State Library of Victoria's Gusto! A Culinary History of Victoria

The State Library of Victoria is currently presenting a free exhibition Gusto: a culinary history of Victoria!

The exhibition explores Victoria’s historic and contemporary culinary landscape, featuring gastronomic treasures from the Library’s collections – from the first Australian cookbook, published in 1864, to an actual World War I army biscuit. To support the exhibition, the State Library of Victoria has produced a Gusto! education resource for Years 3-6 of the Australian Curriculum (VELS Levels 3 & 4). 

If you want to know more please visit the website:  http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2012/10/09/learning-with-gusto/

 

Instagrok

Welcome back to term 4 everybody. We hope that you had a very relaxing break. Tina has come across a fantastic educational search engine that she would like to share with you all -

Instagrok is an educational search engine which claims to:

• Empower differentiated learning
• Provide in-built tracking and assessment
• Develop 21st century research, curation and synthesis skills
• Finds age-appropriate educational content on any topic presented with interactive multimedia interfaces
• Generates quiz questions based on student's research activity and skill level
• Supports creation of research journals and concept maps for learning assessment

Instagrok is user friendly and easy to navigate. Moreover, the content appears to be topic specific, unlike the sometimes random results obtained through standard search engines.
The url for Instagrok is http://www.instagrok.com

-Tina-

Anti-Bullying

The Catholic Education Office in Wollongong recently launched an Anti-Bullying Policy in response to the growing concern in schools relating to bullying involving the use of communication and information technology.
They have also created this fantastic video, as well as an information package, to complement the Student Anti-Bullying Policy, for use in primary and secondary schools.

The video is described on their website as follows: Inspired and performed by students at three Catholic primary and secondary schools in the Diocese of Wollongong, this innovative video production uses their voice and experience to focus on the impact of bullying and provides practical strategies for youth to deal with this important issue. It is an engaging visual stimulus which challenges students to think positively, respond compassionately and act with courage when they are confronted with future incidents of bullying.

I think it's a great video that should be seen by all of our students at Salesian College. I have also enquired about ordering the package that goes with the video, if anyone is interested in sharing it with their classes or homegroups.

Story Scrapbook

Tristan Bancks has created a free multimedia brainstorming app, Story Scrapbook, which allows you to bring images, videos, texts and web grabs on virtual pages to create an interactive story.  You would probably find this a useful inspirational tool for those students who find are reluctant to write stories.  As a contemporary tool it has the potential to engage and stimulate students who may otherwise lack interest in written expression.

 

You can find further information at  http://www.tristanbancks.com/p/story-scrapbook.html

 

-Tina-

vLibrary updated URL

Our Library catalogue - vLibrary - now has it's own URL which will hopefully be a lot easier for you all to remember than the old one. This is a great tool which you should all take adavantage of as it not only allows you to search for the great resources the Library has to offer, but allows you to search through databases like EbscoHost and fairfax news, but also online on websites such as Google, Wikipedia and much more!

The new URL is v-library.scr.vic.edu.au/vlibrary. I would recommend everyone adding vLibrary as an icon on your iPad's home screen. To do so all you have to do is open Safari and type in the URL above. Once the page is open select the following button and then select Add to Home Screen. Rename the button to vLibrary and select Add. And voila! a shortcut will be added to your iPad!

you are not special

I don't know if anyone's seen this video floating around the internet on different blogs but I think it's worth a watch. It's a very good, and quite funny, commencement speech for the graduates of Wellesley High school, but I think it could apply to all areas of life and for any of us. Very thought provoking and definitely worth the 12 or so minutes it takes to watch it.

Creating your own tests and quizzes online

[Image Source: My Lot]

 

For those of you who may be considering devising your own online tests or quizzes for your students, there is an online tool, ClassMarker, you can use gratis to do so.  Classmarker is an award-winning website which allows educators to create online tests and quizzes which are marked instantly.  Although it is a commercial website, educators are able to use an abbreviated free component for up to 100 tests per month and it is supported by any browser.  Features: multiple choice quiz, free text quiz or punctuation quiz.  The url is:  http://www.classmarker.com/

 

Other online build your own test websites you may like to consider include:

 

www.easytestmaker.com

 

http://quizstar.4teachers.org/

 

- Tina -