Stuff 'n Nonsense

Useful links – Weekly

26 incredibly useful Google Calendar tips

Teens ‘not damaged by screen time’, new Oxford study finds / Boing Boing “Research by Oxford University scientists finds “little evidence of a relationship between screen time and wellbeing in adolescents.” Based on data from over 17,000 teenagers, the study “casts doubt on the widely accepted notion that spending time online, gaming or watching TV,…

Word Search Maker Easy tool to use. Makes quick online and printable word find puzzles

Australian Teacher Response “As part of its Australian Teacher Response initiative, AITSL has developed resources to help support teachers and school leaders during these changing times. Since the emergence of COVID-19 (coronavirus), teachers and school leaders have been working to adapt and innovate…

Free stock photos · Pexels “The some good free stock photos & videos shared by talented creators.”

Visual to text coding- Index page | Digital Technologies Hub “This lesson sequence provides a bridge between visual coding (eg. Scratch) and General Purpose Programming languages (eg. Python or JavaScript). Each video builds a simple program in all three ways: Scratch, Python and JavaScript.…

Useful links: Week 13/04 – 17/04

How to Get Kids Ready to Video-Chat for Online Classes | Common Sense Media A list for teachers to share with the parents of their students so they can be ready for their online sessions/lessons.

Webinars – Listenwise Teacher Support Center “At Listenwise, has been watching how the outbreak of the coronavirus has caused many schools to close temporarily and rely on remote learning. They have…

I had a Year 8 English session 5 today (the last class for the week). I was wondering how well the boys would do after the incredibly steep learning curve they were on this week.

We have used laptops for a long time but our boys like the classroom and face-2-face times with their peers and the teachers.

I prepared what I thought was a reasonably simple lesson to introduce this year’s Creative…

My first reflection in our “brave, new world ” of education in Victoria.

Everyone was wondering how are students would go as they logged in to our classes from home.

Very few of the year 7 and 8 students in my classes have ever had to do this ( only some with a medical issue for a short time). As a whole, the boys at our school have always indicated that they liked attending the school.

I teach…

Resources For Teaching Online Due To School Closures – The Edublogger “This guide will give you insights into how educators around the world are approaching school closures. Thousands of teachers worldwide are currently sharing snippets of their experiences via social media or their blogs. We’ve compiled, curated, and built on some common themes and ideas to create this extensive guide.”

11…

Over the past few weeks we have all been on a steep learning curve to prepare for the remote teaching of our students. Although we have been using technology for many years and we also have  a learning management system where I have added all my lesson planes and resources for the past 2-3 years, it has always run parallel to the in class learning and teaching. In most of my classes the students…

Reading in the crime genre

Crime novels come in a variety of forms and the three below were read in the January holidays. I enjoyed each of them allow for quite different reasons.

To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an enjoyable read. It was the fourth in her series of books featuring the very interesting Inspector Grant. This time he is sent to a small English village, Salcott St Mary,…

A New York Christmas by Anne Perry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A change in setting and a slightly later date, early 20th-century New York City, than the usual “Pitt” novels, Anne Perry gives us a relatively new character, Jemima Pitt. The now grown daughter of Thomas and Charlotte, is an appealing and smart heroine, ripe for an adventure of her own. She is accompanying a younger girl as her companion…

“”…she will never become obsolete.”” (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by gcouros

Science Printables and Freebies | Elemental Blogging Lots of science printables for free, with no strings attached.

What Great Scientists Did When They Weren’t Doing Science (infograph) What Great Scientists Did When They Weren’t Doing Science (infograph). Marie Curie was a simply astounding woman. She won the Nobel prize two…

Reshot: Uniquely Free Photos Useful site for for students to go to for images to put in their projects

Why feedback is SO time consuming — and how to fix it | Ditch That Textbook We all agree the feedback to students is important but how can we be give useful and timely feedback and be smarter about it so we don’t get totally overwhelmed by it? This offers some useful ideas about how teachers…

Summer holidays allows me time to relax and read. I have a few reading challenges from my GoodReads groups that I can get ahead on before I have to go back to work. A few of the books I have enjoyed reading are as follows:

Pick Your Poison by Lauren Child This is another intriguing instalment to the light-hearted spy novels that make up the Ruby Redfort series. It can be read as a stand-alone as…

“Educational Quotation: ”We cannot hope” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by Ken Whytock

ASCD EDge – Reimagining Learning Spaces with Design Thinking #HackingPBL This article offers a look at the phases my students would follow to establish their learning space, while calling upon the LAUNCH Cycle, a design thinking process created by A.J. Juliani (@ajjuliani) and John Spencer (@spencerideas). (LAUNCH is an…

“Metacognition” (CC BY 2.0) by mrsdkrebs

Note Taking With Technology | Edutopia “Today’s students require strategies that support their acquisition of knowledge, allow them to save their notes across devices, permit them to search through vast quantities of information, and share their learning with the rest of their community. Before blaming a device—either the pen or the laptop—we need to…

Home these last few days and weather is bitter outside. Decided to sit inside and read some books i have had on my bookshelves for a while now.

The first is by an Australian YA author, Tristan Bancks. I often read his blog posts and pass on many of his tips and advice to my students.

The Fall by Tristan Bancks

This is a nicely plotted crime thriller for middle-years readers, with shades of…