All Black Day

Mike Riversdale, via @BarristaMatt who got it from iphonewzealand.co.nz

Schools across Australia are participating in ALL BLACK DAY today, a fundraiser for the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, which was rocked by a large earthquake exactly one month ago. All images are Creative Commons, credited as requested, and found on Flickr.


gobeirne


NZ Defence Force, Crown Copyright 2011, NZ Defence Force – Some Rights Reserved.


Mark Lincoln, www.nzraw.co.nz


gobeirne


Mark Lincoln, www.nzraw.co.nz


gobeirne


NZ Defence Force, Crown Copyright 2011, NZ Defence Force – Some Rights Reserved.


Will you lend Christchurch a hand and help it to bloom again?

The above frieze was created by students in Class SCHM at Penrith Public School, in western Sydney. Teacher Mrs Mead and the teachers' aides helped the students to paint their hands, then they photographed them in the shape of colourful tulips.


UPDATE: Okay, here's our PhotoPeach slideshow

All Black Day: Christchurch earthquake appeal, 2011

An unlikely earthquake survivor?

Not wanting to make too light of two international natural disasters, but this little plastic "Star Trek" Andorian charm was purchased on eBay a few weeks ago - and was rather late arriving from Japan. He finally turned up today, with an apology sticker on the envelope: explaining he'd been found in Tokyo, at the bottom of the returning mail bag. So back to Sydney he had to go. Seems he would have been caught up in the big Japan earthquake of 2011. (The envelope wasn't damp, so I guess he managed to avoid the tsunami.)

Andorians may not be punctual, but they are resilient!



The sticker reads: "Dear Addressee, We found the mail remaining in an empty bag which had been originally sent to the destination. Thank you. Tokyo International Post Office."

Meanwhile, this recently came back from Mr Kim, my favourite local framing guy:



It's the autographed cover of Dayton Ward's "Paths of Disharmony", for which I was a beta reader.



Dare you take a stroll in New Therin Park?

Wicked pedia

Judy O'Connell's recent post about students and Wikipedia reminded me that there was a very funny post about Wikipedia a few months ago, on a teacher-librarians' listserv, whereby someone had found, incidentally, that some fool had sabotaged the entry on the Newcastle (NSW) Earthquake... to say that it was started by someone stamping their foot in anger.

Of course, before the first post to the listserv was barely in people's "In" boxes, someone else, a registered contributor to Wikipedia, had gone into the site to edit the entry back again. And then announced their restorative action on the listserv. Which caused more consternation because several teacher-librarians had already bookmarked (but not thought to "Save to file") a copy of the sabotaged entry to use as an example when doing explicit teaching about online research.

Slam it all you like; Wikipedia is invaluable as an orientation tool. A living, breathing, evolving encyclopedia of everything, written by people who fancy themselves as experts in areas of trivia. (Sounds like me!)

I've been know to use the wiki when I hit a topic I know nothing about, and it usually gives me at least a feel for the type of more authoritative information that is likely to be out there, beyond the Wikipedia entry. Or whether it's a more obscure topic. And when I've found topics that have rather lean (or totally wrong) information, and I know something about them, I've been known to add data myself: Number 96, The Magic Circle Club, Luna Park Sydney, Star Trek, Andorians... important stuff like that. ;) Even cataloguers keep a watch on it.

Of course school and university students will be drawn to Wikipedia - like moths to a flame! The key is how we all, as researchers, use that information to keep on investigating!

Sunday's magic number: 90.6. Okay! Until just now I actually thought it was the third week in a row with no change. But it's down by 0.3. I guess that's good?