Learner’s Playground

oursrI was happy to have been asked to be part of the ‘Learner’s Playground’ at the QSLA “Creating Future Libraries” annual network conference 2016. Last year Anne Weaver and I created a Makerspace for delegates to explore which can be found here. The Learner’s Playground was part of the Trade Centre and displayed many wonderful ‘innovative’ and exciting activities which are happening in school libraries around Brisbane. During the conference delegates were given time to come and ‘play’ and ‘learn’. I took along a few of our Makerspace resources including: iPads with many ‘making’, creating and coding apps, Makey Makey, Little Bits and Squishy Circuits.

littlebitsThere was no internet access, which was disappointing, so I used Makey Makey from a power source to challenge delegates to create and solve circuitry tasks, thanks to Colleen Graves for the resources.

The Squishy Circuits I took along were from the Kickstarter project I supported…… it comes with LED’s, Power pack, switch, sound and motor. The creators of this project were students who worked with Dr AnnMarie Thomas who developed the idea of conductive and non-conductive dough.

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Other schools displayed activities including robotics, wearable art, paper crafts, green screening, VR goggles, literacy tasks, bristlebots and scribblebots, 3D printed masks……..and of course plenty of ‘books’!

wearablerstars

A special mention to the wonderful work by the ‘The One Million Stars to end Violence Project’ raising awareness within communities. Video about the project.

The conference keynote speaker was the delightful Leigh Hobbs – Australian Children’s Laureate, artist and author. Leigh spoke about his experiences creating his very successful books using characters and settings he is personally connected to and his passion for history, architecture and cultures. He also spoke about how important a school library is in the life of a child.

hobbsleigh

Dr Emily Verstege spoke about engaging girls in technology. Technology has given us all a level playing field and to succeed we need to raise the roof, open the door and break down the walls! She spoke about Technovations which we are proudly involved in!

Another session I thoroughly enjoyed was listening to Brian Falkner, author, talk about school holiday writing camps for middle primary aged students he is running called ‘Write Like an Author’. Click the link to find out more.

Brian

#bestteachingpartnerever Megan Daily also has some great insights into Brian Falkner here.

 

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Jackie Child
Jackie Child has been teaching primary aged students for 40 years in a number of countries. She is passionate about how children learn through constructivist pedagogy. She is a Teacher Librarian at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School and a sessional tutor at Griffith University for pre-service teachers. Jackie doesn’t believe in standing still, there is always plenty to ‘do’ and learn!

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