Virtual Canadian Parks

Wow, the virtual age is truly amazing. This morning I was in Quebec, Nunavut, and Haida Gwaii, exploring our National Parks.

Parks Canada has used Google Street Maps to create virtual tours of many of the beautiful National Parks our country has. So much can be brought to life through the screen of your computer, be it the geography and flora of the different areas of regions, or the visions of historically important places, such as the Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia.

There is so much potential to bring the material taught in your Socials classes to life through this national resource. More places are being added through their street view project. I encourage you to check this out. It is as close to being there as one could be without the travel and way better than staring at the pictures in a textbook.

April 7, 2020April 7, 2020rmcmahon Leave a comment

Want to Become a Shakespeare Buff?

Of course you do! Who doesn’t?

The Globe Theatre, the reconstruction of Shakepeare’ original Globe, is offering streaming plays for free beginning today. Hamlet, the play about the Danish prince, is available from April 6th for two weeks. Other plays follow on a two week rotation.

This is a huge opportunity to watch some of the best Shakepearean actors perform at the illustrious venue, for free. Shakespeare’s plays were always intended to be watched and taking this opportunity to see them “live” will certainly help viewers understand why the Bard occupies such an illustrious place in the English literary canon.

Stream them through the Globe Player, here: https://globeplayer.tv/

Also available through the Globe Player’s free content is Shakespeare Lives, a collection of short films that illustrate the creativity and adaptation that artists have taken some of Bill’s most famous plays. The Sonnet Project NYC, where New Yorkers have at reciting Shakespearean sonnets, and interviews with performers of the plays.

There seems to be plans to release some of their Globe to Globe productions, plays performed in other languages, for free, beginning with a Korean A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I will update with dates for those when I find out more. The itinerary of their streaming English language plays:

‘Hamlet’ (2018), April 6-19

‘Romeo & Juliet’ (2009), April 20-May 3

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (2013), May 4-17

‘The Winter’s Tale’ (2018), May 18-31

‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ (2018), June 1-14

‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ (2019), June 15-28

Interesting stuff all around for the Shakespeare buff or a student trying to figure out what all the fuss was all about.

April 6, 2020April 6, 2020rmcmahon Leave a comment

Something for Needling and Thread

Think Thrice About Your Clothes seeks to reduce waste by helping people to repair and extend the life of their clothes. The series of videos to care for and repair your clothes are short and easy to follow.

I think that clearing out my closet will eventually be part of the plan in the coming weeks, with self-isolation and spring cleaning. This site will give me something to do with that pile of clothes that has been pushed to the back.

April 6, 2020April 7, 2020rmcmahon Leave a comment

To Get You Through the First Bit

Taken from staff email of April 3rd:

I sincerely hope you are doing well and taking care of you and yours in these difficult times.

As you move forward in developing plans and activities for our students, I wanted to send a shout out and remind everyone that the Pinetree Library has an electronic presence to help with materials. We have been compiling and sorting through access to resources in order to provide them in a way that is useful and not overwhelming for you. I hope to have a shiny, new library web page to make access and information easier up and running soon (thanks DL team 😊).

You can still log into the Pinetree Library Catalogue to access ebooks and databases, as well as develop a Collection to share with your students. Everyone can access this from home using their district username and password. I can certainly help with this, please let me help with this.

You can also access our district resources through the SD43 Website. A library channel has been created on the Pinetree Teams and we are more than happy to field questions or offer what aid I can to support your search of materials to suit your needs. Please, please, please, make us do our jobs to make yours a bit easier. This learning curve is steep and everyone can use bit of help.

Links to any of the databases may ask for a username and/or password, which is: sd43u If this does not work, let me know and I will track down the cause. The best bet is to go through the links on our catalogue. The following is a list of some of the items that are provided by the district:

Secondary Level Resources

World Book Online – World Book’s selection page with links to all World Book databases we have access to.

Explora Search

Explora Canada – New interface to search EBSCO’s databases in one friendly screen.

Gale Engage Learning – Gale’s selection page with links to all databases we have access to.

KNOW BC – A major reference that brings together everything you always wanted to know about BC.

Web Library – Provides access to more than 85,000 trustworthy, relevant websites while filtering out questionable and irrelevant content.

Learn360 – Provides over 9,300 full digital video titles and over 28,500 video clips from A&E, National Geographic, Nelvana, Reading Rainbow, and National Science.

Curio.ca – Streaming access to the best in educational content from CBC and Radio-Canada.

EBSCO Host – EBSCO’s selection page with links to all databases we have access to.

Magazines – EBSCO – Browse through hundreds of magazines & periodicals

National Film Board – Award-winning online Screening Room, featuring over 3,000 productions.

Topic Finder – Find new topics or keywords and discover new connections.

Canadian Encyclopedia – Provides updated information about our people and country

Don’t forget, the public libraries are allowing for library card applications to be filled out online and accessing their collections too. They have vast collections of ebooks and online resources, such as Lynda.com and Hoopla.