We Link

Education Services Australia has just launched We Link - a site that enables teachers of Asian  languages to connect with their colleagues across Australia.A great professional learning tool for our Asian Language teachers.

Scootle, which was also developed by Education Services Australia has now doubled its digital content since its launch in 2010.It now provides access to over 20,000 digital resource,including inteactives,videos and units of work which are aligned to the Australian Curriculum. It is a fantastic resource to use when curriulum planning.If you have  not registered with Scootle yet  or have forgotten your password, just email me and I will send you the registration details.

10 Reasons to try 20% Time in the Classroom

Today I was reading  Coby Beatson's article in the latest Teacher Learning Network  Journal called "Connecting with Inquiry".Coby is an advocate of Inquiry based learning and believes that it allows a classroom to cater for all students. A well constructed Inquiry  gives students ownership of their learning, focussing  on skills such as how to question,categorise,analyse and intrepret. Although she is of the opinion that our current emphasis on teaching content needs to shift to teaching skills, she has  adopted a "Singapore time fraction" approach  - 80% spent on covering the curriculum and 20% spent on letting students discover anything they wanted to know about the topic they were studying.I must admit I hadn't heard of this approach. Funnily enough I came across this  article from Edudemic later in the day called 10 Reasons To Try 20% Time In The Classroom. Now that is a co-incidence!

For more information, read Coby Beatson's article in the latest TLN.Copies are in the staffroom

Flipping Out on the Flipped Classroom

Some more information about the flipped classroom! Our  teachers who are investigating "The Flipped Classroom" and putting it into practice for their PLP 's will appreciate USA's teacher librarian Joyce Valenza's playlist of over 30 relevant resources. Use the green arrow on the right to scroll through the various reources on offer.

Create your own Playlist on MentorMob!

Although I have already posted about TED - ED:Lessons Worth Sharing in the past,its worth recommending again as the site features excellent educational videos which can be "flipped" to create customised lessons centred on the video.Click on the link to see the section on Flipped Classrooms
 

Cap That!

Have you heard of  the Cap That! website?It is an initiative of Media Access Australia and is in its third year.It encourages teachers to turn on captions when showing videos as a tool to improving literacy and learning for all students.Traditionally, captions were thought to be for people with hearing difficulties but recent research supports the use to improve students' listening and reading comprehension,vocab acquisition and information recall.Go to the website to find out how to turn captions on and find captioned multimedia  resources that are linked to the Australian Curriculum.

Explaining Social Media Visually

Students should enjoy this  well constructed  visual explanation of Social Media!

Can ereaders Encourage Reading?

Last term I reported on the enthusiasm of our students,both girls and boys, who were involved in using ereaders  in their  Year 7 Literature Circles program. I therefore found the results from a recent American study quite interesting.Although the study is in its early stages the results so far reveal  that middle school boys rate reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an ereader, whereas girls valued reading less.That certainly was not an observation of mine.Both genders seemed to be equally "into" the experience.For more details about the study click on this link
For some  tips to encourage the reluctant reader  click on Enticing The Reluctant Reader

eReaders in Literature Circles

One of our strategies this year to further promote a reading culture at our campus, was to trial the use of ereaders in our Year 7 Literature Circles Program.The chosen group for this trial is "over the moon" and it has been fantastic to hear their comments like "this is so cool","I seem to be reading quicker".Students have enjoyed  using the dictionary  and highlighting function on the ereaders and flicking back and forward to various pages. Discussions have also been lively and in this instance technology seems to have brought the passion back in reading!