The 2022 Softlink report has been released! Each year, Softlink invites school libraries and Teacher Librarians (TLs) around Australia and New Zealand to respond to their annual survey. Each year, Softlink produces a report with their findings. I’ve had a good look at the 2022 report and thought it might be fun to draw out…
Category: Education
Tools for Content Creation
There are so many tools available for digital content creation; it can be very overwhelming! I thought I’d give a quick rundown of the tools I use to create content for blogs, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify. “Free” Content By now we should all know about Creative Commons Licensing and what images we CAN and CANNOT…
Selecting First Nations Resources
I was recently asked to do a presentation for the members of the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) on Resourcing for the Curriculum, and I chose to focus on an area that we are developing in one of the subjects I teach in at Charles Sturt University (CSU); ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum. Currently, we…
A day in the life of a teacher librarian
“What does a typical day for a teacher librarian look like?” I get this question from my students a lot and I can understand why. I mean, we like to know what we’re getting ourselves into. We also like to be able to plan ahead. I think people outside the profession also have questions about…
PhD Research Confirmed
I am so very pleased to announce that I have been officially confirmed as a PhD candidate in the School of Information and Communication Studies at Charles Sturt University. In this blog post, I will share my research project plans, questions, and hopes. Firstly, some logistical information. My research project is called: Factors affecting the…
Aesthetic and Efferent Reading
During my reading for my PhD, I discovered a concept from the 1970s and 1980s that divides all reading into two categories: Aesthetic reading and efferent reading. This concept was put forth by Louise Rosenblatt (1904 – 2005) and has since been supported by the work of many researchers, including Beumer Johnson (2011), Krashen (2020),…
That moment I realised I knew almost nothing
It has recently come to my attention that I have lived a very sheltered life. I never thought of myself as someone that was naive and ignorant, but during the last couple of months I have discovered that there is a lot of things in the world that I have no idea about. I won’t…
Using VR in the humanities department
Technology can be either one of two things: An extremely powerful tool that improves or enhances situations or circumstances Something completely scary that can be more of a hinderance than a help. In education, the pressure to include technology in the classroom has become so intense that many different people from all walks of industries…
Conrad Challenge 2018/2019
In October of 2018, 3 students in year 9 at Mount Alvernia College approached me to ask if I’d be their Coach for the Conrad Challenge, 2018/2019. I had no real idea what was involved but I said yes anyway. Since then we have embarked on a very steep learning curve, and I am so…
Actually, I’m a high school teacher
Person: “So, what do you do?”Me: “I’m a teacher.”Person: “Which year level?”Me: “Actually, I’m a high school teacher” … Cue comment AND facial expression that clearly shows either sympathy for my predicament, or distress for what I must have to put up with. What really gets to me, is that people seem to have this…
Adventures of the Lifting Librarian 