Health articles: NYT

The New York Times' Health section has a huge resource of articles with new ones added all the time.  There's also a weekly email newsletter you can sign up for, to track changes and read new articles you may be interested in.  One for your school's PDHPE and Home Ec. faculties to know about.

From memory (since I did it a long time ago) there's a once-only free registration to use the site.

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Spinebreakers

Penguin UK has a site by and for teenage readers - Spinebreakers.  While some of the content is UK-specific (eg. local events), there are author interviews, tips for teenage writers, and so forth, which are of use to those overseas.  Content includes written, audio and video. 

From their About Us page:

Spinebreakers.co.uk is Penguin's pioneering online book community for teenagers, run by teenagers themselves. Editorial control of the site is in the hands of a core editorial team of nine teenagers aged between 13 and 18 years, supported by a large network of contributing teen editors from across the UK.


Working with journalists, authors, editors and web designers, the teen team will produce a wide variety of multi-media content including video and audio reviews, alternative book jackets and endings, soundtracks, author interviews, podcasts, blogs, short stories and much more.

Spinebreakers.co.uk launched in September 2007 and is the UK’s first online book community for teenagers, giving them the opportunity to discuss, debate and interact with Penguin’s rich source of publishing from contemporary titles such as Meg Rosoff’s Just in Case, Nick Hornby’s first book for teenagers Slam, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation to classics such as J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
 
Penguin Australia has The Squawk, a e-newsletter for up to 13 years, and Between the Lines for teenagers (but not, from the looks, by teenagers as per Spinebreakers).

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Mirror writing

Sometime, for any one of a number of reasons, you may want to have a piece of text, or a library sign, or part of a display, in mirror writing (ie. when you look at it in the mirror it's readable).

Easy peasy! she says, having had to discover how this past week.

I particularly wanted to use quirky fonts, from my selection garnered from Scrapvillage (I've mentioned this site before - lots of great TrueType fonts there to download) and this way, I can.

• O-kay.  Write your text in a Word document. 
• Copy it. 
• Paste it into Paint (Windows/Accessories). 
• Choose the dropdown menu for Image, then Flip/Rotate.
• Choose Flip Horizontal.
• Save your image (suggest you choose .jpg for a smaller file than the default .bmp)

Lots of possibilities: signs, puzzles, whatever you can imagine.  By using more involved/elaborate fonts you can get harder-to-puzzle out mirror writing.

Accreditation: Accomplishment/Leadership (NSW Institute of Teachers)

From the NSW Institute of Teachers:

Accreditation processes at the higher levels of Professional Accomplishment and Professional Leadership are now available. Accreditation at these levels is voluntary and will recognise the talents and expertise of outstanding teachers in all NSW schools.

A quote from the Evidence Guide for Professional Accomplishment:

Teachers working at Professional Accomplishment are:

• recognised by their peers and colleagues as outstanding practitioners across all aspects of classroom practice and associated professional activities
• able to maximise the learning of their students, and assist peers and colleagues to do likewise, using their outstanding depth of knowledge and highly effective teaching skills as described in the Standards
• able to use, and support peers and colleagues to use, consistently effective and varied teaching activities to elicit high levels of student engagement
• able to provide support and advice for colleagues as a result of the oustanding quality of their teaching practice and through their contribution to the school and educational community
• active in helping to establish the porfessional environment which maximises the professional practice opportunities of colleagues and learning of students

Read a Canberra Times article about this here.

Read more at the NSW Institute of Teachers site here.

Catchment Detox

Catchment Detox from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.):

It’s an online game where the player manages a virtual river catchment. It’s not a pristine catchment, there is agriculture, industry and tourism already in place. There are also environmental problems that need to be fixed. The game goes for 50 turns and you make as many changes to the landscape as you like (you can also do none!) before taking your next turn. The aim is to create an environmentally happy catchment with a sustainable and thriving economy.


Home page is here.

Teacher info page is here (thanks, ABC!)

There's a competition running right now that finishes in two weeks (early Sept 2008) but I haven't yet found any indication of whether they'll leave the game after that (hope they do).

Patchwork of ideas on the window

This is a library display I've done for a couple of years now, and it works well each time.  The school has an annual week when special activities take place, and this is one way in which the library contributes.  Each time there is a theme - this year's was about "respect".   In Publisher, I made up a six-form to the page sheet with "I RESPECT" and three categories, which we photocopied onto different coloured papers.  Every student received one to fill in and return during roll call.

After (ahem) some necessary editing, we then put them up on the library windows for the week, for everyone to read and enjoy.  They do get read, a lot - not just kids looking for their own ones, but kids reading the contributions of others.  It's kinda sorta like having thoughts made visible, a patchwork of ideas.  Staff complete forms too, and their contributions are added to the display.

These windows are most often used for general school announcements and so forth, so it's good to change things around.  And sometimes very funny to read students' ideas!

Connections archives

The Curriculum Corporation's very useful journal, Connections, has online archives.  You can look at the latest issue, too.

If you're outside Australia or not aware of Connections:

Connections is a quarterly newsletter produced by the Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS), a business unit of Curriculum Corporation. SCIS is committed to publishing informative and useful material for the benefit of library staff in schools. Our focus is helping library professionals keep up to date with the latest in information services and information technology relevant to school libraries.


Connections is distributed by Curriculum Corporation to all schools in Australia.