The Australian Government, working in partnership with state and territory governments, the non-government school sectors and Education Services Australia have released a collection of resources for school teachers, specialist professionals, parents and students to develop safe and supportive schools.
The Safe Schools Hub (SCIS no: 1601867) is underpinned by the National Safe Schools Framework, which aims to ensure that all Australian schools are safe, supportive and respectful teaching and learning communities that promote student wellbeing. The Hub provides the tools and knowledge that will enable all members of the school community to develop the skills to:
nurture student responsibility and resilience
build a positive school culture
foster respectful relationships
support students who are impacted by anti-social behaviour
Visit www.safeschoolshub.edu.au to explore a range of practical examples, resources and activities to assist you in making your school a safe and supportive school. You can also register on the website or email sshub@esa.edu.au to receive regular updates on news and resources for safe schools.
An introduction to the National Safe Schools Framework
The GR8 debate was organized in celebration of the National Year of Reading and explored how digital technologies such as iPads, social media and the instant internet culture impact upon our core, traditional abilities and views of reading and writing. Both sides battled it out with a diverse array of serious and humorous academic arguments
How Sunshine College celebrated Book week by looking at banned books
“The students were shocked that their favourite books had not been allowed in some places, including their much-loved year 10 class text, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Suddenly, they could feel deliciously naughty while defending freedom of speech. They raided the shelves to find their favourite banned or challenged books. They then decided which passages to read, discussing, arguing, and testing them on each other.”
Anita Vandenberghe in her previous article talked about the philosophy of displays – what is the story behind it? Why should we have displays and would people even notice them? In this issue she highlights the practical side of display. Where to start, what topic to choose, where to get ideas, what material to use and how to prepare yourself?
Welcome to 2013 and the Lunar New Year in the Chinese Year of the Snake.
‘The Snake is the sixth sign of the Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 Animal Signs. It is the enigmatic, intuitive, introspective, refined and collected of the Animals Signs. Ancient Chinese wisdom says a Snake in the house is a good omen because it means that your family will not starve.’
In the world of colour AkzoNobel declares Indigo (SCIS no. 1592774) is a striking statement colour for 2013 associated with wisdom and honesty which enhances your environment. However Pantone Color of the year 2013 is Emerald Green (SCIS no. 1592779)
2013 is also the International Year of Statistics, (SCIS no. 1592783) a worldwide event supported by more than 1,400 organizations. More than 100 scientific societies, universities, research institutes, and organizations all over the world have banded together to dedicate 2013 as a special year for the Mathematics of Planet Earth. (SCIS no. 1592783)
Pope Benedict XVI declared that a Year of Faith (SCIS no. 1592806) will begin on October 11, 2012 and conclude on November 24, 2013. World Youth Day 2013 (SCIS no. 1592887) to be held in Rio theme is… ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’
ABC Splash is not just a series of video clips to use with your students. Check out the Teachers Area (SCIS no: 1592621) with its four teachers collections which feature areas of focus, topics and assessment tasks with links to videos and other teaching resources both within the collection or online.
Discussion followed as to future directions for SCIS in the area of subject access.
Les Kneebone presents an overview of ScOT
The ScOT in SCIS project commenced in 2006 when the thinking was that keyword searching would become the pre-eminent means of resource retrieval. Since then SCIS has offered schools the option of downloading both SCIS Subject Headings and ScOT terms in their catalogue records. The challenge is how to manage and display both SCIS subject headings and ScOT terms in a meaningful way for users in order to exploit the inferred links between resources tagged with ScOT terms that match a curriculum tagged with ScOT terms.
Also discussed was an alternative scenario of transition from use of SCIS Subject Headings to ScOT terms and how schools would manage this process.
On Tuesday 4 December 2012 SCIS conducted a consultation workshop with SCIS partners discussing future priorities in our support for school libraries.
Judy O’Connell, Course Director (Teacher Librarianship) at Charles Sturt University started the day with a set of challenges that covered collections, search, cataloguing, curriculum, interoperability and access. Her presentation Strategic directions for school libraries reinforced the context within which education libraries need to work. These included curriculum, the cloud and game-based learning in a library environment which is both physical and virtual.
The challenge to participants was to rethink library catalogues, which should no longer be seen as simply tools for locating records. Interrogation of data from different data pools requires new thinking and a new user focus. We need to change our technology interface to provide a natural, predictive and responsive search capacity. Web 3.0 challenges us to make library search into a discovery interface.
“How does search impact the way students think, and the way we organise information access?”
Judy pointed out that the search experience influences how students see information structure. Students conceptualise information and the search environment differently, and the way they search should influence the way that we organise information. The learning technologies environment has changed since library management systems were first designed, and we must not lose sight of what is happening in other areas of information retrieval. The importance of metadata developments, including Resource Description and Access (RDA), mean we cannot take old thinking into new information environments.
As part of the SCIS consultation on 4 December 2012 Renate Beilharz from Box Hill Institute provided an introduction to Resource Description and Access (RDA) and its benefits for education libraries.
RDA will be a new standard for resource description and access, designed for the digital world.
Built on foundations established by the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), RDA will provide a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource description and access covering all types of content and media.
RDA will enable users of library catalogues and other systems of information organization to find, identify, select, and obtain resources appropriate to their information needs.
During the period of RDA development, the library and cataloguing world updated some key cataloguing principles and developed some conceptual models for resource discovery. RDA is built on these new conceptual models.
If we remember that the highest principle of the International Cataloguing Principles is the ‘convenience of the user’ RDA has aligned with the ICP principles: find, identify, select, obtain. Through RDA we can practise what we preach and work to improve search results and the way these results are displayed. RDA is very much about the user and functionality; focused on users – not items.
The RDA cataloguing standard is designed precisely for an online environment. RDA’s element set has been clearly defined, and incorporated into the Open Metadata Registry, which is a set of RDF-based controlled vocabularies, and a fundamental piece of technical infrastructure for the Semantic Web.
Renate’s overview led into a presentation by SCIS Cataloguing Team Leader, Pam Kadow, outlining proposed changes to the SCIS Standards for Cataloguing and Data Entry for alignment with RDA commencing the second quarter of 2013.
This is the first release of ABC Splash which currently contains video resources, learning objects and a sample of teacher resources and featured collections presented as e-books.
This is an exciting partnership between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia who are picking content from the ABC archives and contemporary shows to help teachers plan for the Australian Curriculum. All the resources on the site are free to watch and can be accessed from home or from school
The following featured collections have a variety of resources for teaching and learning
SCIS is conducting a consultation workshop in Melbourne on Tuesday 4 December 2012 from 9.00-1.00pm. The consultation aims to engage SCIS and its partners in discussion about future priorities in our support of school libraries.
Spiral, Rena Voronoff, 2007 Photo by Michael Jongen
1.00pm SCIS Consultation closes
Participants are encouraged to stay for a light lunch and then join delegates at the keynote session and opening reception for the IDEA 2012 conference at the Sofitel, 25 Collins Street Melbourne.
2.00pm Keynote: The science and technology of learning, Professor Erik Duval, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
3.15pm Afternoon tea
3.45pm Panel: Challenges and opportunities for digital learning including Rhyan Bloor, Digital Education Branch, DEEWR; Rodney Spark, eWorks; Kerri-Lee Krause, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education), University of Western Sydney and Bevan Doyle, Chief Information Officer, Department of Education Western Australia
Educational Lending Right (ELR) school library survey is an Australian cultural program run by the Australian Government. SCIS manages the ELR survey on behalf of the Australian Government. The ELR survey collects data to calculate the number of copies of specific titles held in Australian school libraries. These book counts are the basis for payments to Australian book creators. The payments are to assist book creators to continue producing Australian books.
600 schools across Australia are selected each year to participate in ELR. This includes schools with enrolments over 100 from all sectors and that use library systems compatible with ELR software.
SCIS started approaching the schools from September, requesting data files be created and provided to us. We were delighted that by the end of term 3 we had already received 54 results! And by the first week of November we have reached all our result targets.
We would also like to acknowledge the ongoing support and assistance from the library system vendors, Sydney, Canberra/Goulburn and Brisbane Catholic Education Offices IT Support, and NSW and ACT Education Dept IT Support who support ELR.
Feedback from participants
The overwhelming feedback is that participation in ELR is straightforward. 96% of participants rated the ELR process as ‘not time-consuming’ (from a few minutes to half an hour to overnight – depending on the library system) and 94% of participants completed the survey independently with no assistance required from ESA or their library system provider.
Comments included…
‘I did the copying (CAL) survey last year. When I saw this survey, I thought: Oh, here we go again. But this one was very quick and easy. Thanks’
‘We are pleased our information provided will assist our Australian book creators and publishers.’
ELR 2012 goes green
In the interests of reducing the paperwork delivered to schools, we provided more information about ELR online and 97% of respondents noted that these online instructions and information were quite adequate for them to do the survey.
Thanks from our authors
We are very grateful to all the schools who took the time to engage with our request to participate in ELR. Australian book creators are also very appreciative of your support.
Mini Goss says;
‘Despite having over thirty books to my name the ELR payment is still a major part of my income and without which it would be even harder to survive in this difficult industry.’
