Friday 8th August 2014 From it’s first public ‘release’ in the early 90s, ‘the Internet’ has grown from a geeky hangout for super-nerds to an essential part of the average person’s everyday life. With this widespread adoption around the globe, have you ever wondered what happens in just a single second, every second, on the Internet? Find out >>>
What is meta data?
Thursday 7th August 2014 With all the discussion today about Government plans to legislate for ISPs to store your online ‘meta data’ for two years, should you be worried? What is metadata? Should you be concerned that it’s going to be retained for law-enforcement purposes if legislation is passed in Parliament? Is it true it can be accessed now without a warrant? … Read More
Stop Motion in the Classroom
Tuesday 5th August 2014 Stephanie Castle, an Australian teacher, has posted some ideas about using Stop Motion Studio on iPads with her high school students. Stop Motion Studio is available in the App Store >>>
School Web Sites
Monday 4th August 2014 A school web site is often the first contact that a prospective enrolment’s parent may have with your school. Your school web site can also become a place for sharing resources and information with the school community. What does your school’s web site say about your school? Does your school’s site convey a sense of a … Read More
Solutions for the cross-platform classroom
Thursday 24th July 2014 The modern tech-savvy classroom can be a complicated mix of devices and software. As technology becomes more ubiquitous both at home and in the classroom, schools find themselves in a more blended world. As educators in the 21st century, we must be prepared to tackle education in an environment that is cross-platform and multi-device. How do we provide an effective, innovative and … Read More
Have new technologies brought new learning opportunities?
Monday 14th July 2014 Today is a ‘student free day’ in local schools, with many teachers involved in professional learning activities focussed on the use of new technologies to support the curriculum. But are these new technologies bringing new learning opportunities to classrooms, or simply providing students with a new typewriter interface? The SAMR model provides a framework to define the impact of technology in the … Read More
Follow ISTE 2014
Monday 30th June 2014 While we are relaxing during the Winter holiday break here in Australia, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is presenting one of the biggest education technology conferences in the world. Around 20,000 educators are attending the ISTE conference in the summer warmth of Atlanta, Georgia, from the 28th June to 1st July. If you are … Read More
Improve Writing Skills Using Digital Writing and Google Docs
Monday 23rd June 2014 Would you like to improve your students’ writing skills and help them bridge the gap between writing in school and writing in the real world? One way of doing so is by using digital writing and Google Docs, the documents editor available in Google Drive. Since Google Docs is collaborative and available 24/7, students using Google … Read More
Un-Googleable questions in the classroom
Friday 20th June 2014 Creating class projects that develop higher order thinking skills, by focussing on un-Googleable questions….. Teacher: What are we learning about this week? Class: EGYPT!! Teacher: Wrong. We’re learning about how to make and answer better questions, remember? We’re just using Egypt as an example when we do it. Class: *Nervous shufflings.* Can’t we just do a project … Read More
Effective Presentations
Wednesday 18th June Death by Powerpoint …. we’ve all been there – battling to keep our eyes open during an eye-glazing slide-show presentation, containing tonnes of irrelevant information, in tiny text that no-one beyond the front row can read! Don’t become one of those presenters! Check out these tips for effective presentations >>>
Google Classroom – first look
Tuesday 17th June 2014 Classroom is a new Learning Management System (LMS) environment being developed by Google to operate in conjunction with Google Apps for Education (GAFE). Classroom is currently available for trial schools, and will be available for all schools using GAFE in September 2014. Classroom will be free for schools. Classroom builds on GAFE to create and organize assignments, provide grades … Read More
K-12: GAFE v OneDrive v iCloud Drive
Monday 16th June 2014 With collaborative cloud apps rapidly becoming an accepted ‘norm’ for file creation and storage, ICT discussion in schools often turns to which of the popular online file-editing and file-sharing packages is the most suitable for use in a K-12 environment. Microsoft, Apple and Google all offer a combination of remote ‘cloud’ file storage, and the usual suite of online, browser-editable ‘office’ applications, as well … Read More
iPads in Action K-6: Literacy and Mathematics
Thursday 12th June 2014 Think3 will present a workshop on integrating iPads in the Curriculum, at Helensburgh PS on Tuesday 24th June 2014. Participants will be introduced to a wide variety of apps throughout the day to showcase the number of ways iPads can be used to successfully support and engage students in their learning. This workshop will involve a … Read More
Transitioning school technology to the new era
Wednesday 11th June 2014 Rather than spending limited school budgets on computers and software licenses, which need to be renewed every few years, savvy schools are now focusing their technology planning on the deployment of infrastructure that can support student-owned and teacher-owned devices, leaving the cost of device renewal to the owners of those devices. The key technology planning considerations for schools in the … Read More
Getting started with Google Apps
Tuesday 1oth June 2014 Introductory step-by-step guides for a wide variety of Google Apps. Learn how to use Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and other Google products, such as Search, Video editing, etc. Check out the Google Apps Quickstarts >>>
Class size DOES make a difference.
Tuesday 27th May 2014 David Zyngier has undertaken a study of the effects of class size on student academic performance. He finds: The more years students spend in small classes during grades K-3, the longer the benefits for achievement last during grades 4-8. Smaller class sizes are especially important for children who come from disadvantaged families. Read more of David Zyngier’s … Read More
Transitioning your school to the new ICT era
Monday 26th may 2014 A key goal of teachers using technology to support the curriculum has always been the integration of new and innovative technologies in day-to-day classroom activities. Unfortunately, the cost of new technologies has always been a hurdle to achieving this goal. When ‘technology access’ is located in a secure ‘lab’ in another building in the school – accessible once a week … Read More
Blended Learning Resources (NSW Rural & Distance Ed)
Friday 23rd May 2014 Blended learning is a teaching practice that has developed to meet the needs of 21st-century learners. It is methodology that can be used in all learning contexts, from face-to-face classrooms through to totally online learning environments. The NSW Rural and Distance Education site provides useful resources for educators in a wide variety of environments to integrate new technologies in … Read More
Digital storytelling with Animoto
Friday 16th May 2014 Animoto is an online and mobile video creation service that makes it easy for students to create and share videos using their own pictures, video clips, words and music. Students choose a theme, then upload pictures and video clips to the video editor. Next, they personalize their movie with text and music, then click a button to create their digital masterpiece. … Read More
Whatever happened to Netscape?
Monday 12th May 2014 For those old enough to remember… When the web first made an impact on the broader population, Netscape was really the only web browser available. In August of 1995 Netscape was valued at $3 billion. So, where did it all go pear-shaped for Netscape? Read the full story at Engadget >>>
What do we want kids to do with technology?
Thursday 8th May 2014 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 … Read More
New Google Docs and Sheets Apps
Friday 2nd May 2014 Google has announced that its Docs, Sheets and Slides apps, currently part of Google Drive, are being broken out into separate mobile apps. Docs and Sheets are available now on the App Store and Google Play. Slides will be available soon, along with a new version of the Drive app. One of the major new features of these stand-alone apps … Read More
Showbie for iPad
Thursday 1st May 2014 Showbie makes it easy for teachers to set assignments and for students to submit assignments, all in an iPad environment. Teachers can also use Showbie to provide feedback to students. Watch the video below, or for more info visit showbie.com >>>
Sync Multiple Google Drives
Wednesday 30th April 2014 If you have a Gmail account for personal use, and a Google Apps account for school, then you have probably already felt the pain of not being able to sync multiple Google Drive accounts to your computer. Insync is a utility that allows you to sync multiple Google Drive accounts to your computer, along with several other neat … Read More
NAPLAN online – is everybody ready?
Tuesday 29th April 2014 The Australian Government is planning to conduct NAPLAN online from 2016. While the Government is to be commended on the move to take advantage of the efficiencies and the opportunities opened by going digital and online, will all parties critical to the success of conducting NAPLAN online be ready for a 2016 test? Will all Australia’s … Read More
Finnish Lessons
Some holiday reading….. “Education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. “This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually. “In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail….” Read more at The Washington Post >>>
Google codifies crawling your email
On Monday, Google updated Gmail’s terms of service to spell out its relationship with users in no uncertain terms: “Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.” … Read More
Configurator – Course update
Due to popular demand, an additional course has been added to Scott Barnham’s Configurator roadshow workshops…. at Bodalla PS on Friday 30th May. Maybe tack the Friday on to a long weekend away on the sunny NSW South Coast! Learn how to manage your school’s iPads using Apple Configurator, at this one-day hands-on workshop. You will learn about….. Apple Volume Purchase Program … Read More
Google Sheets – Convert old to new
If you are using Google Sheets to create your spreadsheets, you are probably already using the recently-released new version of Sheets. But what about your existing spreadsheets? How do you convert a spreadsheet created in the original version to the new format? While Google doesn’t provide a simple one-click conversion tool yet, there is a quick workaround… Open the a … Read More
Managing iPads with Configurator
Learn how to manage your school’s iPads using Apple Configurator, at this one-day hands-on workshop. You will learn about….. Apple Volume Purchase Program (VPP) for apps; Creating & Managing Apple IDs; Installing Apple Configurator; Using Configurator to prepare iPads with the latest iOS; Supervised Mode; Installing free apps, and paid apps purchased through VPP; Creating and installing Profiles to manage settings. Wollongong workshop … Read More