The Story Home is a story based website designed for children featuring the reading of well known children's books by Alan Scofield. The site, created by Alan and Sharon Scofield, claims to strive to provide original and classic children's audio stories, to delight and inspire children and their families, throughout the world." (About The Story Home 2014). 

Alan Scofield himself is an author as well as the founding director of Youth Imaginations Arts Education Agency.

We can see that the story telling podcasts are from an up-to-date website as it was last updated this year (2014). Podcasts are able to be listened to on the site but also purchased through the reputable method of PayPal. The Story Home can also be contacted through its contacts link. 

Teaching Literacy in the Primary Years is a blog created by primary school teacher of eleven years from the Geelong area named Kelly Jordan. Kelly Jordan's blog features links to literacy based interactive programs for children and updates on her own fourth grade class which she is teaching in 2014. The blog is set out well and all information is easily accessible.

Elmo was spotted in downtown Melbourne brushing up on his trumpet skills

Podcast

A man with dulcet tones and brilliant intellect and a knack of conveying high brow themes and subjects to the common man, woman, and not so young child. In this episode of series 2 of his Podgram show, Stephen Fry explores the topic of language in his peculiar yet rational way.

For someone such as myself - who doesn't listen to much radio - I find it difficult to fully grasp and maintain focus on what is being discussed in podcasts without the aid of any visuals. I find that 'going back' and re-listening to parts of a podcast tends to destroy the flow and momentum of the broadcast. Yet I can quite easily flick back a page or two of a book for the purposes of plot affirmation or purely for pleasure without having 'the moment' tarnished too much. This is probably also the reason that I have been reluctant to jump onto audio-books. However there is much delight to be drawn from hearing Stephen Fry discuss a topic he is clearly passionate about and knowledgeable on.

A great accompaniment to this podcast is Stephen Fry's book and television series entitled Planet Word.

Stephen Fry's Podgrams - SE.2 EP.3 Language

The Smith Family - Tech Packs Australian charity, The Smith Family, provide Tech Packs which are internet ready computers to disadvantaged families that would otherwise not be able to afford such items. The Tech Pack comes with a days training and 12 months of free internet access.

Reading Kingdom (youtube video)

Reading Kingdom (youtube video) - The Reading Kingdom is an online program designed to teach children, aged 4-10, the skills of reading and writing. Reading Kingdom was founded by Dr. Marion Blank and her son, Jonathan Blank, is the flagship product of Mojo Learning Inc., who are based in Las Vegas, Nevada. On the Reading Kingdom homepage we see several recommendations and glowing reviews of the Reading Kingdom program by highly qualified individuals such as university teachers which gives it a degree of authority. One major issue for UK and Australian libraries with anything to do with spelling is that the US spells certain words differently to the UK and Australia. So although as adults most of us can discern between English and US spelling it may become a hard habit to break for any child learning any US variations of words. It does depend of course whether you care if your child uses 'ise' or 'ize' as these days it seems to not matter. I personally prefer to use the UK spelling but this may be a generational trait. 

How to Photocopy

How to Photocopy (trial version) - Dean (loosely) demonstrates how to photocopy in this trial version.

How to Photocopy (extensive version) - Dean shows us how to photocopy in this more extensive demo.