You’ve got 2 minutes and a microphone, Victoria, so slam it!
Speak, scream, howl, whisper or sing your original poem at the Victorian heats of the Australian Poetry Slam ‘09 – an electric live event where the audience is the judge.
HEAT:
FRANKSTON - Tuesday 29th September
STATE FINAL:
State Library of Victoria – Thursday 12th November
Got something to Say?
Victoria’s top two slam poets will battle against state and territory winners for the coveted Australian Poetry Slam ‘09 title (and $5000 cash) at the Sydney Opera House in December.
You know how you sometimes come across a movie you can watch over and over again and not get tired of it? “Twilight”, for instance, one of my friends watched it for 7 times!!! or Harry Potter’s saga…
What about you – what movie you like to watch over and over again? Take the polls and let us know.
The CBCA (Children’s Book Council of Australia) Short List was released a month ago. The books included in each of the categories is decided at the Judges’ Conference after extensive discussion and by a secret ballot by the Judges. The Short List usually has six titles in each category. The categories are: Older Readers, Younger Readers, Early Childhood, Picture Books and Eve Pownall.
For the short list in the other categories visit CBCA. The winners of the awards will be announced on Friday 21 August, at the beginning of Children’s Book Week, which runs from 22 to 28 August, 2009, under the theme ’Book Safari’.
You also can vote for the best book in Older Readers category by taking the poll – it will be interesting to see the jugdes’ verdict in August compared with the results of the poll.
Vlingo is a voice-powered user interface that unlocks access to mobile phone wireless data services. vlingo for iPhone™ and vlingofor BlackBerry smartphones allows users to speak into their device and have many popular applications carry out their respective functions. This includes dialing your phone, sending an email or SMS, creating and saving a memo or task, opening a web browser and performing a web search, composing a social-networking status message and more.
Follow the links above and check out the video below to find out more information .
This year our school has the opportunity to participate in the Indigenous Literacy Project which is a partnership between the Australian Book Industry and The Fred Hollows Foundation. The Project aims to help address the current literacy crisis in remote Indigenous communities.
Illiteracy in many of these communities is a common and critical barrier to the full, healthy and happy life many of us take for granted. Low literacy is consistently linked to poor health, and to poor social and economic outcomes. Try and imagine what your life would look like if you couldn’t read. Think of the multitude of ways it would impact on your capacity for success in every facet of your life.
Upwards of 70% of Indigenous children in remote communities suffer from chronic Otitis Media, a serious middle ear disease that can cause permanent hearing loss and inhibit language and literacy development. (DET, WA 2006)
The Fred Hollows Foundation is working with remote Indigenous communities in women’s centres, crèches, schools, safe houses, and in art centres. In 2009 The Foundation is working to provide books to remote communities in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Western NSW.
To support this Project and to remind ourselves of the life-long benefits derived from reading and being part of a reading community, we would like whole families to get involved. You can register yourself or your family at the library. It costs an individual $5 to register or $20 for a family. Once you have registered all you need to do is read, there is no restriction on the type of reading you can do. You can read books, newspapers, hard copy or online, blogs, nings, ebooks, websites, emails, text messages etc. you get the idea. We hope to conclude the project with a book swap in September, but for now, talk to your family about registering, and see me or the library staff if you need help to get started or to find out more about this project and the communities it benefits.
YouTube has something new to check out – movies that have been uploaded for viewing through their site. And not only movies, documentararies also feature along with Television shows. Take a look at the following screenshots to get an idea of some of the content that is available;
This screenshot shows televison progams available from their Science and Technology category;
When you click on a movie or program you want to view you are taken to a viewing window much larger than what we are used to seeing.
You can still have the option of viewing in full screen mode. The picture quality is surprisingly good; much better than if you viewed in full screen a regular Youtube upload. The only downside is that some of the movies are not available for viewing in Australia. My husband was very disappointed to discover he couldn’t access Cliffhanger, one of his all time favourite action movies!
Thanks to Alec Couras and Dan Colemanfor the heads up to this new initiative from YouTube.
ht in the dark as most vampires prefer)? Or is he still ‘hot property’?
