A Special Social Story: Student Librarians follows Ash, a Year 6 student who is training as a student librarian in their school library with the teacher librarian and library assistant. It is split into three sections (duty days, meeting morning,Read more…
Can You Strike It Rich During The Gold Rush? A Critical Review (Gameplay as Experiencing Digital Literature)
The Australian gold rush of the 1850s has been the subject of multiple digital experiences of very similar names for nearly three decades. Some were set in Bathurst, others in regional Victoria, some text-based and some with a more visuallyRead more…
Just Grandma and Me: A Critical Review (90s Digilit Endures!)
I can remember my first experience of digital literature. Age seven, I witnessed my teacher loading Just Grandma and Me (Broderbund, 1992) onto our classroom computer, and everyone took a timed turn. Reluctant readers went first, and I devoured books,Read more…
Snow Fall: A Critical Review
Evocative. Mind-blowing. Truly… beautiful. The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner’s cover letter describing the winning entry sums it up in its collation of review taglines (The Pulitzer Prize, 2013). The publication of seminal multimedia news story Snow Fall, created by JohnRead more…
Vox Books: A Critical Review (Is It DigiLit?)
How far does the (academic, educational, sociological and psychological) hand of digital literature stretch? The more I read, the more questions arise… Recently, I came across a book in Chermside Library that I picked up initially because it had aRead more…
Reflective Practice: Key Functions of Library Spaces
I’ve been interested in how to go about building a school-wide culture of reading since listening to Amy Hermon’s interview with Melissa Thom (School Librarians United, 2nd December 2019). It was the first time I had heard the term, butRead more…
Preparation for Assessment 2 – Current Knowledge and Understanding
I come from a context of having explored many forms of digital literature without realising one would call it digital literature! Going into ETL533, I assumed that digital literature was based around e-books, Project Gutenberg texts, or similarly formatted worksRead more…
Assignment 2 Part B: Reflective Practice
At the start of this subject, most of my experience with libraries in the primary space led me to believe three fundamental truths: that the main function of a teacher librarian was collection management, that the physical collection trumped theRead more…
Assignment 3 Part C: Reflective Practice
In my previous professional life as a teacher I was required to approach inquiry-based learning in two very different contexts. The first was as a Cycle 3 Montessori directress, where the entire educational philosophy and all associated pedagogy are groundedRead more…
Approaches to Policy Development
My undergraduate major was in policy studies, so critiquing and making recommendations about revisions to existing policies is a process near and dear to my particular (some would say pedantic) heart. Starting right from the beginning, and writing the policiesRead more…
Cumberland Council vs The People: On Censorship
On the 1st of May, Cumberland Council was asked to vote on the immediate removal of books about same sex marriage from the city’s library service. After a narrow vote (6-5) to proceed, less than three weeks later the motionRead more…
Definition of Literacy
Definitions of literacy vary, obviously depending on their context: Cambridge Dictionary: 1) The ability to read and write and 2) knowledge of a particular subject, or a particular type of knowledge Australian Curriculum v8.4: Literacy involves students listening to, reading,Read more…
Collection Development Policy – Current and Future Practice
Written on May 12th 2023 Reading L.J. Morrisey’s article ‘Ethics in Collection Development’ (2008) gave me cause to pause and reflect on my own experience and practice and how it mirrors choices made by selectors in resourcing their space. IRead more…
Reflecting on the Role of Teacher Librarians
My first school librarian, in the first weeks of Kindergarten, told me off for drawing a heart next to my name and writing my N backwards on the card that I dutifully removed from the back of my chosen borrowingRead more…
A Tale of Two Collections (And Their Challenges)
I visit a lot of schools in my current position, and we often find ourselves teaching or registering students in the heart of the school (a.k.a. the library). We often see amazing arrays of books, magazines and other physical resourcesRead more…
Read, Reflect, Reimagine by Ang – An Introduction
I’m Ang, and there are three important things you should know about me: I love to READ. My personal preference is middle grade and YA fiction, but I read a LOT outside that for work, and my son (Little A)Read more…