Google is all about search

This week I started the GAFE course, Google Apps for Educators run through Buffalo State University New York this course if facilitated by Jeff Utecht.

What attracted me to this course was a colleague's recommendation. He included the link to the website and after  reading what it was about - I was sold. This course is all about using Google Apps and Cloud based technologies in the classroom. The first learning outcome listed was "Search more effectively" Just what a busy school librarian needs to know - especially when every student and staff member has a default setting of searching on Google. My own default setting is to search on Google.

Today I did the first lesson on searching (there are 4 lessons on this all together including one called "Becoming a search master" - just what I need to know. All the resources are for teachers in schools.

The scary part is that I will be assessed for comments in forums, tests and a final 10 minute presentation showing work I am doing in my school using the things I have learnt on this course. YIKES. If you want to take the course - the next one begins April 1st.

I will keep you posted as to how I am going....

Blogging in two places

Our school has developed class and subject blogs this year and of course our library has it's own blog.

We are using Wordpress and have a generic banner for all classes which could use some beautification in my humble opinion. BUT we are there and it is our goal to blog at least once a week. My colleague Pla is very good at creating photo galleries. There are some lovely galleries about lunchtime in our library, seminars and the like. I add the content pages and have started a libguide style section for our staff and students in the tab 'Learning Support for classes'.

Here is this week's offering about the Destiny Quest mobile app. This post will also be added to the IICS Facebook page to let parents know as well.

Book 76 - My name is Mina by David Almond - England

How does a novel about the life of a troubled girl grip the reader so effectively? David Almond has this ability to make a simple life so enthralling. Don't get me wrong Mina is far from simple. She is home schooled by her mother and she tells the story of her everyday life and how she came to be home schooled. 

At one point Mina recounts how she made a friend at school who limped badly and was a fellow outcast from the rest of the school children. Their conversation evolved as the friend says she is going to have a very painful operation so she won't limp any more. She then asks Mina is she will have an operation to repair her strangeness.

Mina is strange to her peers and to her teachers. She is brilliant, she thinks deeply about things, she is a tortured soul who is trying to come to terms with the grief of her father's sudden death. Her favourite place to be is sitting in the tree at her house. She writes in her journal up there. She watches the neighbourhood from there. She feels safe there.

Mina is a character from David Almond's book Skellig (review from Reading Matters) and this novel is the prequel to Skellig. In the last few chapters of My name is Mina Michael and his family move into the house next door and his baby sister is shown to be very ill. 

Guardian review                                                                                                     David Almond's website
David Almond speaking at Scottish Book Trust event 'Authors Live' about writing about the ordinary.