Activity
Select a curriculum topic of interest.
Select one of the online communities or resource sharing services listed in this section, and spend some time searching for tags, hashtags, lists or communities of relevance to your topic.
Share a link to a relevant online resource found from that community in Forum 2.5 and discuss the pros and cons of this community as a recommendation source.
You might also like to browse some other curation tools to see which best suit your needs.
Curriculum area/topic: Technologies –
Online community: OZ_TLNet
Search process:
* put “technologies” into search bar
* Did not get much of any use
* Put in “computational thinking”
* Got one hit for a PD course
* Put in “food technology”
* Got nothing
* Gave up
TAKE 2:
Curriculum area/topic: Technologies –
Online community: Diigo
Search process: entered tag Food_technology and got an error message that the user was deleted because of spam
TAKE 3:
Online community:Pearl Trees
Search process:
* entered food technology AND Year 4
* Got a random list of resource collectors with random resources collected therein – if this is meant to be useful I need someone to show me how
<strong?Reflection:
Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if someone had actually taken the time to demonstrate how these sites could be used to aid the selection process rather than dumping a list marked either “keyword” or “hashtag” in the module and sending us in on our merry way. I will go look at forum 2.5 to see if anyone had more success than I did.
Activity
Select one of the crowd sourced review sites listed in this section or search for prolific book bloggers in the field and have a look at the way these reviewers discuss fiction relevant to school libraries.
Share a link to an interesting book blog, Goodreads or LibraryThing review in Forum 2.6 and discuss your thoughts on the value of such a review, and what issues there might be for relying on such sources as selection aids.
This review of the book Radio Rescue is quite useful for assessing potential classroom use suitability of the text. Besides information about the plot, writing and illustration of the story, it also gives information on historical research features and indicates ways that the book could be used with a class. The review gives information about the specific technology featured in the book, as well as the presence of historical notes included after the main story. However, it is the insight regarding how the crafting of the historical information into a personal story and the power of that to help students connect to the experiences of a different technological age that makes this review especially useful.
Most of the issues involved with relying on blogs as selection aids have to do with reputation, authority and context. One way to evaluate the reputation and authority of the blog is to read the “About the blog” page. According to this (Braxton, n.d.) the reviewer is an Australian educator with 40 years experience as a classroom teacher and Teacher Librarian in primary schools. Also listed on the page is that she won the Dromkeen Linrarian’s Award in 2003. This award is given annually to individuals by the State Library of Victoria in “recognition of the important role they play in introducing young people to literature and encouraging an enjoyment and love of reading” (State Library Victoria, n.d.a, para. 1). A quick look at the previous recipients’ list (State Library Victoria, n.d.b) shows that Barbara Braxton did, in fact, win the award in 2003. Without personal knowledge of Ms Braxton it is not possible to conclusively prove that she is truly the person writing this blog and its reviews, but we can be reasonably reassured of the authority behind this source. Regarding context, we can see that Ms Braxton teaches in an Australian, presumably Victorian from the award, primary school. That gives some level of context, but without further research or information it is difficult to know how similar the school context that informs her perspective is to the school context of the school for which you are selecting resources. So, even the most authoritative reviews should be taken with caution and evaluated with respect to your own particular school context.
References
Braxton, B. (n.d.). About the bottom shelf [Blog page]. Retrieved April 9, 2018 from http://thebottomshelf.edublogs.org/about-the-bottom-shelf/
Braxton, B. (2014, November 14). Radio rescue [Blog post]. Retrieved April 9, 2018 from http://thebottomshelf.edublogs.org/2016/11/14/radio-rescue/
State Library Victoria. (n.d.a). Dromkeen Librarian’s Award [Web page]. Retrieved April 9, 2018 from https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about-us/scholarships-awards/dromkeen-awards/dromkeen-librarians-award
State Library Victoria. (n.d.b). Previous recipients: Dromkeen Librarian’s Award [Web page]. Retrieved April 9, 2018 from https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about-us/scholarships-awards/dromkeen-awards/dromkeen-librarians-award/previous-recipients