There is so much information out there on the topic of "encouraging children to read". Due to the amount of information I have narrowed my research to early primary school children.
A lot of commercial websites do have good information but it is really distracting to see adds moving across the page. One website which I found useful was Kidspot which lists ways to encourage reading. Some of these are fairly basic which they acknowledge themselves but others are useful and practical.
There is also a lot of information on the "Premiers Reading Challenge for 2009" and this includes the Premier on You Tube talking about the challenge. There is a direct link through the Public Library website. I also found the media releases from the Premier and one which is focusing on Education Week which has just finished. In this media release the Premier talks about the new literacy brochure to help parents read to children.
I have found that subscribing to websites with an RSS feed is not as good. There is just too much information being sent and a lot of it is not relevant to the topic. I think you need to be really careful when you subscribe to make sure the website covers exactly what you need.
It is all starting to come together which is good. The new applications we have tried are not quite so daunting. I think I can say now after this subject that I have been using the internet the wrong way all these years.
So much to comment on in this post as you have raised soem really interesting issues. First of all I agree with you that this is a really popular topic and a good idea to limit it as you have done. Even with that limiter you wil probably find a lot of material and I guess that is why the RSS feeds have been too plentiful! As you say, it is a useful strategy with a broader topic to be carreful to subscribe so you do get what you want and not a lot of irrelevant info.
ReplyDeleteI am glad it is starting to come together but am sure you have been using the Internet just like all of us before Web 2.0, to find info rather than having info come to us. We have to make sure we get only the info we want (a bit like putting "no advertising material please on our letter boxes"!
Keep up the good work and best of luck for you new job in the primary school library. This research will be directly relevant.