Some technology sites to consider for our teaching

 Image above: Bec's top11 sites for technology in the  classroom

Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle
Geographical thinking Scoop.it  
Spatial literacy Scoop.it  
History and geography Scoop.it 

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au


Some technology sites to consider for our teaching

I recently ran a workshop with Bec Nicholas from Brisbane on technology in the geography classroom. Her presentation of her top 11 sites to do technology is something to consider for our teaching - they are not just relevant to geography, so feel free to explore!!. Just ideas to explore!  I am sure any of them you have already used but just in case ...

Two other great sites for technology in the classroom are:

• I recently came across a listing of top sites for humanities educators from a site called GoEd http://www.goedonline.com
• A blog from Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher in the US who continues to post some great teaching resources on his edublog

Please share with the faculty if you have any other technology orientated sites you use.

 

Engaging with the AITSL Standards

 Image above: The AITSL website Home Page and introductory video.

Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle
Geographical thinking Scoop.it  
Spatial literacy Scoop.it  
History and geography Scoop.it 

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au


Time to engage!

"...they guide professional learning, practice and engagement, facilitates the improvement of teacher quality and contributes positively to the public standing of the profession. The key elements of quality teaching are described in the Standards. They articulate what teachers are expected to know and be able to do at four career stages: Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead."

 In our faculty meetings we have briefly talked about the AITSL Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and their relevance and importance to us as teachers in SA. Our faculty meetings this week provide us with the opportunity to 'get our heads' around the Standards and to discuss their implications for our work as teachers at Thebarton Senior College.

 “As professionals, teachers need to engage in reflective practice to critically think about their skills and knowledge, access professional development for improvement and become an active member of learning communities to meet their professional needs.”

* Here is some background about the standards before we look at them in detail.

• The Standards define the work of teachers and make explicit the elements of high-quality, effective teaching in 21st-century schools, which result in improved educational outcomes for students.
• The Standards present a common understanding and language for discourse between teachers, teacher educators, teacher organisations, professional associations and the public.
• Teacher standards also inform the development of professional learning goals, provide a framework by which teachers can judge the success of their learning and assist self-reflection and self-assessment.
• The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers is organised into four career stages and guide the preparation, support and development of teachers. The stages reflect the continuum of a teacher's developing professional expertise from undergraduate preparation through to being an exemplary classroom practitioner and a leader in the profession.
• The Graduate Standards will underpin the accreditation of initial teacher education programs. Graduates from accredited programs qualify for registration in each state and territory. The Proficient Standards will be used to underpin processes for full registration as a teacher and to support the requirements of nationally consistent teacher registration.
• The Standards at the career stages of Highly Accomplished and Lead will inform voluntary certification

  
* Organisation of the Standards

• The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers comprise seven Standards which outline what teachers should know and be able to do. The Standards are interconnected, interdependent and overlapping. 
• The Standards are grouped into three domains of teaching: Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice and Professional Engagement. In practice, teaching draws on aspects of all three domains.
• Within each Standard, focus areas provide further illustration of teaching knowledge, practice and professional engagement. These are then separated into Descriptors at four professional career stages: Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead.

* Certification: a future conversation

• In the meantime have a read of the latest from DECD regarding certification opportunties.
•  As for DECD implementation of the Standards?
  

* FAQ

• A very useful frequently asked questions on the AITSL Professional Standards is on the AITSL site. 

 Faculty task:
What are the indicators (nouns and verbs) to determine whether a teacher is a Proficient, Highly Accomplished or Lead teacher? In short, what are the determinants that need to be evidenced to determine whether a teacher is proficient, highly accomplished or lead. Such determinants will play an important role in future Personal Development Plans in schools around Australia.

TED-Ed - an amazing resource

Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle
Geographical thinking Scoop.it  
Spatial literacy Scoop.it  
History and geography Scoop.it 

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au

 TED Ed Use engaging videos to create customized lessons.

We have all heard or looked at TED over the years. The site is an amazing source of stimulating talks.  Now there is TED-Ed! TED-Ed is a great resource to support your teaching on any topic. You can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube.

In particular, the site advocates Flip lesson planning. "Flipping" a video allows you to turn a video into a customized lesson that can be assigned to students or shared more widely. You can add context, questions, and follow-up suggestions to any video on TED-Ed or YouTube.

Worth a look: Humanities and English resources for AC

Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle

Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au

 

Resources supporting the Australian Curriculum for English, History and Geography

Over recent weeks we have seen the publication of on-line resources to support the Australian Curriculum for English, History and Geography (also Mathematics). These resources have been developed by the national teaching associations for the subjects (HTAA,  AATE and AGTA) with money supplied from the Australian Government via Educational Services Australia (ESA). The SACOL (Supporting Australian Curriculum Online) resources are worth a look because they contain professional learning materials on our learning areas as well as specific teaching materials for the new F-10 Australian Curriculum in these subjects. As well as providing some useful professional learning in humanities, the resources may also provide some teaching ideas and activities which can be adapted to our Stage 1 subjects.

As time goes by, the sites are likely to include materials to support the Year 11 and 12 courses as they are published by ACARA. These sites are worth a look to see what is going on with the Australian Curriculum, which is already impacting on F-10 schools and indirectly will impact on us next year by the fact that some of our students will have undertaken the Australian Curriculum subjects instead of SACE in their Year 10 classes this year.

If you have not already done so, go to the ACARA Curriculum Portal to view the English, Geography and History curricula prior to looking at the resource sites to get some background on these three new curriculum's in our faculty area.

Here are the SACOL sites relevant to English and Humanities at Thebarton Senior College for your preview:

The English site

The History site

The Geography site

... and the Mathematics site for those interested

The Science site (ASTA) should be published by the end of June. As for the business and economics and civics and citizenship sites, no decisions have been made as yet (waiting for the money from the Federal Government). Hopefully these learning areas will have the chance to develop resources to support the Australian Curriculum in those subjects when they are published by ACARA.

Faculty sharing

Putting the curriculum jigsaw together?

Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle

Email contact: malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au


Thanks for sharing

Thanks to Marisa, Liz and Emma for presenting their work at TSC last night. I hope everyone is finding useful the sharing of our work at faculty meetings. As you are aware the reason for sharing is to update our curriculum knowledge so that we can be informed when talking to students about subject choices in our learning area. Really appreciate those who have put themselves out there to present to the faculty and look forward to hear from others over coming months. Just come and see me if you wish to present anything to the faculty (even if you have already presented).
As promised at the meeting, here is Marisa's presentation as a pdf.


From Marisa on Specialist Courses at TSC

The following powerpoint outlines two of the Packaged courses available at Thebarton Senior College. The ATAR Package allows students to complete their SACE and gain an ATAR to many University courses. The SACE Completion Package is aimed towards students who wish to complete their SACE and gain entry into TAFE courses starting at Certificate 3 or 4 level, gain apprenticeships, or enter the workforce. This powerpoint details the subjects and teachers involved in both packages and also the benefits for students when completing their SACE through these specially designed courses.

 

*** you will need to unblock Dropbox to view the Powerpoints uploaded on this blog.***

 

Hums sites to check out

Image above: A life revealed - fascinating! The National Geographic girl. Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on the National Geographic cover in 1985. Now here is her story at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text

Related links
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact: malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au



So much, so little time!


I recently came across a listing of top sites for humanities educators from a site called GoEd http://www.goedonline.com/

I have edited the sites listed to be mainly relevant to humanities adn English teachers. All we need as teachers is the time to get familiar with each of these sites and we certainly would be having some creative teaching going on.


Web 2.0 Tools

Poll Everywhere
An inexpensive and quick alternative for clicker response systems. Create your first poll in 30 seconds without having to sign up. Your students simply text their answer to a predetermined number and, voila! Poll Anywhere is free if your class size is less than 40 students.

Animoto
Use Animoto to easily create presentations and videos with your own images and music, or choose from a library of stock files. Teachers can apply for a free Animoto Plus account.

Wikispaces
With a free option for K-12 teachers, Wikispaces is a great tool for making custom webpages that your students can edit together. You can manage privacy settings, create student accounts without email addresses, embed media and even customize the design of your Wiki pages.

Voicethread
Voicethread’s group conversations are stored and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world. It allows you to create multimedia slideshows with images, videos and documents. Others can view the slides and then leave text, audio or video comments.

Prezi
Prezi is a really neat cloud-based presentation program that allows you to zoom in and out. If you don’t mind your slides being public, you can sign up for a free account with 100MB of storage.

IMDb
Use IMDb, the internet movie database, to see if there are any movies that are relevant to the topic you’re teaching. If you find one, you can also check the rating to make sure it’s appropriate for your classroom.

Quizlet
As one of the largest and most popular flashcard creation websites around, Quizlet allows students and teachers to customize their own “sets” of flashcards. You can manage access to the flashcards you create and share them with your students.

SlideShare
SlideShare is one of the most popular ways to upload and share PowerPoint presentations and other documents. Again, this is a great tool for transferring documents between your home and school computer without having to carry around a flash drive.

ClassMarker
ClassMarker is an online quiz and test creation website. As an educator, you get 100 free tests taken (and graded!) per month.


Informational Resources

CIA Factbook
The CIA World Factbook contains information on the communications, economy, geography, government, history, military, people, transnational issues and transportation for 267 world entities.

Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a simple search engine that specializes in scholarly literature. It allows you to search across many sources including articles, books, court opinions, online repositories, university libraries and more.

Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is searchable database of information about government, historical events, political figures, important documents and more.


Current Events

Google News Archive

Time Magazine

New York Times

Newseum
View today’s front page from more than 800 newspapers worldwide. Use this website to demonstrate how different cultures can perceive the same event.

Cagle
A daily compilation of editorial cartoons from around the world that cover current issues and important figures.

Clay Bennett Cartoons Archive
Modern cartoons on a range of topics including individual liberties, global warming, lobby reform, congress and more.


Interactive Timelines

Timerime
Search for pre-made, media-rich timelines or make your own using MP3 audio clips, YouTube videos and more.

X Timeline
Another website that makes it easy to create and share timelines with pictures and videos.

Time Toast
All you need is a valid email address to create interactive timelines that can be shared anywhere on the web.

Tiki Toki
Easily create stunning web-based, sharable timelines with images and video. Tiki Toki also has a group editing feature for collaboration.

Dipity
With Dipity, you can find, create and embed interactive, customizable timelines.

Capzles
Create your own sharable timeline with images, video, audio, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and PDF files.


Printable Maps and Mapping Tools

ScribbleMaps
Easily draw on Google Maps and then share with your students or post to your teacher blog.

QuickMaps
QuickMap’s slogan is “Doodle on Google!” It’s another free and easy way to draw on Google Maps.

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
High-quality historic, thematic and topographic maps of the world including Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Polar regions, Oceans and United States.

Printable World Maps
Free printable maps of the world’s countries. Each map is a blank outline.

Nat Geo Education: Mapping
Free, printable 1-page maps, printable large-format maps and an online interactive student map.

Mapping History
Animated socio and political maps of 18th and 19th century United States, Europe, Latin America and Africa.

Animaps
Animaps letting you create maps with markers that move, images and text that pop up on cue, and lines and shapes that change over time. Your finalized Animap appears like a video that can be played, paused, slowed down and sped up.

BBC Dimensions
This website takes important places and events, and overlays them onto a map. Just type in a zip code. Use it to show your students how large something like the Great Wall of China or the battle of Stalingrad really is/was!

The 21st Century learner and curriculum

Image above: A Society and Culture class at Thebarton Senior College.

Related links
Spatialworlds
Geogsplace
Socialsense
Thebarton Senior College Moodle

Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter

Email contact: malcolm.mcinerney@thebartonsc.sa.edu.au

 What's changed?

This posting explores the issue of where students as learners have changed. Is there such a thing as a 21st Century learner? The research indicates that there is! If we are on about developing a 21st Century curriculum then we must take into account that the learner has changed and think about how the currciulum may be different to accomodate these changes.

These changes may be categorised under the headings of what they require and expect and what they are interested in.

*They require and expect:• not to have to learn “by rote”knowledge. They recognize that knowledge is important but not to be expected to learn chunks of deep knowledge

• respect from their teachers. They consider respect needs to be ‘earnt’ by their teachers

• to learn the skills of knowledge acquisition, analysis and synthesis

• to develop a taste of the ethos and frameworks of disciplines.

• relevance of learning to their life. They ask how the curriculum delivered will prepare them for the real world whilst they are at school and when they leave. They expect real world competencies through their learning

• the freedom to personalise/customise their learning/tasks to meet their personal needs

• their learning to be flexible, self reliant and autonomous

• new technologies to be available to support their learning and collaborative work

• to work collaboratively in the real and virtual space

• be able to meet achievement standards if they work as required

• the opportunity to study in depth a topic/issue they find of interest

• connectivity with their life and their learning experiences.

* They are interested in:

• issues of social justice

• real stories

• connecting with others in the real and virtual space

• using current technology to learn – in particular to enhance connectivity

• being active citizens and make a difference

• embracing cross-cultural competencies – sensitivity to other cultures

• greenness and sustainability through real ecologically responsible acts

• being global in outlook – citizens of the world

• customising their education to their needs – personal pathways

• being a resourceful learner, curious, enquiring, community relevant and learning

beyond the school day.

The 21st Century curriculum needs to be written to ensure that ‘teachable moments’ happen to the maximum! To do so the curriculum should be written to incorporate:

o Flexibility• be flexible to meet the needs of the self-reliant and autonomous learner.

o Multiple literacies• recognise and consider as equally important the range of ‘non-traditional’ literacy’s i.e. visual, financial, health, media, environmental, spatial etc.
To develop cultural literacy and intercultural understanding.

o Orientation
• be thematic in nature, providing guidance via the provision of ‘big ideas’and ‘essential questions’, instead of discreet content alone.

• view all topics studied though the lens of sustainability.