Term One in the ISC

Well, it is the end of a very busy term for the ISC with the following programs having occurred:

• All Year 7's, new students and new staff have been involved in orientation sessions to help familiarise them with programs,facilities and services provided by the ISC.


• All Year 7's have completed their 5 week "Literature Circles " wide reading program.


• 7B and 7D have been introduced to information literarcy skills during their enquiry tasks on Ancient Egypt
• All Year 9's have been introduced to new online databases on the ISC VLA.


• The ongoing 2011 Victorian Premier's Reading Challenge for Year 7's and Year 8's was launched.

The ISC has been a hub of activity with many classes booked in for research during the term,notably Lucas McGauran's Year 8 Geography classes.There has also been an increase of VCE students using the ISC for private study and the ISC is definitely the "lounge room" at lunchtimes.It is satisfying to see the ISC being used for a range of activities.

Australian Bureau of Statistics

I'm sure you have checked out the Australian Bureau of Statistics website at some time but it is worth revisiting as it has been recently revamped and contains a wealth of information.It is now alot easier to navigate and the Education section is fantastic. It includes:

• Classroom activities and online publications that provide useful information for maths,economics,commerce,geography,history,p.e., health and the environment.


• Online games that assist with statistical understanding,including a suite of learning tools designed to help teachers introduce statistical concepts in the classroom.


• Online video tutorials


• Indigenous statistics

The "Topics at a Glance" section is also worth visiting.

Japan's Disaster

Concerned citizens from around the world have been uploading Slideshare presentations with data and photos to communicate the devastation that the earthquake and tsunami have created.The Slideshare blog has many presentaions from the scientific and economic community which will be of interest to geography/environmental science teachers or those of us who just want to keep up with unfolding events.

Slideshare is a very useful Web2.0 presentation tool that allows you to share presentations.Once a class account has been registered on Slideshare it is possible to show student powerpoint presentations online.
Not only can you create presentations to share on Slideshare you can also search for presentations that you might want to use yourself.You might have noticed that I have embedded many Slideshare presentations that I have not created myself into my own blog posts.I love this "sharing aspect" of Web2.0 tools which gives you so many quality resources at your fingertips.They also make your blog so much more interesting and informative.

Online VCE Support

Over the last few weeks I have come across two online learning tools created to support VCE students outside of their own classroom. The first is Merspi, a free Web2.0 Question and Answer social networking site for the VCE community.Using Merspi, a student can interact with a VCE community beyond their school - posing their own questions,using existing answers as a resource for their own study and answering questions of others.Tagging of questions enables users to locate all previous questions and answers about an area of study. Responses are also moderated and registered members can become moderators according to the reputation they have built through the level and quality of their responses.There are many teachers who have become contributing members of the Merspi community.Futurist Mark Pesce said this about it

I visited Merspi intending to have a quick look and I stayed for an hour. Merspi has the hallmarks of a true socially-networked community-encouraging the sharing instinct and rewarding valued responses

The second support tool is for VCE biology students.Northern Victorian teacher Andrew Douch has created a series of podcasts for various topics.They can be downloaded/subscribed to free through iTunes or go to http://biologyoracle.podomatic.com/

Google Art Project

Last week in the Age's "Greenguide" I read about the recently launched Google Art Project. It is a fascinating resource for both art lovers and students. It features over a 1000 famous artworks online in extraordinary detail and the virtual walkthrough tool enables users to navigate more than 385 rooms in the galleries. Seventeen galleries are currently involved,including MoMA in NY,State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg,Uffizi in Florence and the Tate in London.More galleries will come on board in coming months and there are Australian galleries expressing interest. There is also a digital art tool that offers a "Create an Artwork Collection",allowing people to save specific views and build their own personalised collection that can be shared. In the first week that the Google Art Project was launched,70,000 collections were created from more than 10 million visits to the site.I find that just gobsmacking!