Thursday 3rd December 2015
DinoTot is a free search service for children, powered by Google safe search.
DinoTot search results are kids-oriented. Sites that present information in an easy, simple way are placed on the top of the search results. Sites that are made specifically for kids get a special ranking boost.
Search results appear in large Arial font and come with big thumbnails to help children read, differentiate between the results and choose the most appropriate sites.
Tuesday 1st December 2015
Learn how to use Google Classroom to provide an online classroom environment that you can ‘blend’ with regular class activities.
Classroom is available free for schools using Google Apps for Education, and is integrated with your Google Drive.
Students and staff can access Google Classroom from any computer or iPad (or other tablet) at school or at home, fitting neatly with the needs of schools that have moved to a BYOT model.
Wednesday 25th November 2015
A five-year pilot study by a team of Southern Cross University researchers has identified four elements critical to creating an ‘outstanding’ school.
The results of the study have been published in a book titled ‘Creating the Outstanding School’, authored by Professor David Lynch, Jake Madden and Tina Doe.
Professor Lynch said governments across the globe were calling on schools to improve the teaching and learning performance of their schools.
“Socio-economic success in a technologically based global world is requiring all citizens to have high standards of education,” Professor Lynch said.
“The challenge for school principals, who are charged with implementing such school reform agendas, is making pragmatic sense of the enormous volumes of largely disparate education research being conducted around the world.”
The pilot study, conducted under the leadership of Professor Lynch, was undertaken at a Coffs Harbour primary school. The first challenge for the research team was to define what was meant by ‘outstanding’ school.
Professor Lynch discussed the study – how to define an outstanding school, and how to create an outstanding school – in this interview on the ABC:
Monday 16th November 2015
Is your school planning for the introduction of BYOT (or BYOD)?
The first item on the checklist of many schools planning for the use of students’ and teachers’ own technologies on the school network is ‘what are the minimum specifications of permitted BYO devices?’
In fact, experience in schools where BYOT has been a success suggests that this consideration should be towards the latter end of your BYOT checklist.
What are the most important considerations when planning for BYOT? >>>
Tuesday 10th November 2015
If you share a lot of docs and files in your Google Drive, keeping up with who is editing which files can be a headache.
Rather than setting up notifications on every document you share, you can be notified if any document in a particular (shared) folder is being edited. Although this functionality is not yet built into Google Apps, there is a Chrome extension that will do the job.
Install the extension, select the folder you want to keep track of, and you will receive an email every time a file contained in the shared folder is edited, or if a new file is added to the folder. (Might come in handy for students submitting / editing assignments, etc)
The Gooru video below provides the details….
wazmac is on leave – no news updates will be published during September and October 2015.
Thursday 3rd September 2015
Google has announced a swag of enhancements for Google Apps, just in time for the new school year in the US.
New features have been added across Docs, Sheets, Forms, and Classroom.
Wednesday 2nd September 2015
Google is applying a makeover to its logo and identity, acknowledging the community’s move to an online world centred on mobile devices.
In one of it’s biggest design changes since 1999, the company’s new banner uses a cleaner sans-serif typeface, while retaining the four colours (albeit in slightly different shades) of red, yellow, green and blue for the name Google.
The makeover will apply to all the company’s branded products, the intention being to make it easier to identify the tech giant on the smallest of screens.
Thursday 27th August 2015
Schools are moving from an ICT deployment model where desktop computers were located in secure computer rooms, to a model embracing the widespread use of mobile devices – available when and where they are required to support learning activities.
Where is your school on this transition continuum?
Tuesday 25th August 2015
Google Classroom continues to evolve, with some often-requested new features launched for the new school year in the northern hemisphere.
New features include:
Monday 24th August 2015
How private is your staff and students’ data when it is stored with a commercial cloud provider?
Will students and teachers be targeted with advertising, based on the content of their emails and documents stored in the cloud?
Who owns ‘your’ data, once it is stored on a remote server, possibly in another country? Can you retrieve your data when moving to another provider?
Wednesday 12th August 2015
Are staff at your school embracing new Cloud technologies?
Think3’s Scott Barnham will be presenting a one-day hands-on workshop on Google Apps for Education at Port Kembla PS on Thursday 20th August, at Port Kembla PS.
These workshops are always popular, and are a great opportunity for all school staff to keep up to date with the latest tools to support their role as both educators and administrators.
Monday 10th August 2015
At Ravenswood School for Girls the playgrounds are full of girls who are not texting or even updating their social media status. A large group of year 10 girls are shrieking with delight over a skipping game where at least 12 jumped together. A group of year 11 students try a new version of Twister. Other girls play the old-fashioned game of totem tennis.
It’s part of a program called Look Up Lunchtime, devised by Kate Barbat, a teacher of personal development, health and physical education.
When Kate was on playground duty she’d noticed “so many girls were sitting in a circle, on their phones and not connecting”.
So she did something about it.
Wednesday 5th August 2015
The first item on the checklist of many schools planning for the introduction of BYOT is ‘what type of devices do students need’?
In fact, experience in schools where BYOT has been a success suggests that this consideration should be towards the latter end of your BYOT checklist.
Device specifications are not the most important consideration when planning for BYOT / BYOD in schools…..
Monday 3rd August 2015
A class website can be used as a gateway to online resources to support class activities.
Check out some examples and read the step-by-step guides to making a free website for your class.
It takes less than 15 minutes to create a web site that not only looks very professional, but will also play a key role in ‘normalising’ the use of online resources in your classroom.
Tuesday 28th July 2015
When considering ICT services, schools are rapidly transitioning from being providers of desktop PCs for students and teachers, to being providers of network and Internet services over which students and teachers interact with their own technologies.
No longer do schools need to maintain on-site file servers or expensive software licensing contracts – this is now mostly available through online services. Often for no cost.
Students and teachers can access their data and collaborate with their colleagues anywhere, anytime, on any device.
This is the new model of ICT provision in K-12 education.
Is your school making the transition to the new era?
Your school budget expenditure over the past 15 years provides a good indicator of your progress along the transition continuum.
Monday 27th July 2015
In the post-PC era, schools are striving to build collaborative learning environments supplemented by BYOT programs, using online tools such as Google Apps for Education, Weebly, YouTube and a myriad of other ‘cloud’ options.
There is one component common to all these tools that is vital to the success of the technology supporting the curriculum – reliable high speed Internet access.
The governing Council of schools in Monmouthshire (Wales) has recognised this basic need, and has allocated a budget to significantly improve Internet access in their schools.
The new funding will boost schools’ broadband Internet connections to 100MB for primary schools and 1GB for secondary schools.
Thursday 23rd July 2015
‘ICT in the curriculum’ is not the same as ‘learning about computers’.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can become an engaging tool to support the learning environment.
Is your school developing school management and planning structures that foster the exploration of new and emerging technologies, to support and enrich classroom learning activities?
Our goal is to ‘normalise’ technology use in the school – for technology use to become ‘transparent’.
Wednesday 22nd July 2015
Using this new Google Drive plug-in, people using Microsoft Office for Windows can now open their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents stored in Drive, then save any changes back to Drive once they’re done. (Windows only)
Tuesday 21st July 2015
A few years ago I walked into a classroom with a local District IT manager.
The class of 9 and 10 year olds were working in groups, all engrossed in producing videos about their chosen topics. Some groups were constructing stop-motion videos, others were outside the classroom conducting hard-hitting interviews with staff. Other students were off in the school workshop constructing items to use in their ‘sets’.
Every student was totally engaged in their activity, and the learning process.
As we left the school, the IT manager (who was ultimately responsible for deciding what technologies were made available to local schools) rolled his eyes, and expressed the kind of thoughts that I have heard all too often from non-teaching staff who support schools – “What a complete waste of time that is – how many of those kids will ever work in the film industry?”
This is the same person who was managing a group of office-bound technicians busily rolling out Microsoft Office to the computers used by these same 10 year olds so that they could “learn to use the tools they will need when they leave school”.
Technology is a tool, not a learning outcome. Bill Ferriter’s poster articulates the issue perfectly.
Thursday 16th July 2015
When schools begin their journey down the BYOT path – leveraging students’ own technologies to support the curriculum – much planning time is often focussed on which device (or devices) will be acceptable, how these devices will connect to the school network, how apps will be controlled, and other ‘technical’ hardware and software support issues. (Not to mention policy development and community engagement.)
While all of this discussion and planning is relevant, it is not the most important ingredient in a successful BYOT model.
How students’ devices are used in the classroom, and the easy availability of relevant online content, is the key factor in a successful BYOT model.
The pedagogy is more important than the technology.
Wednesday 15th July 2015
The recent tidal wave of critical vulnerabilities in Adobe’s Flash Player has prompted many security professionals to call for the much-maligned software’s demise.
Flash has been particularly popular for use on animated web sites used by K-12 schools.
Adobe has patched more than twenty Flash vulnerabilities in the last week — some of them days after active exploits were discovered — and issued over a dozen Flash Player security advisories since the beginning of this year.
Flash has become such an information security nightmare that Facebook’s Chief Security Officer called on Adobe to sunset the platform as soon as possible and ask browser vendors to forcibly kill it off.
Now even OS X commentators are calling for it’s removal. Fortunately there are alternatives.
Does your school really need Flash anymore?
[Update]: Mozilla has blocked Flash in Firefox >>>Tuesday 14th July 2015
Box have announced that you can now create a Word doc, PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet, directly from your online Box account (no Microsoft account required)…..
Monday 13th July 2015
If you have previously used Doctopus and Goobric (to assess assignments with your pre-made rubrics), you will love the work that the gurus have put in to integrate these tools with Google Classroom.
Great overview video from Jennie Magiera…
Thursday 25th June 2015
If your school is planning to move to a BYOT model, this information may be useful in developing program resources, infrastructure and policy.
The first thing to understand is that setting device specifications is not the most important factor for success!
Monday 22nd June 2015
A third grade class where kids spend 75% of the day on iPads? Is this the future of education?
When the 24 third-graders in Morgan Mercaldi’s class arrive at the Jackson Avenue School every morning, they take their iPads out of their backpacks and put them on their desks. The tablets will remain there, or in hands and laps, until the children put them in their packs to take them home.
Last year Mercaldi had her students stash the iPads away when they weren’t using them. But she has abandoned that. “Putting them away serves no purpose. We use them constantly,” Mercaldi says.
Friday 19th June 2015
Google is continually updating and adding new features to their various apps.
Some major updates have appeared recently in Sheets, adding new functionality to nearly every aspect of Sheets from chart creation to data display, and collaboration.
Tuesday 16th June
A sound ICT infrastructure is an essential foundation of a successful modern learning environment.
To be successful in supporting the curriculum, school ICT infrastructure development and implementation (computers, mobile devices, the network cabling, wireless access points, etc) must be considered in conjunction with, and in response to, the needs of the school learning environment.
Is your school’s ICT infrastructure designed to support a dynamic learning environment, or a corporate office?
Tuesday 9th June 2015
Using new technologies, students are able to share their knowledge in a variety of modes and media.
How do teachers grade assignments and projects that have been created using a variety of media?
We’ve all been there at some point or another…
Everyday, we make choices that affect our privacy and security online.
Google has setup a new site where you can check (and control) access to your personal information that is stored with Google.
Checking this information might also be a useful professional development activity for teachers.