The team representing us in Mareeba this year on June 7th is: Ben Weller, Megan McDowell, Josh Pellach and Brogan Lynton. The team are reading furiously and hope to take us higher up the ladder than ever before with their understanding of the 6 district novels. The booklist for this year includes:
- Red by Libby Gleeson
- The Whisperer by Fiona McIntosh
- Keeper by Mal Peet
- The Girl Who Owned a City (Graphic novel) by Dan Jolley
- On Two Feet and Wings by Abbas Kazerooni
- Hammering Iron by L S Lawrence +Teacher’s Notes
We wish them luck in the competition. Mareeba SHS went on to win the State title last year, so they are in for some very tough competition.
ID Cards
Phew, we’re a little behind with renewing our ID cards but everyone should have collected them from T & R and be using them now. Notice the increased functionality of the magnetic strip. Now you can associate your login and password with the card and release your print jobs from the colour printer, scan and photocopy. Keep your ID card with you because mistakes are often made when “keying in” characters on a keyboard or LCD screen. If you need assistance with printing, photocopying, scanning, computer glitches, passwords as well as information problems- the library staff are here to assist you.
Learning Portals
Learning portals are multifunctional too. This blog is a learning portal. Our 24/7 catalogue is a learning portal as are our Library pages on the school website. Our library catalogue has many functions now. You do not only search for school resources. Every time you search for a subject, author or title, you are one click away from actioning a federated search of JCU, TAFE, The National Library, Curriculum Corporation, Google Safe Search and The Learning Place – and this is simultaneous and automatic. If you haven’t tried our Library catalogue for searching the Internet more successfully, give it a go! These library portals link you to many directories and tools like our School Diigo Library and our Clickview Online Library. Please see library if you can’t remember our student username and password.
Build your own learning portal of sites and resources depending upon your passions and interests. Subscribe to lists and RSS Feeds for the latest information. If the world’s energy problems worry you, Scientific American has a very interesting article this week about how the world could be powered without fossil fuels. My own interests have pushed me some useful library articles this week about ereaders encouraging reading and how the brain adapts to reading in the digital age. These are my interests, you must develop a learning portal to take you easily to yours – we can share deep web directories, online magazines and specialized search engines to tap into our separate needs for information. For instance if you’re into films, documentaries and mini-series, ATOM has a fantastic collection of free ebooks and learning guides onsite and in itunes for many Australian films like Sapphires or Ten Canoes.
BLOG CLUB
WANTED: Blog writers for our club and if you can’t make it Thursday after school, arrange an appointment any time with Mrs Robins to start your very own blog. Face-to-face membership isn’t necessary once you are set up. You can maintain your blog remotely. You don’t have to blog every week. This is not a simulation – join up and share your skills and talents with the entire world.
Free Screen Capture Software
Jing is a great free screen capturing program you can download for free. You can capture stills and create narrated film tutorials of your desktop, or part of it, with one click. Jing will allow you to save as a movie file or link online. Teachers will find it particularly useful. Download it now and share your knowledge with others. Note – Jing has a time limit of 5 mins duration.