Somewhere in Time - revisited

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to director Jeannot Swarc's commentary on his film, "Somewhere in Time", on DVD today.

The year I was doing casual teaching (1981), I often had Wednesdays off - and would go to the double feature at the ol' Mecca Theatre in Hurstville. Free coffee at intermission - and two amazing films. Saw some brilliant stuff that year!

Coincidentally, the theatre was right next door to the CES office where I had to hand in my unemployment forms, and that was a mere formality since I was getting too much work to qualify for any monetary benefits.

The end, but yet not the end

The school students finish up today, but New South Wales public school teachers have two more days on duty. Hard to think about planning for next year when you're tired from teaching this year...

The money saved by the government on those two days of students' free travel (ie. because they won't be coming to school those last two days) was diverted to pay teacher salary increases earlier in the year. But with everyone looking so weary this week (party days, report cards, room clean-ups, Year 6 farewells, library stocktakes) I'm not sure how enthusiastic we'll be about two days of professional development when the rest of the world is seemingly off Christmas shopping.



Today's pic: Superman cap given to me as an end-of-year gift by two of my most enthusiastic young library patrons! They know me too well.

Australia's first astronaut is 50!

"Happy 50th Birthday" to Mr Squiggle.


Mr Squiggle, the man from the moon.

He hasn't aged a day! (Sigh. Unlike moi.) He can draw with his nose. He rides a rocket to the moon every week. He's a marionette friend to talking steam shovels, snails and blackboards. I watched him on TV as a kid, even worked with him (briefly) when we were 21 and 20 respectively, and now we are both past the big 5-0.

I did the kite-making in a 1980 episode of "Mr Squiggle and Friends", entitled "Space Age Kites", directed by Virginia Lumsden. I appeared on the little TV which Gus the Snail wore for a shell, and I had to teach Miss Jane (real-life daughter of actor Willie Fennell) to make sled kites out of beautiful, shimmery, polymer film. (I was taught how to do them by my wonderful teachers college craft lecturer, Klin Sullivan, who is a long-time puppetry colleague of the Hetherington family; Klin recommended me for the gig.)

My episode was made in the January of 1980 but didn't air until the August. It was quite a fluke as to how I became involved. I had stayed in touch with Liz, a prac supervising teacher in my second year at college, and her school kept inviting me back for their end-of-term celebrations. Knowing I was finishing up at Christmas 1979, I was invited to do some volunteer work at the Marrickville kids' drop-in vacation centre - located at Tempe, in the old heritage-listed nunnery by the river. (The students were bussed over every day in a mini-bus, and they were great kids, who were so appreciative of my efforts as a then-fledgling craft teacher.) We did several all-day excursions over four weeks of the school vacation, including Taronga Park Zoo, Channel Seven TV studios and the Festival of Sydney in Hyde Park.

It was at the Festival's hands-on craft exhibit where I bumped into Klin, and she said that if I'd come back on the weekend she'd upskill me to make space-age sled kites for the "Squiggle" show. All I had to provide my own eyelet punch, and fame could be mine! When it came time to tape the episode, the ABC and Miss Jane were able to come to us at Tempe, where we had a ready made child audience - they loved me! - and then we drove to Centennial Park in the afternoon to fly the kites we made for the cameras.

Not a bad opportunity for a 21 year old graduate teacher with no experience.

You know, despite the glorious rainbow vibrancy of Mr Squiggle himself, and the amazing purple and silver sled kites, I've never seen the episode in colour! The week my episode was due to air on TV, there was a lengthy bread strike - I was working in my Dad's independent depot bread shop in Ramsgate. I had to take my portable b/w TV in, and the episode ran for the entertainment of the queue of customers who were lined up to buy their meagre rations of daily bread. Mum and Dad couldn't see the episode at all, since they were back at the Bexley store, serving their own queue of customers. There were no commercial home video machines yet, of course. I had even asked my old college to tape the episode for their archives (and me) - on U-matic video - but something went wrong with their aerial socket that day, and it taped in b/w! (Somewhere around here I have a fairly clear b/w crosstape, but it's probably on Beta. Sigh. Unless I once made a VHS copy.)

Also: a man named Terry Dowling sang a silly song about an alien in the episode - and it was a shock, years later, to meet him in Galaxy Bookshop and realise that Terry Dowling the folk singer was THE Terry Dowling, SF writer - and the husband of Kerry, a fellow ASTREX Star Trek Fan Club member! Small universe!

Rats!

Some friends on Facebook were reminiscing about the old television show, "Fawlty Towers". My favourite scenes included: the moose head snagging Sybil's cardie; Basil the rat - or Syberian hamster - in the ratatouille; the fire in the kitchen; the cat eating the poisoned meat and coughing up a furball; the deaf woman complaining about the view from a Torquay window... So many funny things in that classic series.

Which had me remembering:

I raised rats as pets during the early 90s. When I started at a new school as the teacher-librarian, several of the teachers were excited about the idea having one or two baby rats in their classrooms. The principal didn't like the sound of the idea, though, so we kept calling them Siberian Hamsters. The joke went on for weeks.

The principal went on leave and suddenly everyone had their cages ready! A few weeks went by, the kids were all abuzz, and everything was very positive. One teacher even made herself a sign for her pet corner that read "Our Siberian Hamsters".

I said, "Won't it be funny when the boss realises they're rats" and the teacher looked at me, surprised, and asked, "RATS?????"

Oooops.

Sunday's still too-high number: 96.4. Sigh...

Vale Barbara

Today I heard that my friend and teaching colleague, Barbara, passed away yesterday afternoon, after her two relentless battles with cancer. I've been struggling all day to come up with some appropriate words, but I keep self-editing as I search for a better way to convey just how funny, talented, generous, perceptive and determined she was - about so many aspects of Barbara's family life, her career, and her friendships.

Barbara took me - a complete stranger - under her wing when I ended up in a very unique teaching situation, about this time of year in 2002. It certainly made that five-week stint a memorable time, and such a valuable learning experience. It helped to mould me into who I am today.

The annual school shopping trip is coming up again in November, and this year Barbara's seat will be empty. However, I can guarantee that as soon as we start sharing favourite Barbara anecdotes, the bus will be filled with happy memories and much laughter. Which is exactly what Barbara would want.

RIP, Barbara...

Search terms desperado

"collaborative team teaching sucks", someone typed into Google this morning... and found my blog, according to Sitemeter.

Some teacher-librarian out there is having a bad day! Luckily they found my uplifting words of wisdom! (The "sucks" bit only came up because a previous post of mine mentioned a famous "Star Trek" episode, "Obsession", which featured a blood-sucking cloud creature.)

More learning, growing and achieving

Unlike the last conference I was asked to speak at, I went into today's events without that heavy weight of responsibility and impending disaster. I mean, if I could fill an hour on my own last time, how much easier would it be this time? We knew our material back-to-front, if necessary. The most difficult aspect would surely be, what bits do I leave out?

My co-presenter, Cath Keane, had prepared eleven of our PowerPoint pages, I'd added my own hyperlinks to the twelfth and last slide, and we only had 50 minutes or so to fill anyway. We also had plenty of time before our session, "Young rappers", to play on the interactive whiteboard (IWB), test our hyperlinks and cache all our web pages that we were planning to visit. We also knew in advance that we had about twenty people signed up to hear our talk. Everything worked in the rehearsal and off we went to the first keynote event of Day 2 of this Early Years Conference.

Clinical psychologist, Lyn Worsley, presented her fascinating session on "The resilience doughnut: the secret of strong kids" and, while she probably didn't say anything terribly new, especially to a ballroom filled with teachers who already had solid backgrounds in early childhood education, the strength of her approach was the clear answer of "where to know?" that one could glean after having used her clever, simple analytical tool for gauging the resilience of a particular student. Wonderful!

Before we knew it, Cath and I were deep into our presentation on book raps, blogs, wikis and Circle Time. Our only hitch was that our computer connection, which had worked so perfectly in rehearsal, had been lost for the presentation. A tech person came in and got us back online most efficiently, but our live connection to the Wilfrid rap blog (on Edublogs) was no longer working. Luckily, our PowerPoint had lots of frame grabs from the site, and the links to the Departmental website and my school's wiki pages were still viable, so we carried on regardless. We finished off with a reading of my Kinder students' "Zebra with spots" fable of 2007, and a walk-through of selected pages from my school's wiki pages. I hope our presentation has encouraged more schools to start dabbling in wikis and blogs.

It all seemed to go very well, but a highlight for me was that two attendees hung back at the end to (re)introduce themselves. It was none other than Warren and Kathy, two of my colleagues from my teachers college days! They'd noticed each other in the audience of my workshop session - I'm not sure at what point they realised that I was also from the same year - but morning tea turned out to be a mini-reunion of the Class of '79 of the Guild Teachers College. We swapped anecdotes about the good ol' days and pocket histories of our lives. It was the first time we'd seen each other since Graduation Day in 1980 - very exciting, and great to know that they are doing so well in their own teaching careers. (I can see a bigger reunion coming up in the next few months! I hope.)

Next up was Peter Gould, Manager, Mathematics at NSW DET - and one of the people I worked with on numerous occasions back in my Scan editor days. Peter's keynote was "From ABC to 123: what counts in early numeracy" and - despite some frustrating glitches with the movie clip elements of his presentation - it was an invaluable reminder of the essential differences in the ways young children learn to be numerate as opposed to literate.

After lunch, I attended two more workshops, both of which (again) ably demonstrated the amazing array of teaching and learning strategies that interactive whiteboards are bringing to classrooms in the 21st century. I guess that's the main thing I'm taking from this conference: that most of today's students are already citizens of the digital world of Web 2.0. The sooner their teachers and parents play catch-up the better. Every presentation I went to was using IWBs as part of their presentation - even my presentation, and today was the first time I'd actually been able to use one! Knowing that a little knowledge is dangerous, I can't wait to get my hands on an IWB as part of my school library's facilities and let my imagination run wild. Or wilder.

This conference left its delegates with so much food for thought (and delicious food for the body - the Novotel, Brighton-le-Lands always does well in that regard), great ideas we can start using on Monday (first day back of Term Three), and some wonderful memories of networking with colleagues, old and new. Synthesising all the learning into our daily lives will take time, but I'm glad I gave up two days of my vacation to absorb it all. I'm also grateful for the very handsome, gold-embossed "Presenter" pens, which Cath and I received for doing our workshop.

Roll on Term Three...

Learning, growing, achieving in the early years, Day 1

Tomorrow I'm speaking at Day 2 of the 2008 Early Years Conference: Learning, Growing, Achieving, presented by NSW DET. Day 1 was held today, but my talk session - co-presented with current Scan editor, Cath Keane, isn't until tomorrow.

Cath has put together a PowerPoint presentation about our recent ventures into the world of Web 2.0 - online book raps for Stage 1, and related blogs and wikis, and I'll also be talking about my school wiki pages, using some of the material I prepared (on fable writing for Early Stage 1) for the School libraries leading learning conference I did earlier this year. My conference notes are still online, revamped a little to incorporate some recent reflections. Since that last conference, I've also worked on some other relevent projects: a wiki page for the Arthur Simultaneous Reading event and some great Nursery Rhyme matrices, which I used in Term One this year with Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 classes.

Today there were some excellent and thought-provoking keynote speeches from Professor Scott Paris, of University of Michigan, ("Teaching and assessing comprehension right from the start") and Tracey Simpson ("Honest talk, shared language: connectedness for success in the early years"). Both keynotes emphasised the importance of teachers making full use of evidence-based practice, both reading the results of others' research, and using one's own to inform future teaching. I enjoyed these sessions, took lots of notes - which I promise to synthesis and report back about.

As I await my school's first interactive whiteboard (IWB), it was interesting to note that many (most?) workshop presenters are now using them as standard equipment. I attended excellent and flashy sessions on "Student learning in a digital age" and "COGs: raising the bar in the early years". In the main room, there was also a "Regional showcase" of the Best Start assessment tools project from the Sydney Region.

In summing up the regional showcase, Rob Randall reminded us of an excellent earlier quote and many people jotted this down as one of their last comments on their notepads. The new emphasis for the schools involved in Best Start has become "... shorter teaching episodes with fluid groups of students".

Not an entirely new thought for those of us with plenty of experience in PSP (Priority Schools Program) schools, but no doubt quite a new concept for others.

Tomorrow - Day 2! Wish me luck!

Identity: Sharing Our Stories rap

The NSW DET rap, Identity: Sharing Our Stories for Stages 3 and 4 is underway, the second such rap to be presented in a blog format (hosted by the School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit via Edublogs) rather than the traditional email and listserv arrangement.

I would like to urge teachers and teacher-librarians to drop by the rap and have a look at what I believe is going to be a great learning experience - for students, teachers, teacher librarians, AEOs (Aboriginal Education Officers) and community members. A range of excellent resources is available, including: programming and planning, proformas, music, and online factual texts with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People sharing their personal stories about what has formed their identities and has made them strong. Several of the participating schools have already posted their introductory, jointly-constructed, blog entries (see the section called "Intro").

Many teachers complain they find it difficult to make sure they properly address Aboriginal perspectives in their programs, and to find relevant resources. The rap is also a great way to develop a familiarity with blogging as an educational tool. How I wish I had my interactive whiteboard already; at my school we are making do with a regular computer, and the students are highly motivated to rap together, and to read the posts from other schools.

Last term's completed Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge book rap, also in blog format, is still available for comparison purposes. The "Teacher" section contains many "Frequently Asked Questions" about blogging. Also worth a look!

Greedy for blogs

In the last year at work/ie.school, we've formed at least three new professional learning groups that extend beyond our one school and take in other local schools with similar goals and projects. Inevitably, these networks mean even more after-school committee meetings, but the value of the results these groups can produce, means it's usually well work the time invested.

Today, I found myself volunteering to create another blog for the teachers, teacher-librarians and consultants involved in two of the groups - this one a little more in-house in theme, purpose and audience/participants, so I won't be promoting the URL far and wide at this point, although if it takes off it may well find a niche beyond its original brief. It's only very early days yet.

Essentially, it's a blog about our school (and other schools in our learning support group)'s quest to select, purchase and efficiently utilise interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in our school programs. I had suggested to the network that involving ourselves in some group projects would be a great way to support each other, proactively on several learning journeys with the IWBs. Me and my big mouth. (A new wiki activity just wasn't enough!)

As my third blog (fourth if I count helping out with the Wilfrid rap blog last term), I was astounded how quickly I could go to Edublogs, throw together a few pieces of already-created information and have a slick-looking set of posts, attachments, links and models of previous examples in about an hour, with a few hours of after-work tinkering to get the presentation looking user-friendly.

It's empowering!

The modern slideshow

Ever gone to one of those awful "slide nights" when you were a kid? Some neighbour would invite your whole family over to see slides of their family holiday to... wherever. And the slide projector always developed a fault, or blew a globe. Or someone would spill the box of slides, or the screen would be blank and someone would make those tired old jokes about the white screen representing a snowman in a blizzard.

May I present the modern slideshow, which I'm using as a teaching tool in my job as a teacher-librarian. I Photoshop and upload the photos to the Internet from home, select them as a group for a slideshow, and design lessons around the use of the images (that have no copyright problems).

My first three Flickr slideshows have proven to be very useful. But I learned something very exciting yesterday: when the mouse is dragged across the middle of the frame, a large "i" icon appears. I assumed this meant "information" but I never thought to test it. Children don't seem to have that lack of impulse to click a button; thus I discovered that my photo titles and description, in white text, superimpose the photos at the click of a mouse! Simple, but effective. Technology makes adults feel dumb sometimes!

Chinese New Year K-2
Bridges - Stage Two (Years 3 & 4)
Antarctica - Stage Three (Years 5 & 6)

Connect, Collaborate, Create

Today, I was an invited presenter at the 2007 Connected Learning Conference, held at the Novotel, Brighton-Le-Sands. The topic of my brief contribution was book raps, and how they were great examples of connecting, collaborating and creating. I can only guess that my audience included principals, teacher-librarians and computer savvy teachers.

Lots of deja vu moments. Once again, Colleen and I were venturing off for a lengthy car journey to speak at an education conference about ICT (information and communication technologies) and collaborative teaching; one of my first duties at "Scan", in 1998, had been a similar task. The Novotel is also the annual venue of Selwa Anthony's author management conferences, Succeed With Me, so the rooms, decor and even the wicked food offerings were all very familiar. (Bang goes the diet for this week.) There were also lots of well-remembered faces from my time at Ryde State Office of the NSW Department of Education and Training. Most of these people couldn't believe it had been over five years since I was working with them at Ryde, as editor of "Scan" - and neither could I!

The whole day was most rewarding - really great keynote speeches that had everyone both overwhelmed but invigorated about future possibilities in education! - and the pen souvenir I was given, as a presenter, is very cool in its Star Trek inspired plastic tube!

Celebrating literacy

On Thursday, the community at the primary school where I'm teacher-librarian, enjoyed a glorious spring afternoon celebrating literacy with a multicultural reading picnic. Thematic reading picnics have become a popular tradition at our school. An initiative of our Priority Schools Program (PSP) Committee, these picnics have become an excellent way for the all of us - parents, caregivers, students and staff - to focus on the importance of improving literacy skills and attitudes to reading.

The students arrived at school in multicultural costumes, or dressed in the colours of the national flag of their family’s country of origin. During the day, I presented each class with a certificate acknowledging their participation in the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge for 2007. This year, 313 of the school’s 400 students successfully completed this state-wide Challenge, up from 209 students in 2006. (A lot of independent reading has been achieved, and the students’ confidence in reading for pleasure has soared; it is great to see such enthusiasm for books.)



After lunch, the students and their visitors gathered in the main playground for a presentation of the folk tale, “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”. Our English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher assisted a group of her students to deliver alternating segments of this familiar story in a range of home languages and English. Languages represented included Croatian, Mandarin, Korean, Shona (a language of Zimbabwe), Tongan, Hindi and Farsi (a language of Afghanistan and Iran).

A multicultural trivia competition, organised by another teacher, had also been running in the days leading up to the picnic. There was also a display of multicultural picture books from the library and book reviews written by Stage 3 students (which are soon to be published by the Penrith Star).

Picnic baskets of goodies and favourite books in hand, it was then time for buddy classes and family groups to move off to various grassed areas around the school – each location was named after a different continent – for an afternoon of shared reading. It was very exciting to see all the groups on their picnic rugs so engrossed in their books.

And, today, the Sun-Herald newspaper (page 44) featured a photograph of some of our students at the picnic and quoted me in the accompanying article:
The children's picnics were centred on the joy that came from "literacy and reading, and... the fact that you can read a book anywhere. We're always looking for informal ways to get the parents up and to get them focused on literacy."

The article was titled, "Move over, teddy, this picnic's for bookworms".


How to try to top the amazing multicultural costumes worn by the students and parents? Go intergalactic! My screen-used Tellarite ambassador's costume from "Star Trek: Enterprise" gets its (Australian) debut on home soil. The trousers came with the costume, but how about those Ugg boots, eh? My Westie contribution to the ensemble.




It was a very hot afternoon, but the two layers of costume were surprisingly tolerable. I didn't wear the third layer, of course: the official Paramount Tellarite fat-suit! In fact, I thought maybe my result for Sunday's magic number would have been much better than 93.3 (sigh!) but it has been a week of many little celebrations and indulgences, such as: the staff dinner after Tuesday night's student disco; a thank you pavlova on Wednesday; the reading picnic on Thursday; a staff dinner at King Henry's Court restaurant on the Thursday night; a staff breakfast at McDonald's on Friday morning; end-of-term drinks on the Friday afternoon; and dining out with friends on Saturday night. What's really frustrating is that I feel skinnier. Well, they say that muscle weighs more than fat - and I have been walking a lot this week...

Return of the bird

Yesterday, I mentioned the bird that entered the school library, seeking the spider I'd caught during my lesson. Today the bird was back! I glanced at the clock and it was exactly 24 hours since his previous visit. Good timing!

I was going to suggest that he came in to hear the next chapter of the book I was reading but, last week, my story sent one of the students into a sound sleep, so maybe I'm reading way too much into these events!

Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying seeing vacant floorspace in the living areas of the house. Last January, I pulled lots of stuff out of one room, intending to rearrange and consolidate all the stuff and store it more efficiently. Admittedly, I did end up shoving things back into the other room as visitors were imminent on Saturday for Midwinter Christmas, but still the cosmetic effect is great!



The event was successful. There were nine of us, a good number for catering purposes. Just for fun, we had a cupcake decoration contest, a full-sized artificial snowman, and enjoyed watching one friend's well-edited DVD of a vacation in Japan, and another friend's professionally edited DVD of her son's Malaysian wedding. Bluey was on display for the evening; the guests reckoned than only I would be so determined to have the world's biggest Star Trek action figure in my dining room!

Eight legs, no prizes

Last week, on "Big Brother", the housemates had a task whereby they had to enter a "spider chamber" and collect a specified number of huntsman spiders.

Today, in the middle of a library lesson with a class of six- and seven-year olds, a large, huntsman wandered into the library, closely followed by a very cheeky bird. just what you need to through classroom management skills into disarray.

Taking my lead from the housemates, I calmly walked over, shooed the bird out the door, and placed a plastic container over the spider so the lesson could continue.

After the students had returned to their classroom, I was able to remove the spider to the garden. Okay, Big Brother, do I get a few nights in the Rewards Room now?

Born to read

Tonight, our school was part of the official launch of a local initiative to improve literacy potential of students entering Kindergarten through early intervention: books from birth.

An interesting array of speeches from an equally interesting array of speakers, with the keynote address being from Dr Robin Morrow, a former bookseller and Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) judge.

Dr Morrow, whom I know briefly from numerous teacher-librarians' meetings and conferences over the years, spoke fondly and knowledgeably of her documented efforts of reading iconic picture books to her grandchildren in their pre-school years, fostering a love of literature through repetition, anticipation, shared experiences, and even plenty of cuddles.

Our choir attended and made us all proud, not only with their singing, but with their exemplary behaviour through long speeches aimed mainly at adults.

It was a great evening all round and gave us all reassurance that what we do every day at work/school really makes a difference.

Tomorrow: the Pedlars' Fair! (I have my red velvet cloak and jester's cap at school, ready for the big day. In other words, I'll be there with bells on.)

A rapping good time

This month at school, I'm working with a little phalanx of six- and seven-year old book rappers in the library. A book rap is a carefully guided discussion about a book by email, designed to teach students about ICT (information and communication technologies).

We had to brainstormed an introductory message to the other classes (all over Australia), edited it and emailed it, and then refreshed our memories with a reading of the featured book, "Possum Magic" by Mem Fox.

Today, with the cooperation of the four home class teachers, we were able to squeeze in an extra session, so we tried to get on top of next week's Rap Point. Highlight of the session, though, was when the library telephone in the office started to ring. I hesitated about answering it, but it would have been annoying to let it keep ringing. I gave an audible sigh and raced off to answer the phone.

Still clustered around the brainstorm sheet, one little voice among the group of students chirped, "Don't worry, Mr McLean, we can handle this..."

Talking shop

I just arrived back home after a wonderful meal at Springwood's Orient Hotel. It was a staff dinner. Several non-teaching partners of the staff had that half-bemused expression as the teachers did what they do so well: talked shop about students, classes and teaching methods. No matter how earnestly we promise it won't happen, it always does...

The restaurant seems to have become become a staff favourite over recent years. Although there are several cosy nooks inside, we usually end up in the large front area, which is a transparent plastic-curtained area (with gas heaters on poles). The looooong table made conversations a bit restricted, so there was plenty of chair-hopping during the night.

When there are lots of us, there is a cheaper, limited choice menu available but, last night, we ordred from the regular a la carte selection. The lamb dish sounded very tempting, but I'd eaten lamb only last Wednesday, so I went for a well-recommended barbecued chicken fillet dish, which was scrumptious.

Oh, by the way, I've recently stumbled across the blog of Ian MacLean, a student of Dearborn, Michigan (not far from Ann Arbor, where my penpal, Olivia, lives) in the USA: The Chronicles of Ian. I absolutely love his blog's motto: "... where I'm Ian, and you're wrong."

A complaint free world

Our school was a sea of orange today, as we celebrated Harmony Day.

I felt a little at a lose end. My first library class didn't arrive for a lesson, because the Stage 1 students were doing rotating harmonious, orange activities. It was the first time in four consecutive Harmony Days that I haven't been up to my elbows in orange icing, Arnott's Arrowroot biscuits, and assorted lollies, to help the students make (and eat) "friendly face" bikkies. But I couldn't commit to an activity station because I had a Stage 2 class due at the halfway point. It was still fun to do a quick tour of all the (very orange) group activities.

Wearing an orange rabbit Beanie Baby around my neck, I was telling any of the teachers who queried my choice of mascot that I'd always wanted a hare on my chest.

Speaking of colours: over at radio station MIX 106.5 FM, they were discussing an innovative website from Christ Church Unity in Kansas, USA, which offers free rubbery purple bracelets to promote the concept of a complaint free world.

Essentially, you wear the bracelet but, when you catch yourself complaining, gossiping or criticising, you move the bracelet to the other arm and begin again. If you hear someone else who is wearing a bracelet complain, you may point out their need to switch the bracelet to the other arm, but... you have to switch your own bracelet first. After 21 complaint-free days you are supposed to find that "your entire life is happier, more loving, more positive and more abundant".

In typical Sammy Power style, MIX's morning announcer said, "I'm going to tell them that I don't like purple."

The longest title

Today I gave up an afternoon of my vacation to be part of committee for the Department of Education & Training's COGs (Connected Outcomes Groups) project. We are investigating the list of potential literary texts that will be included in the units of work being developed for teachers. Fascinating stuff - and a good way to prepare for, and ease into, the daily grind when school starts back next week!

As the meeting wasn't going to take up the whole day, I was able to organise morning tea and lunch with my wonderful colleagues still working at SCIS/Scan. It was rather nostalgic heading off for a peak hour train (in the rain, but who's complaining?), with a Star Trek novel to read on the long commute to Ryde. Just like old times...

I took the SCIS cataloguers something a bit unique; a children's anthology of short stories I found at Galaxy Bookshop a few months ago, with surely one of the longest titles ever:

Noisy outlaws, unfriendly blobs, and some other things that aren't scary, maybe, depending on how you feel about lost lands, stray cellphones, creatures from the sky, parents who disappear in Peru, a man named Lars Farf, and one other story we couldn't quite finish, so maybe you could help us out, edited by Ted Thompson with Eli Horowitz, with an introduction & almost half a story by Lemony Snicket (McSweeney's, 2005).

Sadly, it was already on the SCIS database. Beaten by New Zealand. Drat. (I hadn't actually noticed that it was a 2005 book, and the writing contest printed on the inside of the bizarre dustjacket had already expired.) Oh well, it was a fun thought.