Just for fun

From the Just for fun section of the latest ezine ....

http://digicc.com/fido/

Ok so what is the formula?

Develop or Upgrade your Classroom Library

Make a classroom library a focal point in your classroom, and partition the area in some way from the rest of the room.The space should be large enough to accommodate five or six students in a comfortable manner. How do you make the space comfortable?

Read on ...

Tags: library , Teachers

Primary School Competition Celebrate Australia Day 2007

Upper Primary students are now invited to participate in the national competition to celebrate Australia Day 2007 for the chance to win a digital camera for themselves or their school.

The theme is: An Australian Day: A day in the life of my community.

Students are asked to explore all the great things in their local community and to use these to capture what they celebrate about being Australian.

Students can use images and words to create a visual essay that captures "a day in the life of" their community and expresses what they value and celebrate on Australia Day.

More details...

Teacher joins exodus for better pay

[In August,] Australia lost another of our youngest and brightest teachers to the British education system.

Luke Hall, 23, a maths and science teacher from country Victoria, hopped on a jet for a new life working in London.

His departure and that of thousands of other teachers each year has led to calls by Labor backbencher Craig Emerson for a model that would allow all state school principals to pay teachers more money for good performance instead of seniority. Read on ...

Tag: teachers

Assembly prayers illegal, schools to be told

Reported in August ...

State schools will soon receive a new set of guidelines on religion, including a warning that prayers or Christian karakia in primary schools are illegal in most circumstances. Read on ...

Tags: schools

Learn genetics

From the Genetic Science Learning Centre

“Helping people understand how genetics affects their lives and society”

Includes Resources for teachers

Visit Learn Genetics

Tag: genetics, teachers

Two years' preschool for all, pay rises for staff urged

Found this clipping recently ...

A NATIONAL preschool system that gives children at least two years' education before they start school is the ideal child-care system, says a paper to be released today by 21 social policy researchers.

Read on ...

tags: preschool, teachers

Teachers sell lesson plans online

eBay for educators' helps teachers turn their hard work into extra cash

From eSchool news

A new web site launched in April, teacherspayteachers.com, aims to do for teachers what eBay has done for the masses: It gives teachers a far-reaching platform for selling their lesson plans to other interested educators. Buyers say the site helps them quickly find relevant content that can be adapted for their classrooms; sellers say it allows them to earn some extra money for their work.
Read on …

Tag: teachers

Reading, Writing and Google

Check this out ...

The Literacy Project, launched with United Nations, to cull teaching tools like, perhaps, Hooked on Phonics.

Google unveiled on Wednesday a Web site dedicated to literacy, pulling together its book, video, map and blog services to help teachers and educational organizations share reading resources.

The site was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's largest gathering of publishing executives, in conjunction with the United Nations and a literacy campaign organized by fair officials.

Continues ...

Tags: Literacy, Google

Digital Classroom Resources

The Digital Classroom Resources (DCR) provides a select collection of free online learning materials which are available through the site. These materials have been classroom tested and peer reviewed. Many items in the library are posted with editorial reviews and a link to a moderated discussion group focused on the materials. Visit the site …

tag: Teachers

USING WIKIS IN SCHOOLS: A CASE STUDY

By Lyndsay Grant, Learning Researcher, Futurelab

IntroductionWikis have been heralded as one of a number of new and powerful forms of software capable of supporting a range of collaborative ventures and learning activities. This paper addresses the potential uses of wikis - online editable websites - as learning tools in schools. It places wikis in the context of current relevant literature about collaborative learning, summarising major theories of learning in communities and knowledge-building in networked groups. It also looks briefly at the trends in the wider area of 'social software', of which wikis are just one example. Using wikis in school is explored further through a short-term 'case study' in a UK secondary school. The literature and research background is used to analyse some of the emerging issues surrounding using wikis in the classroom highlighted through this case study. This paper looks both at the affordances of the technology itself and the wider context of the classroom, and offers some provisional conclusions about the potential of using wikis to support collaborative learning in schools.

Read on …

Tag: wikis