Books on your mp3 player

I came accross a great new site this week that you might find very useful. The link is
http://librivox.org/ and the idea is that you can dowload audio versions of books onto your computer or your mp3 player.

This is a site created by and added to by volunteers and so it is presently free. It is constantly being added to and caters for audiences of children through to adults.

A warning though: there are no new releases here. The reason for this is copyright regulations. These are very important and very complex laws, and make no mistake, the power of the copyright council is great and far reaching.

Each country has their own copyright laws and this site conforms to the American laws, which are slighlty different to ours. In Australia, published works are protected by copyright for 70 years if they are published after the death of the author, or if published during the life of the author (which is more common) the works are proteceted for 70 years after the death of the author.

This site requires that the texts on there were published before 1923, in order to comply with the US copyright laws. However, it is the responsibility of the person dowloading the file to ensure that they are complying with the copyright laws of the country they are it. It is quite possible that an item under copyright in one place is not in another.

With texts this old it is quite simple to check the copyright. For this site, because of the way it is set up, you only really need to check the date that the author died. If they died before 1955, you are safe to dowload it. If not, it gets a bit more complicated. I have checked about 20 of the more popular authors, and the only one I found that did not comply was C.S. Lewis.

I have probably made it all sound very difficult, but it is not as bad as it sounds. This is a great resource and I would encourage everyone to check it out. There are some classics on here which you may never otherwise read and this is a fantastic way to experience them.

I would be more than happy to check up on the copyright of anything on the site if you just let me know.

I would love to read some comments from anyone who does give this site a go and would like to let us know what they thought of it.

TC

Living books

Did anyone see Denton this week? I didn't either, but this week's show has certainly set people talking.

Andrew Denton introduced Australia to the concept of living books. Living books are the newest thing to hit libraries in Europe. The theory is the library signs up various people who become the living books, which library users can then borrow for 45 minutes at a time. The idea behind it is that people can find out more about particular groups of people by borrowing a living book and chatting to them. Some of the examples of living books have so far been Muslims, homosexuals, animal activists, a gypsy and a journalist.

Andrew then spoke to a living book, a transexual, and one of the library users who borrowed her. The borrower was a mother whose daughter had decieded she was transexual and so she was able to find out more about what this decision whould mean for her daughter and what she could do to support her daughter in that choice.

Let me know what you think of the idea and what sort of living book you might like to borrow and why.

TC

To Wikipedia or not to Wikipedia

One of the most popular sites accessed here at school is Wikipedia. It is a great site because it is easy to use, the user interface is clean and clear and it has heaps of information on virtually any topic that you can imagine. Better than that, anyone can add to it or change what is already there. It is this very thing that is perhaps both Wikipedia's greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Like all of you, I am still studying. I am currently doing my Masters and very much enjoying it. Last week we had to submit an assignment and today our lecturer sent us an email regarding the use of Wikipedia. He was baffled by the fact that some students had referenced Wikipedia in their assignments. To the bottom of his email he attached the following:

WIKIPEDIA WARNING

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has candidly advised college students not to use Wikipedia as a source. Speaking at a University of Pennsylvania conference called 'The Hyperlinked Society' Jimmy said he gets about 10 messages a week from students who've got into trouble for using the online encyclopedia. 'They say "Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia",' and the information proved to be incorrect.

Jimmy said he had little sympathy for such students, and thinks to himself 'For God's sake, you're in college; don't cite the encyclopedia.'

He added that the Wikipedia team has thought about producing a fact sheet for professors to students explaining what Wikipedia is and how it is not always a definitive source. 'It is pretty good, but you have to be careful with it,' said Jimmy. It's good enough knowledge, depending on what your purpose is.

admittedly you are not university students, but many of you soon will be, so it is a good idea to start getting into good habits now. Also, if you know better, why not choose to do better?

We subscribe to an online reference collection; Oxford Reference Online. It is an excellent selection of published reference books that have been put online so that schools can access all of these books without having to buy them all or replace them when new editions are printed. It is very easy to use, it has a variety of functions and provides huge amounts of information that is suitable for all students. The information is also guaranteed to have been written and edited by experts and authoritative sources.

There is more information about Wikipedia and researching on the Internet available on the 'Using the Internet' page of the virtual library. There is also a direct link to Oxford Reference. Please see the library staff if you can not remember the password or where to find it.

I would like you to share your thoughts on this topic by posting a comment.

TC

@ the movies

There certainly seems to be a plethora of new movies out at the moment that have been created based on books; many of them very popular titles. There are four in particular that have received a lot of attention.

48 Shades is based on the novel 48 shades of brown by Nick Earls. About a boy in year 12 who moves in with his young, groovy aunt for the year when his parents move to Geneva. This is a great coming of age movie by a fantastic Australian author. There have also been rave reviews for the all Australian sound track to this movie.

Stormbreaker is based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Horowitz. The first title in the Alex Rider series, this is set to be an exciting film.

An inconvenient truth is the documentary film based on the book by Al Gore. Both the book and the movie have received much critical acclaim. It looks at the issue of global warming and our impact on the Earth. One reviewer did comment that the audience must stay until after the credits.

The new Macbeth film is a contemporary take on the classic Shakespearean play. Another Australian film, this one is set in Melbourne and centers around the criminal underworld. This is by all accounts quite a confronting film and is strictly for mature audiences.

If you have seen one of these movies, or another one based on a book, post a review here for everyone to check out.

Happy viewing!

TC

Exam preparation

The end of the school year is closing in fast; I can feel it. The air of excitement surrounding the year twelve boys is getting thicker by the day. Over the next eleven weeks boys across the Senior School will prepare for and sit exams. For some boys, this will be their first taste of them, for others it will be the last time that they sit in an exam here at school.

It is crucial to your success that you find a way of learning the content of your subject well. This is more than just cramming.

Cramming doesn't work! Cramming is trying to remember large qualities of information just prior to your exam. It doesn't work because the information is only going into your short term memory, which is not very good at storing large amounts of information. This means that you will often lose much of what you are trying to remember before you sit the exam. Some people will open the paper and fail to recall anything at all.

With any luck you have actually learnt much of what you need to know for your exam during the year. Once you learn something it goes into your long term memory, which can store incredible amounts of information for a very long period of time. This is why in year twelve you have 30+ weeks to learn the curriculum but only about 3 weeks to revise it. And revise is the key word.

During the revision period you are going over the things that you have learnt so that they are fresh in your memory, this way you are able to recall them easily during your exam. It is also a time where you will find very small (hopefully) gaps in your knowledge and the aim then is to learn this missing information. This should be easily done as it is a small amount only and it is related to the information that you have already learnt; this learnt information acts as scaffolding to support you learning the new information more easily.

Different people have different methods that they find useful for revision. A large percentage of the population are visual learners, they learn though images and pictorial representations of information. Lists of information are not the most productive way for visual learners to learn information.

Information can be represented visually in various ways. Pictures and diagrams are fantastic, they do not have to be works of art, they just need to portray the information that is important. Using colour to highlight, make groups etc is also a very powerful technique. The third technique, which can be incredibly useful, is the use of concept maps (mind maps). This uses a combination of words, visual layout showing connections and hierarchy and also utilises colour. Software programs such as Inspiration and FreeMind are also available now so that you can even create concept maps on the computer.

If you have not tried creating a concept map before I would highly recommend that you give it a go. They can be very simple representations of large amounts of information with complex connections. I am more than happy to help students with learning how to create the most effective concept maps at any time. I would also recommend that you check out some of the books written by Tony Buzan about Mind Maps. The following link is also a good mind mapping resource http://www.thethinkingbusiness.co.uk/mindmappingbenefits.htm.

Please ask any questions you have about mind mapping, exam revision or anything else discussed here, or post any positive experiences that you have had with using mind mapping techniques.

Happy Roald Dahl Day

Ok so I missed it. Roald Dahl Day was on the 13th of September. So I guess it is a belated Happy Roald Day greeting. :o)

September the 13th was Roald Dahl's birthday and if he were still alive he would have turned 90 this month.

Like millions of people around the world, I grew up reading Roald Dahl's books and watching the movies that were created from them. The BFG is my first memory of Dahl's books; it was read aloud to us in one of my primary classes. I also remember there being some focus on him when he died in 1990, which was around the same time that I was able to read his novels independently.

Whilst many authors have their fans, and some remain popular from generation to generation, very few seem to have the timeless appeal that has kept Dahl's books on popular reading lists for close to five decades.

My personal favorite is been Matilda. It is typical of Dahl's stories where good triumphs over evil and the innocent, good child wins against the nasty adults. I am sure that part of Dahl's appeal to children is that he engages their imaginations with magical story lines and humorous and often made-up language, but he also challenges their minds with long and uncommon words and complex jokes. As a young girl myself, who also loved to read, I was certainly able to connect with the character of Matilda.

I would love for people to share their own favourite stories and characters of Roald Dahl.

Perhaps if you haven't read a Roald Dahl in a while September is the month to do it!

TC

Promotions

I just finished reading an interesting article. It was a report from the San Fancisco Chronicle and it was about a particular book promotion. We are used to seeing books promoted in magazines, on posters around the place, in fancy stands in bookshops and via word of mouth. In recent years promotion through the Internet has rapidly increased with many writers now having their own web sites etc. Of course if a book is lucky enough to be made into a movie, the book itself will often see increased sales and readership, some even assuming cult status (Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter etc).

The thing that made this most recent promotion newsworthy is that it has never been done before. The publishers hired a film maker to create short film (about a minute and a half) based on a section of the book. The clip was professionally produced and was made to make the audience want to find out what would happen next. The clip was then put on YouTube. The idea being that thousands of people would see it and be inclined to email it to their friends. In this way, millions of people become intrigued and want to buy the book to find out what happens.

We are used to seeing movies made from books. Many readers are often disappointed in the results. So what happens when this happens in the reverse?

Part of the enjoyment in reading a book is that we are able to create images of the characters and the setting in our minds; perhaps if we see someone elses visual interpretations of these things first it will take away some of the enjoyment of the story.

On the other hand, I am sure that we miss hundreds of fantastic books simply because we don't ever find them. Perhaps the writer is unknown, the cover isn't appealing, it doesn't have the expensive displays in the bookshops and it is never made into a movie.

Perhaps this promotional technique will be a once off, of maybe it will become a very popular and successful way to promote books amongst a generation that spends far more time on the internet than in book stores. Regardless, I believe that it will still be word of mouth (or email) that will have the greatest force for promoting books.

I would love to know what you think about this promotion idea and also the most successful methods you use to find great books.

TC

Blog # 1

Welcome to the first PAC library blog!

I wanted to set this blog up as a new way of communicating with the school community, particularly the students. My intention is to share a lot of information about many different topics; some of which might include specific books or genres, information literacy skills, new additions to the library, the Internet and much more.

I would very much like this blog to be interactive. Anyone can make comments in response to my blog. This might be in the form of questions, personal comments/opinions or information. A collection of comments between people on the blog can create whole discussions online. I would like you to feel that this blog is as much yours as it is mine.

There are however some rules...

Whilst you will most likely access this blog via the school intranet; you need to keep in mind that it is hosted by an external site and that it is able to be read by anyone on the Internet. For that reason, personal information is not to be published. When referring either to yourself or others please only use first names, initials or an alias.

Language and content must be appropriate. Anything that is deemed as inappropriate will not be published, this includes low level swearing.

This site is to be constructive. Derogatory, defamatory and put down type comments will not be published. Any criticism must be constructive and not offensive. Differences of opinion should be just that and not a debate over who is right or wrong.

I hope to see as many staff and students as possible playing an active part in this blog. Enjoy!

TC