Library Online

The largest library in Europe was opened yesterday in Birmingham. The wonderful Malala Yousafzai gave a very inspirational speech as she opened the Library.

Our school Library Service is a much smaller version, of course, but it is run on the same professional principles. If students learn how to use our service, they will be able to access large university and public libraries with real success and with a massive impact on their future studies.

Watch the video to hear Malala’s wonderful speech about the power of books, libraries and education. There is also a link to the full text below the video:

Full text of Malala’s speech.

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: libraries, Malala Yousafzai, public_libraries

Seattle Public Library’s amazing video!

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: books, promotion, public_libraries, reading, world_records

The winners of the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal have been announced today!

Congratulations!

Images clipped from the official Carnegie and Greenaway Shadowing site.

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: books, Carnegie, Greenaway, reading

Fantastic news this week – the very popular author, Malorie Blackman, has been appointed as the new Children’s Laureate.

Students at The Dixie Grammar School love her books, especially the Noughts and Crosses series.

She has a new book out this week, Noble Conflict. It is on order for the Senior School Library – here is the book trailer:

Congratulations to Malorie!

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: books, laureate, reading

Exciting news, as the school is in Market Bosworth and so close to Bosworth Field.

It was announced today by a team from the University of Leicester that the skeleton found underneath a Leicester car park is really that of King Richard III.

Mrs Robinson has made a Research Guide on the Battle of Bosworth, Richard III and Henry VII:

More information can be found:

BBC website

The University of Leicester’s Richard III page

Richard III Society

Richard III on Wikipedia

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: Bosworth Field, Richard III

We have won an iPod Touch for our school libraries! Microlibrarian Systems, who are the developers of our Library Management System, Eclipse2, entered us into their prize draw and we won.

Mrs Robinson would love to have students’ ideas for how we might use our iPod to promote reading or research skills. Here are some to start you off:

1. Listening to audiobooks
2. Reading ebooks
3. Listening to podcasts, e.g. for Languages
4. Looking at apps developed for education
5. Taking photos of activities in our libraries

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: apps, ebooks, ereaders, iPod Touch, podcasts, technology

Click on the photographs below to see the most amazing sculptures made by the artist Guy Laramee out of books. There are even more here.

But please don’t try that with books from our libraries!

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: art, books, sculpture

Why not read this site on your phone? Here is the QR code:

To get our app, please follow these instructions:

Please download the iPhone and Android apps in the following locations.

1) iPhone app: http://itunes.apple.com/my/app/bloapp/id436962200?mt=8
2) Android app: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.infindo.bloapp.activities

Note: To add this blog, you simply need to snap the QR code with Bloapp. Alternatively you can search for this site’s name using the search function as well.

If this does not work, please let Mrs Robinson know so that she can sort it out!

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: apps, news, QR Codes

Here are the photographs from our fantastic Write Path session, which I wrote about previously.

Here are the links to the stories. Our students worked in pairs to write a paragraph, collaborating on stories with schools from around the world. Please read them and tell us what you think! The names in the links belong to the authors who started each story.

Story started by Alex Milway

Story started by Catherine Fisher

Story started by Joanne Harris

Story started by Jo Craig

Story started by Penny Dolan

Story started by Pete Johnson

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: English, special events, Write Path, writing

We had an amazing hour in the Library this morning and Mrs Robinson is exhilarated and proud as punch after taking part in Write Path for the first time! All we can say is “Can we do it again next year, please?”.

Write Path is an annual event aiming to encourage connections with students around the world through the means of a collaborative story writing activity. This year, Write Path is taking place over two weeks with over 60 schools from a wide range of countries taking part.

 The organiser has been able to enlist the support of some fantastic authors and poets.  They will each write a story or poem “starter”. Each day, six of these are available and the students then write the next paragraph (up to 250 words) so that the story/poem progresses during the day. These are then uploaded to a collaborative website so that everyone can see. The last school each day finishes the story/poem. Each school gets one slot during the two weeks.

 The English Department here were so helpful, choosing the 12 students from Year 7, organising a teacher to help out, getting hold of some Sixth Formers who also encouraged and supported the younger students and much more. Thanks so much!

 The students themselves were brilliant – taking to the whole idea with cries of “Awesome”, particularly when told that the finished stories would be published in book form. They were up and running very quickly, and worked fantastically well. We were amazed at their flexibility when some of the paragraphs from the school before us popped up half way through our session – they simply adjusted what they had written. Our Sixth Form students helped some of the Year 7s with typing and kept them focussed on the task – huge thanks to them too!

A fantastic hour!

written by Mrs Robinson \\ tags: English, international, literacy, special events, students, Write Path, writing