Tag: literacy

Text Complexity in the Digital Age: An F for Online Reading?

See on Scoop.it – English Classes

By Thomas DeVere Wolsey If you are reading this, chances are good that you are a teacher or education professional. As a result, the subtitle probably caught your attention right away; but this blo…

See on literacybeat.com

Novel approach to literacy | The Sun-Herald newspaper – 29/07/12

See on Scoop.it – English Classes

Article by Keeli Cambourne on school libraries being transformed to support literacy development in students. Features the changes school libraries are making to accommodate the needs and interest of 21st century learners, incoluding ebook collections, students creating book trailers, National Year of Reading initiatives and supporting struggling and reluctant readers. Also features the benefits of recent refurbishments to these school libraries.

Features three Sydney schools: Roseville College, PLC Sydney, Mount Annan Christian College Currins Hill.

 

Excellent initiatives and ideas that would encourage more boys to read.

See on newsstore.fairfax.com.au

Keeping it Real

Digital Literacy- Keeping it Real. Kate Pullinger. Thought provoking discussion with the auhorbof several books as well as the fabulous digital text ‘Inanimate Alice’. Kate really is doing groundbreaking work to inspire young readers and writers to use all of the tools at their disposal. And there are very many. She is passionate about multimodal texts and we shared ideas around the room about what we could do and what others had done. This type of session is always inspiring because you get a feel for the creativity that is going on in classrooms around the world.

Innovations PD Day

!6th May I went to the Innovations showcase set up by the innovations division of the State Govt. Education Dept. Despite having to listen to the minster Lynne Kosky congratulate us for doing such a great job while being so poorly renumerated (my words, not hers) and for her testimony to our innovation (again, considering the budgets some schools have it is close to miraculous) the day was thought provoking. Our Keynote speaker was very happy to get us all thinking and sharing our ideas while he congratulated himself for succeeding despite his schooling in a 1970s Chadstone school. Although he was rather self congratulatory he did raise some interesting ideas about school organisation, however, his premise that we need to focus on the bright young things, the ‘skywalkers’ as he termed them, ignored the fact that lots of innovators are not under 30 and nor do the younger teachers hold the monopoly on passion. Maybe I’m just a grumpy old bat!

At the end of the day we were treated to a showcase by Microsoft’s innovative teacher of 2008 Andrew Douch. This really did inspire me, I wanted to go home and begin podcasting straight away. The testimonials by his students, ex-students and even other students around Australia and internationally was an amazing piece of proof that what he is doing is working.

The workshops that I chose were the one on Elluminate, which I have had some experience with, but still taught me new things and the one by Courtenay Gardens Primary School who are doing amazing things with literacy in their school. It sounds so simple, but they just focussed on one thing and got behind it and the fact that their kids improved their literacy skills as evidenced in their AIM results, shows that their dedication and persistence has paid off. I am looking forward to visiting and finding out more.

I came home and rethought some of the things that I was planning for the upcoming weeks, which I always think is the sign of a successful professional development day.