Day

• Managing Student Safety Online
• Chat in the Classroom
• Combating Net Nasties in Your Classroom
  [Viruses, Hoaxes, Spam]
• Cyberbullying
• Email in the Classroom
• Evaluating Websites
• Image Search Tools
• Search Tools
• Blogs in Education

If you know of other resources useful to teachers exploring aspects of Internet safety please let us know via the comments on this blog.

One year later, 17 participating institutions have contributed to The Commons from their photographic archives. Australian contributors include: The Powerhouse Museum, The State Library of NSW and The Australian War Memorial.

Screendump from www.flickr.com/commons

The program has two main objectives:

1. To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and
2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge.

If you make use of a photo from The Commons, you are advised to read the usage rights statement.

from The Commons website…

The best way to get involved is to add a tag or two to the photos you see, and if you happen to know anything else about the subject, by all means add a comment.

*Any Flickr member is able to add tags or comment on these collections. If you’re a dork about it, shame on you. This is for the good of humanity, dude!!

For readers new to online photo sharing here is quick introduction.

We are proud of our community.
We are proud of our history and our present.
We are proud of our children, and our artists, and our songmen,
we are proud of our whole place.
Because we are proud of all these things,
we are sharing them with you.

from Inside Film

…Twelve Canoes is a website which paints a compelling portrait of the art, culture, history and place of the Yolngu people whose homeland is the town of Ramingining and the Arafura Swamp of north-central Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

The high-end site is a work of art in itself; honouring the people of the Arafura swamp, and built around twelve filmed “visual poems” describing and illustrating many aspects of Yolngu history, life and culture from Creation, Our Ancestors, The Macassans, First White Men, Thomson Time, The Swamp, Plants and Animals, and Seasons, to Kinship, Ceremony, Language, and a slice of contemporary life in Nowadays.

Other features of the site include galleries which showcase Ramingining art and artists, music and songmen, language and common terms, and photographs that capture the essence of life in the region. More…

The Australian National Film and Sound Archive is hosting the Twelve Canoes website.

The CMIS Resource Bank Help pages will assist you in using the Resource Bank to locate resources suited to your specific curriculum needs and your students’ phase of development.