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Link to our new blog for our re-named building!
https://winifredberrylibrary.wordpress.com/ Will take you the Winfred Berry Information Centre blog!
Welcome to our “school”
A recent Creative Coffee meeting held in the library led to a request from students to have a fish tank in the library space. Meet our new fish – names and identifying images are still on their way from our Year 11 fish selectors!
Wisdom, our special sculpture, has had to be relocated for this fish to move in.
This art work, named “Wisdom”, was donated by the Luxton family in 1974. Their daughter Sarah was a student at our school.
The owl was chosen because of The College badge, which has an owl sitting on an open book. The motto comes from the Alexandra College motto (Scientia et Consicetia) translated into English: Knowledge and Wisdom.
The artist who created this sculpture was George Henry Allen. He was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1900.
He was an official war artist from 1942-1945.
From 1945 he was Head of the Sculpture Department at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
George Henry Allen has made stone carvings for the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
He won a competition for the Forecourt Memorial Group at the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne.
His preference for broad simplification of forms can be seen in this owl.
Timeline of Changes to Our Library Learning Space
Reference, Private Study and Research Spaces
at the top, reading and circulation desk at the bottom!
Adam Wallace Visit
Tuesday 9th September we were fortunate enough to host a visit from an author and illustrator courtesy of YABBA. Our author was Adam Wallace. Adam travelled to Hamilton and ran two session, one for us and one for Baimbridge College, as we had put in a joint application to win an author visit.
The audience of 55 was the largest Adam had ever addressed and he was very pleased with the level of student engagement. The session ran in two parts: writing techniques and drawing techniques. Many helpful hints about publishing and getting work published were woven into the discussion. There was also time for Adam to circulate and address individual questions, or comment on creations.
5000 Poppies project
Our Poppies ready to go!
We have sent our 29 poppies off to the national collection for the 5000 poppies project: http://5000poppies.wordpress.com/ . The end product was an individual poppy for each Old Collegian who lost his life at one of the Boer War, World War 1 or World War 2, with their name, final battlefield and the school emblem on a tag. We are very grateful to Mrs Karen Jackson, her friend Anne, Helen Reiher, Matilda McGoon and Linda Archer for their involvement.
ACMI Intermix webinar
This is what we could see on our IWB while we waited for them to join us.
On Wednesday this week we hosted an ACMI Intermix student conference through our Microsoft Lync platform, using our Polycom round table system. The live event ran at Federation Square from 5 till 6pm, which meant we would not be able to participate in person. Contacting the host Tim Bright (see: http://timothybright.com/ ) to suggest a webinar felt pretty cheeky, but it really paid off. 7 excited students from years 9 – 11 sat in IT1 with their own (less extravagant) afternoon tea, Mr Cook and myself, and were able to suggest ideas, ask questions and hear about many interesting things.
This event did not take place without some time consuming hard work by Mr Ian Cook (our IT technician) and Simon Dargaville (IT at ACMI), for which we are very grateful.
This is what we could see on our IWB
The top left hand image in this photograph shows the people in Melbourne. The smaller image to the right shows part of IT1. The panorama at the bottom shows the students attending our part of the conference. With the Polycom unit the camera angle moves to focus on the person speaking. I was delighted that all our students spoke and offered suggestions, as attending this type of webinar can be quite confronting. Once again, I was proud to be part of such an active learning community.
This event will lead onto some further interaction with Intermix programs: http://www.acmi.net.au/intermix.aspx and some local film making based activities run in conjunction with our library.
Watch this space and SIMON for further details!
PLN course information
At the SWDLA meeting in Warrnambool we covered many topics, including blogging. Made me get on with updating this important resource for us all. There are several new things I have learned about: Google Reader; Vic PLN and I have also found some good blog sites.
We also learned how to embed You Tube clips into our blogs. This is OK as far as copyright is concerned because it takes you to You Tube to watch it:
Year 9 History Collaborative assessment task.
I have jrecently been to a conference (Computelec ELH) where I was shown the LEAP21 model of setting up student assessment to meet the needs of twenty-first century students. Their recommended path for assessing the task in terms of things like collaboration really taught me the power of real teamwork for a meaningful product. I have returned to school and have started putting my interpretation of this into action.
The first working lesson with one of my classes was today. Everyone got down to work in some sense, but one group has really blown me away. Four boys who are working together using TeamLab sent me an invitation to be part of their project:
Within 15 minutes of the start of the lesson, they were all on line working in their shared space, which looks like this! They have customised it with our school badge and everything!
A new year: 2012
It’s good to be back and have wonderful things happening in your library. This year there is a very big committee, mainly made up of Year 12 students. You may like to consider joining us, especially if you are in years 7 – 11. There will be many competitions: already Mrs Nichols and Caitlin M in Year 7 have won mugs for Library Lover’s Day. Check out the new page for the Blogging competition: https://alexandralibrary.wordpress.com/blogging-competition-2012/
THAC Book Lovers 