Author: Nick

Learning Design Part 2

Published by Nick

The information below is taken from the Leaders Resource – Getting Started developed by the Teaching and Learning Services team DECD.

Below is a video which takes teachers through the process of using Learning Design. The example uses a Year 4/5 history class to demonstrate the process. The video is obviously designed to promote the Australian Curriculum/Learning Design but does take you through the six stages of the process which is useful if you would like to develop a stronger understanding of Learning Design.

If you would like to view the resource that this video is from (or just view this video in better quality) please go to the links section in the side bar of this blog and click on “DECD Australian Curriculum Leaders Resource.”

To view a larger version click on the YouTube button in the bottom right corner of the video. This video was created by DECD Teaching and Learning Services.

NAPLAN Testing

Published by Nick

Found this interesting interview!

“Dr Justin Coulson is a parenting psychologist and expert in happiness from the University of Wollongong and he’s adamant his children won’t be doing the NAPLAN tests. Dr Coulson explained his reasoning to Afternoons presenter Kelly Higgins-Devine.”

As well as Dr. Justin Coulson view a number of parents ring up and give there views.

Click here to visit the ‘612 ABC Brisbane’ website and play the interview.

Australian Curriculum Senior Secondary

Published by Nick

Consultation is now open for the Australian Curriculum at a senior level for English, maths, science and history. Their are 14 separate subjects under these main subject headings. To access these draft curriculum’s you need to register on the ACARA site – if you are not registered you can do it when you go to the links below (will take 3 minutes). Even if you don’t want to provide feedback you may want to have a look at how the Australian Curriculum compares with our current SACE courses.

To access the ACARA Senior Secondary Australian Curriculum click here. If you would like to go directly to a subject page click on the relevant subject below (remember if you have not registered you will need to do so when you get to the page).

English

Responsible use of Social Media

Published by Nick

The use of social media is wide spread and regardless of what we personally think of this medium it is here to stay and is the way that a large portion of the worlds population communicates. This includes our students. If our students are on Facebook then we should educate them about Facebook, if our students use mobile phones then we should educate them about the use of mobile phones. I use Facebook and mobile phones as examples because I would be surprised if their were more popular mediums among teenagers (and younger) for sharing comments and images.

When it all goes wrong and an image is posted which shames or embarrasses others or themselves our reactions as adults can be very condemning, “Why would you do that?” “Didn’t you realise the consequences?” I think it can be easy to sit back and think that the last couple of generations of kids are Internet savvy and automatically know what to do when using social networks because they have grown up with it. I also think this is an incorrect assumption. As parents and teachers we need to guide kids on how to use social media responsibly. Below are a couple of resources which could help teachers to do this. Do you have students in your class on Facebook and using mobile phones? If the answer is yes how do you help them use these tools responsibly?

I have collected a couple of resources for teaching digital literacy and citizenship and created links to them below.

The poster below is not easily readable in this post but you should get the idea. It would be a great starting point for discussion with students who post images and comments online. Common Sense Media – Digital Citizenship poster quality version – (click here to go to their site for a downloadable version of the poster).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Common Sense media digital literacy and citizenship curriculum K-5

Common Sense media digital literacy and citizenship curriculum 6-8

Common Sense media digital literacy and citizenship curriculum 9-12

Learning Design Part 1

Published by Nick

My intention is to present a series of posts on the topic/process of Learning Design. Hopefully these posts will give you an understanding of the process. The resource for these posts will be the Australian Curriculum Leaders Resource ‘Getting Started’ DVD (developed by DECD Learning Services). This resource provides information including Power Points and short video on 4 areas – 1. Australian Curriculum 2. TfEL 3. Learning Design and 4. Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s). The Australian Curriculum Leaders Resource can be accessed online by clicking here or see Nick for the DVD if you are interested in looking at these topics in more depth.

Rather than try and spend large chunks of time in meetings going through Learning Design I thought it might be useful to do small snippets from the DVD over a period of time to introduce Learning Design to teaching staff.

Learning Design is the term used for combining the ‘What’(Australian Curriculum) and the ‘How’ (TfEL) in a way that will assist teachers with their programing and assessing of student learning. Learning Design encompasses the following (click on the diagram below to enlarge it and view it clearly).

 

 

 

Teachers – Productivity Commission Report

Published by Nick

I thought staff might be interested in this report by the Productivity Commission into Australia’s school workforce. Some points from the article:

“It recommended governments use a program to give principals more autonomy to trial pay incentives to attract teachers.” – for rural and hard to fill positions.

“The report also criticised efforts to reduce class sizes over the past 50 years as “a costly policy that has not translated into a commensurate improvement in overall student outcomes.”.

“The commission also said principals should be given the power to discipline or fire underperforming teachers.”

“It said efforts to improve teacher quality should not focus on the payment of bonuses.”

Click here to read the full article.

Parent Review R-6 Reports

Published by Nick

I have started to put together a process for discussing R-6 reports with the parent group. I would really like feedback from R-6 staff and leadership. By no means is this a final copy. Any feedback would be appreciated either through the comments or come and see me face to face.

Some formatting lost and writing looks average. This is just due to uploading the power point to Slideshare so please ignore this.

R 6 reporting parent review

View more PowerPoint from 13nick

Differentiation For High Ability Learners

Published by Nick

I have not had a good look through this site but what I have seen looks useful. If you are looking for information and resources around differentiation then this site offers a range of information on the topic. There is also a link to this site on the Pedagogy page under Domain 4.

Click here to go to ‘Differentiation For High Ability Learners’.

A new way to look at the world

Published by Nick

Here is an interesting web site that allows you to look at the world through an interactive tool that increases or decreases the physical size of a country depending on the topic chosen. There are 5 main headings – People, Planet, Business, Politics and Living. There are 106 topics of comparision under these main headings. Click on a topic and watch the countries grow or shrink depending on how that topic impacts on that country i.e click on ‘population’ and watch India and China grow and Australia shrink. Run your cursor over the countries to get limited data like country name and percentages. The site also offers the same format for the US and Japan. A link to this site can also be found on the ‘Curriculum’ page under ‘Geography’.

To visit SHOW World click here.