Last Friday I organised my last Holiday Reading Function and yes it was tinged with sadness. Thank you to all staff who have supported this event and helped to nurture a reading culture on our campus. I have enjoyed these events over the last ten years and they have satisfied my love of reading and also my love of cooking!
This will be my last post and it is also tinged with sadness. The In The Know blog has been a labour of love and I am grateful that I started it five years ago as it has been a fantastic professional learning opportunity for me. I would highly recommend having your own digital PLN as it certainly keeps you inspired and informed.
We are in exciting times with regards to educational change and I will watch from a distance, with much interest, the moves Gippsland Grammar makes to ensure an education that embraces the future.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
STEM Initiatives
Last week I mentioned the "STEM for a Day" government initiative.This week there has been more exciting news for STEM Australia with Malcolm Turnbull releasing his 1.1 billion innovation package. The information below has come from Lindy Hathaway,an educator in the ACT.
Malcolm Turnbull's $1.1 billion innovation package (the Ideas Boom) was released on Monday at CSIRO in Canberra - "inspiring Australians to be innovative" and to take risks. The government will spend $84 million over the next 4 years "inspiring" Australians in digital literacy and STEM areas. This includes funding to upgrade teachers' digital skills, educational apps and $13 million to boost the participation of girls and women in STEM. The government will spend $51 million over five years targeting coding activity in schools including online computing challenges for Year 5 and 7 students, ICT summer schools for Years 9 and 10, an annual 'Cracking the Code' national competition for years 4 to 12 and support for teachers to increase IT-related activity in the classroom. This fits well with the Australian Curriculum Digital Technologies.
CSIRO and other science research projects will enjoy more funding and a renewed focus, businesses will get more support for innovation and universities will get increased funding for research. The Australian Synchroton (bright light beams for research) and the Square Kilometre Array (largest radio telescope) will get $800 million over 10 years.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-07/pm-malcolm-turnbull-unveils-$1-billion-innovation-program/7006952
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/here-comes-the-governments-innovation-statement-2015-12
Tech Girls Are Superheroes
The Tech Girls Are Superheroes campaign was started by the Tech Girls Movement (TGM) in 2014. Founded by Dr Jenine Beekhuyzen, TGM promotes positive female IT role models to encourage and raise awareness of STEM career options for girls. The free booklet Tech Girls Are Superheroes has 26 stories from talented women in IT, each with their own avatar. Available here:
http://www.techgirlsaresuperheroes.org/home/
The winners of the 2015 Search for the Next Tech Girl Superhero were announced last month. See their work here:
http://www.techgirlsmovement.org/news/2015/11/9/hp1cc4do6v7rnzq8jwvxpv6yy7c6q9
Entries are now open to all girls in years 4-12 for the 2016 Next Tech Girl Superhero. Students submit technology-based solutions for different challenges according to their year group eg. building body confidence, increasing cybersafety, reducing environmental impacts. Winners receive funding and mentoring for their idea. Entries close 1 July 2016. http://www.techgirlsmovement.org/superherosearch
Margareta Osborn Comes To Book Club
Last Friday was a special lunchtime for our Book Club members. Our special guest was local author and school parent Margareta Osborn. Margareta is a fifth generation farmer and lives in Glenmaggie. A successful writer, her stories revolve around country living and our Book Club members enjoyed hearing about her creative writing journey. They also enjoyed their pizza lunch and were excited to receive a copy of An Doh's " The happiest Refugee", their holiday Book Club novel.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Holiday Reading Function in the ISC
The ISC team invite you all to attend our Holiday Reading Function on Friday 4th December. It will start at 3:30 pm and drinks and nibbles will be supplied. Liz and Trevor from Collins Bookstore will also be making their regular "guest appearance" to tell us about the latest summer reads. We hope that you are able to come along and help us celebrate the end of the year. This function is a great opportunity to start unwinding and easing yourselves into holiday mode.
Day of Stem
Click on the image above to listen to the ABC podcast on Rick Geritz, CEO of Life Journey and advisor to Barack Obama on cyber education. He is in Australia to help promote Day of Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) This is a national initiative designed to enable every student in Australia to:
- Test drive their futures by self selecting from leading STEM organisations and living "the day in the life" of a stem leader.
- Be mentored by a guide to help set a path for a future in STEM
This is achieved by students participating in a self guided interactive career simulation experience that aims to motivate, inspire and introduce students to real life projects.
There are a number of organisations involved, including the Collingwood Football Club which involves students looking at sports analytics.
Schools, parents and students can all be involved. Click on the image below for more information
Anti Bullying Animated video
Daisy Chain is a great Australian 5 minute animated video created to support young children deal with bullying. It is narrated by Kate Winslet and has come about because the creator's own son was being bullied at school. He couldn't find any suitable books or videos and so initially created an app. He then went on to create this video which can be accessed via YouTube. For more information read the Guardian article.
DigiConf 2015
For those us who weren't able to attend the annual DLTV Conference held at Swinburne this year , here are three keynote presentations that you might find time to watch at some stage.
Hamish Curry - Game, Mindset, Match
Nathan Jones - iPad and Assessment
Mel Cashen, Laura Barker,Bec Spink- Digitech in the Classroom
ABC Splash Apps
You might like to check out ABC Splash's free educational apps for primary and secondary students that map to the Australian Curriculum. Click on the image above to access.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Luncheon For Champions
Another successful year is over for the Victorian Premier's Reading Challenge. This year 3,600 books were read by our Year 7 and 8's and 24 students were eligible to attend the Chinese Luncheon last Friday, having read over 50 books. Congratulations to Hannah Husodo and Isabelle Condron for reading 100 books each. What a great effort!
Open Education Resources Toolkit
An Open Educational Resources (OER) Toolkit for Teachers, Curriculum and elearning Developers has recently been developed. It support schools and teachers to understand and make use of OER to create curriculum resources. The Toolkit helps you to find and use OER and shows you how to go about licencing these resources for incorporation into new learning resources.
OER is a global movement. To touch base again about OER., they are teaching and learning resources that are freely available to anyone. They have licences ( think Creative Commons) that allow free access, use, adaptation and sharing.
Developing Emotional Intelligence
This is a very funny trailer of a film called "The Secret Life of Pets". It would be a great resource to show students when teaching them about self control!
Year 8 Paired Reading
Last week our Year 8 students had the opportunity to showcase their "Reading in Pairs" blogs to the rest of their class. They also reflected on their own learning and peer assessed in a respectful and constructive way. This is the fifth year that our Year 8's have used a blogging platform to analyse and reflect on their reading of a chosen novel. With reading being the central focus, over the past six weeks students have completed a variety of tasks including learning how to customise a blog, add posts and embed multimedia. It has been a satisfying project to be involved in and the blogging platform has certainly given our students interesting and challenging ways to demonstrate their understanding. Below are some examples.
Grace and Lily
Lucy and Dakoda
Simeon and Ben
Tom and Will
Grace and Keely
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Mindset Tedtalk: You Can Grow Your Brain Cells
Another Mindset video for your interest. In this fascinating TedTalk, Sandra Thuret, a neuroscientist, discusses research and practical advice on how we can help our brains grow. Our brains can create nerve cells and this is called neuro genesis. You probably already know that neuro genesis decreases when you lack sleep, have a poor diet or under too much stress. Luckily for all of us, learning increases neuro genesis. So does activity. So buy your self a fitbit and get moving!
Enhancing Online Safety
Enhancing Online Safety is the new website of the Australian Government- eSafety Commissioner. It replaces the ACMA CyberSmart website. It is an excellent website that I can highly recommend for teaching digital citizenship to our students. Like the ACMA site, it contains many resources for teachers and parents and lesson plans and videos are age appropriate. The "Games,Apps and Social Networking" page is particularly good with links to over 50 sites popular with students.
Quick guide to popular social media sites and apps from eSafety Office on Vimeo.
Team Building Games
Strategies To Help Students Thrive
Recently, the ISC has purchased the above book for our Teacher Reference collection. Written by well known teacher blogger, it looks at how teachers can create classroom conditions that motivate students. Larry Ferlazzo provides plenty of research based strategies on how you can help your students develop goals, grit, gratitude and a desire to transfer their skills to their life outside of school.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Science Of Learning
The Science of Learning is a new American publication from the Deans of Impact. It summarises latest cognitive science research related to how students learn and connects the research to implications in the classroom.
It identifies six key questions about learning:
- How do students understand ideas?
- How do students learn and retain new information?
- How do students solve problems?
- How does learning transfer to new situations?
- What motivates students to learn?
- What are some common misconceptions about how students think and learn?
This is an excellent and easy to follow resource that I highly recommend to all teachers. Click on the image above to access.
Using Videos to Reflect and Refine Teaching Practice
I have often included Teaching Channel videos in my blog and via Teaching Channel this week I have come across two great resources from Harvard 's Centre for Education Policy Research that inform learning using videos.
The first resource is called Video Observation Toolkit. It includes a range of materials to support teachers in using videos for professional learning. It is suggested that they can be used for
- self reflection
- peer collaboration
- evaluation and coaching
Keep these resources in mind for next year when you are thinking about your PLP's
Year 12 and Stress
This article was in the Canberra Times this week, reminding Year 12 students that there is life after Year 12 exams. A Sydney study of Year 12 students has recently revealed that gifted girls suffer more stress and that 42% of students suffered from high level anxiety. To read the article and watch the video clip from ReachOut.com, click on the image above.
The GoldenTriangle of Happiness
A loving partner, up to $100,000 of household income and a social activity that offers a sense of purpose is the new "golden triangle of happiness" according to Deakin University psychologist Professor Robert Cummins.
Deakin University Research has found that financial security, having a sense of purpose and good personal relationships were the key to happiness. Based on 29 Australian happiness surveys over the past 12 years, Professor Robert Cummins has revealed that to be happy it doesn't matter where you live ,if you are a white/blue collar worker or have children. Surprisingly the research also revealed our weight, health and happiness were usually unrelated. Also it was surprising to read that Tasmania was the happiest state.
To find out more click on the links below:
Deakin Survey Reveals Golden Triangle of Happiness
Golden Triangle of Happiness
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Media Consumer Survey 2015
This recently released fourth edition of Deloitte’s Media Consumer Survey provides a
snapshot of how Australians are consuming different media and
entertainment, using technology and devices, interacting with social networks
and responding to advertising.
The Deloitte’s survey also reports on how
attitudes and behaviours have changed over the past four years.
- Using the internet has joined TV as our preferred source of entertainment
- Time spent watching TV and video has increased to 17.2 hours per week.
- Low cost subscriptions across multiple forms of entertainment are increasingly popular ( video, music)
- Wearable technology is starting to trend. After only two years on the market, fitness bands are already at the same level of adoption as tablets were in 2012
- 80% use social media, up from 65% in 2012.
- The smartphone is our favourite device
- 17% read newspapers
- 15% listen to the radio
- 8% read magazines
- Click here to register for a copy of the Report
Social Implications of Social Media
With so many Australians using social media daily you do question the social ramifications of this behaviour. In the latest Media Consumer Survey mentioned in the post above, 51% survey respondents stated that time spent connecting with friends through social media was just as valuable as face to face time. I must be one of the 15% who still listens to the radio and last week I heard our Rev Rich Lanham speak to ABC Gippsland's Sian Gard about this very issue. His interview was part of "Mental As" week which has been the ABC's focus for the week. As you would expect, although he was agreeing that " internet friends " are important, he was recommending that individuals develop their own identity and personalities through real life relationships. It is here that they can practice and test their social skills and get a real feeling about their "place " in the world.
Psychologist Meredith Fuller is very pro social media connections, seeing many advantages of connecting online, considering most people's busy lives. To read more of what Meredith has to say, click on the image above.
TED Talks for Learning
Here are 5 TED Talks from some great big thinkers on how we can design for more engaging and meaningful learning experiences. I think most teachers would have already viewed Ken Robinson's "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" but the others might be new to you and are worth viewing. Click here to view.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is now available as an app for Android and iphones.
Using these apps you can:
Using these apps you can:
Learn anything —
for free: Over 4,000 educational videos and explanations at your fingertips
in math, science, economics, history, and much, much more.
Quickly find what you need:
Redesigned navigation and search make it faster to find what you want.
Keep learning even when
you’re offline: Bookmark your favorite content to “Your
List” for easy access, and download it to keep learning even when you’re not
connected to the internet.
Pick up where you left off:
Your learning syncs between your Android/iPhone and khanacademy.org, so your
progress is always up-to-date.
Click on the images above to install these apps.
Click on the images above to install these apps.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Magic: The Gathering Tournament
At the end of last term, as a strategy to increase student centred activities in the ISC, we sponsored the Magic: The Gathering card game Tournament. The tournament was entirely organised by Riley Jones and Adam Judd and was a four rounder between 15 students. Held during lunchtimes in the Discussion Room,it ran very smoothly and those involved were certainly competitive and passionate about this game. Competition winner was Cordell Vollemaere. Second place went to Riley Jones and third was Campbell Pike.Prizes were vouchers from Sale's game shop "Puzzled". The students involved are very keen to run more tournaments in the future.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Preparing Students for Their Future
In preparing our students for an increasingly global and competitive world, it is necessary that they develop learning skills that go beyond traditional academic skills. As well as having a strong skill set in information, media and technology, they will need to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, creative and innovative.
It was with much interest that I read in Education.hq about Frankston High's entrepreneurial course in Year 9. Having family living in the Mornington Peninsula, I have known for sometime that Frankston High is regarded as an esteemed high performing government school. Families are actually paying premium property prices to ensure their children have the right postcode to be enrolled. The principal is John Albiston, a fun loving guy I taught with at Sale High 30 years ago!
To access the article click on the image below.
Although this was published five years ago, the Future Work Skills 2020 Report is worth reading. This report from the University of Phoenix Research Institute looks at future work skills across different jobs and settings. It analyses drivers such as global connectivity and new media that are reshaping how we think about work and the skills students will need to be productive global citizens. Click on the image below to access the report.
Click on the image below to access the summary
It was with much interest that I read in Education.hq about Frankston High's entrepreneurial course in Year 9. Having family living in the Mornington Peninsula, I have known for sometime that Frankston High is regarded as an esteemed high performing government school. Families are actually paying premium property prices to ensure their children have the right postcode to be enrolled. The principal is John Albiston, a fun loving guy I taught with at Sale High 30 years ago!
To access the article click on the image below.
Although this was published five years ago, the Future Work Skills 2020 Report is worth reading. This report from the University of Phoenix Research Institute looks at future work skills across different jobs and settings. It analyses drivers such as global connectivity and new media that are reshaping how we think about work and the skills students will need to be productive global citizens. Click on the image below to access the report.
Click on the image below to access the summary
ABC Maths Competition
ABC Splash has a great competition happening at the moment. Students using a smartphone, notebook or video recorder explain a maths idea in 30 seconds. The best 3 entries will be animated by ABC designers and published as a resource on the ABC Splash website. Competition closes 7th November. Click on the image above for competition details.
AITSL
Last Monday was World Teachers' Day. Click on the image above to access AITSL's latest newsletter.
Inclusion Strategies to Help ASD Students Succeed
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Intellectual Humility
I was interested to read that Google named "intellectual humility" as one of its five essential qualities for hiring new employees. The executive in charge of hiring says "with out humility you are unable to learn
Humility Boosts Learning is a report from the John Templeton Foundation and ties in nicely with our Growth Mindset concept. Read about the report by clicking on the image below.
Intellectual Humility Boosts
John Hattie'e latest articles
You can always keep up to date with John Hattie's work on the Visible Learning website. You can also follow him on Twitter @Visible Learning. However, this week I have come across some new articles via Pearson's blog. We are currently committed to Pearson with our Year 7 - 10 Pearson Science textbooks and ebooks.
Click on the image below to read Hattie's post in the 16th June Pearson blog and click the two links below to read his most current articles.
You might also remember that some time ago I posted about renowned educationalist, Sir Michael Barber, giving the inaugural Australian Learning Lecture. See below for his thoughts on John Hattie.
Year 9's in Spineout online magazine
In May, our Year 9's enjoyed skyping American author Megan Miranda. Click on the image above to see our write up in the online magazine called Spineout which promotes reading and creative pursuits of students around Australia
Genrefying our Fiction Collection
Traditionally fiction is arranged by the author's surname from A -Z. Using a bookstore model, we will be arranging fiction alphabetically within genre sections. Genres will include aboriginal fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, historical fiction, dystopia, crime/mystery, sports fiction, family saga , romance, classics, humour, war and animal stories.
As readers we all have preferences and arranging books by genre provides a scaffold in the selection process. It will help students understand and articulate what they like to read and why and will give our ISC team the opportunities to discuss genres and further wide reading.
With Term 3 just about over, we are halfway through the genrefying process and so behind our hoped schedule to have the project completed by the end of the year. This is disappointing for me as I would have loved to have seen all the genres set up by the end of year but it is still great knowing that it is a "work in progress" and will happen in its entity next year.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Mindfulness Online Course
On the weekend, via Twitter, I was alerted to a free six week online mindfulness course from Monash University called Mindfulness for Well Being and Performance. It is hosted by well known experts Dr Craig Hassad from Monash University and Dr Richard Chambers.
Craig is a General Practitioner and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and has authored nine books including Mindful Learning with Dr Richard Chambers.
Dr Richard Chambers is a clinical psychologist specialising in mindfulness. He was involved in the development of the Smiling Mind smartphone app designed to make mindfulness accessible to more people.
The course starts on the 14th September and runs for six weeks and requires approximately two hours of your time each week
To register, click here
The course offers background information and practical strategies for bringing mindfulness into your personal and professional life.
I have enrolled in this course and look forward to learning about this important way of living. Hopefully it will help me get a better night's sleep!!
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Digital Games and Learning
Mindshift has just put out this excellent guide to digital games and learning. It provides:
- an overview of games in the classroom
- what the research says about gaming
- selection criteria for choosing games suitable for your classroom
- examples of how teachers are using games in their classrooms
The Science of reading on Screens
Click on the image above to read the interesting article about how reading on screen changes how
we read. Many researchers are saying that reading onscreen encourages non linear reading - basically skimming. I must admit I had to make a
conscious effort to read the article deeply and not skim! It is a basic summary of research done that focuses on reading on screens and includes the attitudes we bring, fatigue and our culture of technology use. It also includes information on the reading brain and how we learn to read and decode.
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