ETL 501 Topic 2

Topic 2:

·         I was told by our retiring TL that the Reference books were those not to be borrowed. After weeding (which included 10 sets of world book encylopedias all pre 1990’s) I’m left with around 300 print books that the students and teachers just don’t use. They include books on birds, animals, machines…. Unless I’m missing something, these should be in the NF section.  – I’m leaning towards the “no reference” section side. Why have books that can’t be borrowed.

·         Wikipedia – As a primary school teacher Wiki is set out in an easily read format for 8 – 12year olds. We use it to initially find information – however children know they must then find another source that backs Wiki up before using it.

·         Specialised dictionaries – interestingly enough Wiki provided the best definition of these.

·         Print based dictionaries –our school still has class sets primarily because there aren’t “class sets” of computers available. An older teacher once told me that kids still need to learn the skill of looking up a word in a dictionary – I question if this is the same as saying they still need to learn how to feed paper into a type-writer, or how to use a slide rule.

·         Online atlas: Atlas of living Australia  http://www.ala.org.au/ this was a great one for primary school kids. Tested it with Year 4 -  they loved picking an area of Australia and zooming into until it changed to an arial photo of the streets. Easy to navigate around.

·         VERSO looked great – easy to navigate and find what you are after – a shame it is password protected, I found some books that I would have liked to have a closer look at!