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Nigel Coutts

The folly of goal setting activities - The Learner's Way - 10 views

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    It is soon the start of a new school year for students in Australia. In other parts of the world, the year continues after a short break for Christmas while New Year festivities are just around the corner for those observing the lunar new year. The start of the year is considered an excellent time to reflect on key ideas that matter to our learning and potential for success. But does this equate with goal-setting?
Jac Londe

Earth at Night 2012 - 59 views

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    I live in Australia and I have NO idea what all those lights are in the OUTBACK!! There's more light in just a few spots in the Outback (and there's LOTS of those shown in the image) than in the WHOLE of New Zealand? What gives? Mining? Aliens? A data ERROR? The ABC .net site explains that the lights are bushfires! As the images were taken over a number of months, the fires may not have all been burning at the same time. April (when the images were started) may be a the worst time for fires, however, the Outback is usually dry and fires would occur at any time.
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    I also live in Australia and have to agree with Colin - why so many lights in the outback? The outback of Australia is very sparsely populated and there are no big cities to generate these sort of lights. Maybe it is the aliens!!!
Mark Gleeson

Edmodo vs Blogging (updated and reposted from a post originally published in September ... - 12 views

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    I originally wrote this post in September 2012. With a new school year beginning in Australia and plans to ramp up blogging and Edmodo at our school this year, I have updated this post to use with my staff with more screenshots, new ideas and some additional references to the iPad use of these tools with dedicated apps. For those who have seen it before, you may like to revisit.
Nigel Coutts

Starting the year on the right foot - The Learner's Way - 8 views

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    Across Australia students are returning to school. Armed with fresh stationery, new books full of promise, shoes that are not yet comfortable and uniforms washed and ready to go, students will be heading off for the first day of a new year. What do they hope to find and how might we make sure their first day back sets them up for a successful year of learning?
maryanne wright

About ABC Splash - splash.abc.net.au - 120 views

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    a new world-class education website for Australia packed with hundreds of videos, audio clips and games 100% free to watch and play at home and in school See volcanos erupt and microbats fly. Investigate fossils, megafires and worm farms. Meet fairytale monsters. Unwrap an Ancient Egyptian mummy and explore the Great Barrier Reef without getting wet!
Nigel Coutts

Holiday Reading List - The Learner's Way - 35 views

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    For those in Australia the end of the teaching year has arrived or is just around the corner. With holidays approaching now might be the perfect time to find a good book to read and reset your thinking ahead of the start of a new year. Here are my favourite reads from this year. 
Carol Mortensen

PhotoPeach - http://photopeach.com - 73 views

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    Learn together in the classroom and share your projects with the world. Photopeach is used by educators and students in hundreds of schools world wide, including schools in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, England, Pakistan, Argentina,Thailand, and more. The combination of images, music, and text helps students learn about presentation, expression, writing, communication skills, art appreciation, and media literacy. The quality of the finished work is great and students will remember it forever. Start creating fun slideshows with captions, soundtracks, quizzes, and easy editing controls!
Michele Brown

StepMap - Create your personal map for free - 10 views

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    StepMap enables you to create maps for free and to search for maps in the map directory. In the map directory you can find maps for Africa, Asia, Australia/Ozeania, Europe, North America and South America. You can add images, videos, audio files and much more to your personal map. Categories in the map directory include Travel Routes, News Maps, School Maps, Fan Maps, Political Maps as well as Historical Maps.
Julia Gardiner

Lateline - 29/10/2012: PMs plan for every child to learn an Asian language - 14 views

    • Julia Gardiner
       
      The rationale or thinking behind introducing languages early in primary school
  • Gillard Government's Asian Century white paper sets an aspiration for Australia to rank as the world's 10th biggest economy by 2025, capitalising on the rapid economic growth in the region.
  • education will be the key and wants all school students to study an Asian language.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • funded
  • where all the new teachers might come from
  • where all the new teachers might come from.
  • the gold standard
    • Julia Gardiner
       
       The gold standard =any excellent example of something, like how Olympians are the gold standard for athletes
  • If you understand through the learning of language how people think, how they construct meaning, what is important to them culturally, then I think that gives us better insights into the people that we're going to be working with in the future and negotiating with.
  • The Prime Minister says she'll force the curriculum changes by tying them to Commonwealth funding to state and private schools.
    • Julia Gardiner
       
      Is this  good policy making? Some would  consider  it 'blackmail'!
  • Broadly, teachers and education experts have welcomed the plan, but question where the money is going to come from.
  • catchcry of the Hawke and Keating governments
    • Julia Gardiner
       
      The Hawke-Keating Government refers to the Federal Government of Australia from 11 March 1983 to 11 March 1996. It was a Labour government
  • Currently across all levels of schooling there's around 18 per cent of our young people who are studying one of the four priority Asian languages: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and Korean. And that diminishes to fewer than 6 per cent by the time they get to Year 12.
    • Julia Gardiner
       
      How do we encourage students to  continue  learning an Asian language into the final years  of high school and  eyond?
  • say we simply don't have enough Asian language teachers to deliver the Prime Minister's vision and for the last decade the numbers of graduates have been declining.
  • hat's happened because universities have been under these budget constraints and when they've made decisions about what to cut, they cut courses with low enrolments and there goes the languages.
  • JEANNIE REA, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION
    • Julia Gardiner
       
      Suggested reasons for the decline in language graduates and therefore  in language teachers. 
  • will help.JULIA GILLARD: We live in an age of different learning possibilities and choices. What we can do through the National Broadband Network, what we can do through having the world's first online national curriculum, which is what the Australian curriculum is, means we can get a deeper penetration of language, literacy and learning.
  • e Prime Minister acknowledges the shortages, but says technology
  • will help.
    • Julia Gardiner
       
      This argument t can be debated.  It would suggest that technology in itself will be a solution!
  • we need to be looking very carefully at what sort of encouragement and incentives we can provide to students so they continue doing a language, go on and major in a language in university and then go on to teach in the area.
  • JEANNIE REA:
    • Julia Gardiner
       
      What type of incentive scan be offered/
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    The Prime Minister wants all school students to study an Asian language to secure Australia's future in the Asian Century.
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    Completely deluded. Even here in Singapore, surrounded supposedly by chinese speakers the international schools are not getting it right and success stories are unusual ...
Mark Gleeson

The Literacy Shed - A great new resource for Visual Text Literacy Teaching - 123 views

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    The site is organised into 24 different 'sheds", each providing a selection of quality visual texts (mainly 3D animations) accompanied by very useful teaching notes (Note to Grammar Gurus/Spelling "Nazis" -  ignore the occasional typo in the notes) outlining how you can use the clips in exploring themes, characterisation, narrative, plot, mood, use of audio, body language, inferences,deductions, predictions  - the notes cover just about everything. It's equally useful for reading comprehension and writing development. The use of the resources also go beyond just Literacy. Many of the resources are also useful for Humanities subjects as well and Smith points these links out in detail. What I especially enjoy is the number of foreign animations that expose students particularly in USA and Australia, my home, to different cultural and creative perspectives beyond Hollywood story telling.
Glenn Hervieux

Nat Geo MapMaker Kits - National Geographic Society - 34 views

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    Complete set of 11 map kits that students and teachers can use. Easy to assemble. The kits offer United States political and physical maps, world political and physical maps, maps of Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, Australia and Oceania, polar region maps, and maps of New England.
Martin Burrett

Starting at age 6, children spontaneously practice skills to prepare for the future - 11 views

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    "Deliberate practice is essential for improving a wide range of skills important for everyday life, from tying shoelaces to reading and writing. Yet despite its importance for developing basic skills, academic success, and expertise, we know little about the development of deliberate practice. A new study from Australia found that children spontaneously practice skills to prepare for the future starting at the age of 6. The study, from researchers at the University of Queensland, is published in the journal Child Development."
Rachael Bath

Booz and Company's new study identifies three imperatives for lasting and successful ch... - 21 views

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    This is a very relevant and interesting article about some research that applies in Australia as much as the rest of the world.
Nigel Coutts

Creating a Generation of Innovators - 51 views

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    Innovation is very much on the agenda in Australian and globally. The OECD publishes lists of nations most likely to succeed through innovation and nations seek to encourage increased innovation to maintain their competitive edge. The result of this in Australia is the recent launch of a new 'Innovation Australia' policy with wide reaching measures to encourage and foster a culture of innovation.
Jim Connolly

Obama to push for new ed-tech agency | Featured Funding News | eSchoolNews.com - 44 views

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    Another federal agency with powers of the purse over education. Yeah, that's what we need.
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    The very next entry in Diigo, (after this one about a new ed-tech agency) was an article about Victoria, Australia providing iPads for every student. Some of the classrooms in my school haven't even a single computer for the 27 students to use. Somebody needs to provide the leadership to help the U.S. keep up with the rest of the world. If it is a fed agency, so be it. Iit's better than what we have now (at least in my state) which is nothing.
amcconnell06

Why media tablets will transform education | Accenture Outlook - 48 views

    • amcconnell06
       
      This is if the books are brand new. School systems don't spend that much money per student per year. The books get reused from year to year.
    • dedide Atkins
       
      Not in Australia I am afraid.
  • Content can be revised and updated continuously. Textbooks no longer need to be text but can be any media. And a tablet can administer tests, enable students to engage in collaborative projects or support remote education for rural children. Since a tablet is a full-fledged computer, it can also support specialized applications that cater to children with learning disabilities or different learning styles. The possibilities are endless
  • If all this were to come true, the biggest losers will be dogs—they’ll no longer have any homework to eat.
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    • amcconnell06
       
      Haha. And I still get this excuse to this day.
  • it represents their path to the future. As such, it’s difficult to build consensus around any new educational philosophy; experimentation, however well intentioned,2 is perceived as tantamount to tampering with the lives of young people.
Matthew Jorgensen

Professional Learning Access Network Australasia - 21 views

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    Brand new portal for teachers in Australia and New Zealand. It has a comprehensive Professional Learning events calendar that can be filtered so teachers can find their topic easily.
meghankelly492

Music performance skills: A two-pronged approach - facilitating optimal music performan... - 1 views

  • music performance anxiety (MPA)
  • The concept of “flow”, describing the subjective psychological state in which a person is completely immersed and fully concentrated in an activity which is enjoyable and rewarding, is often associated with optimal functioning
  • Anxiety is generally regarded as having an antithetical relationship with flow
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  • The clinical implications of this negative association between MPA and flow suggest that a two-pronged approach focusing on facilitating flow and positive functioning as well as reducing pathological MPA may bring about improvements in the performer’s subjective performing experienc
  • Seligman’s (2011) most recent model of well-being, from the field of positive psychology, understands well-being as comprising five elements: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Achievemen
  • There is a substantial body of Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) research providing evidence that MPA is a debilitating phenomenon (Kenny, 2011) which can affect musicians at any stage of their careers, from highly experienced professional performers (Fishbein, Middlestadt, Ottati, Straus, & Ellis, 1988; Kenny, Driscoll, & Ackerman, 2014) through to child beginners
  • Anxiety is often described as having an antithetical relationship to the experience of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), and it has been suggested that fostering techniques for facilitating flow may provide a powerful tool for reducing MPA and encouraging optimal performance
  • “when performance anxiety was highest, flow was lowest and vice versa … the presence of one minimises the magnitude of the other” (Fullager et al., 2013, p. 251), and a recent study found evidence of a strong, significant negative association between flow and MPA amongst 200 professional orchestral musicians (Cohen & Bodner, 2018), supporting Kirchner et al.’s (2008) earlier findings with music students
  • Investigations of the efficacy of existing methods for treating MPA indicate that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy based interventions are most effective (for an overview, see Burin & Osorio, 2016).
  • However, evidence suggests that pharmacological methods, particularly beta-blockers, are most commonly used, often in the absence of medical supervision (Cohen & Bodner, 2018; Kenny et al., 2014) and that the subject of MPA is still stigmatised, with many musicians and teachers unwilling to talk openly about it
  • Csikszentmihalyi’s nine dimensions of flow as follows
  • Although there was an increase in flow over time, this was not significant, F(1, 20) = 4.27, p > .05, η2 =.18, and there was no evidence of a significant interaction between group and time, F(1, 20) = 0.56, p > .05, η2 = .03, indicating that the hypothesis that there would be an increase in self-reported levels of flow in the intervention group, was not supported.
  • Figure 4. Judge-rated musical performance quality and signs of performance anxiety in the intervention group.
  • These results support the fourth hypothesis that there would be an increase in judge-rated PQ and a decrease in judge-rated SPA.
  • Results showed evidence of a significant negative association between MPA and flow, and three out of the four study hypotheses were supported: the music performance skills intervention was found to be effective in reducing pre-/post-test MPA in the intervention group compared to the wait-list control group; there were significant improvements in positive and negative affect and state anxiety associated with the performance situation in the intervention group; and there were significant improvements in judge-rated PQ and behavioural signs of performance anxiety. However, there was no significant change in pre-/post-test measures of flow. These findings will now be discussed in more detail.
  • This supports the understanding of MPA as a specific type of anxiety, where the performer suffers from MPA without necessarily being generally anxious or impaired in any other areas of his/her life (Clark & Williamon, 2011; Hoffman & Hanrahan, 2011) and corresponds to Kenny’s (2011) description of the first and most mild of three types of MPA (for full coverage of this issue, see Kenny, 2011).
  • Thus, the absence in improvement in levels of flow in the current study could also be due to the low average hours of daily practice reported
  • The increases in participants’ positive affect and decreases in negative affect after the second simulated performance compared to the first indicate that the intervention was effective in facilitating positive emotion, the first component of Seligman’s (2011) PERMA model of well-being
  • Evidence of improvements in judge-rated performance quality indicate that the intervention was also effective in facilitating the fifth (Achievement) component of the PERMA model.
  • “Ironically, it may be that the last people to receive some benefit from the therapeutic value of music may be the musicians themselves” (Brodsky, 1996, p. 95).
  • Hopefully, such an approach will enable developing musicians to acquire the skills necessary to enjoy satisfying, successful and healthy lives as performing musicians, in which the threat of debilitating MPA and the need to recourse to beta-blockers are a thing of the past.
  • Cohen, S., & Bodner, E. (2019). Music performance skills: A two-pronged approach – facilitating optimal music performance and reducing music performance anxiety. Psychology of Music, 47(4), 521–538. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735618765349
Nigel Coutts

The Joy of Teaching - 21 views

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    For teachers in Australia the year is drawing rapidly to a close. It is a time for packing away classrooms, taking down displays of student learning and saying farewell to students as they move on to new classes. At the ending of one year it is worth taking a moment to ponder what is so remarkable about teaching as a profession.
Scott Garrigan

USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people's access to writt... - 0 views

  • Right now, in Geneva, at the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world's copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners. At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages), introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn't want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it's possible for disabled people to get access to the written word? The USA, that's who. The Obama administration's negotiators have joined with a rogue's gallery of rich country trade representatives to oppose protection for blind people. Other nations and regions opposing the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU. Update: Also opposing rights for disabled people: Australia, New Zealand, the Vatican and Norway.
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    Copyright "rights for the user" champion and author, Cory Doctorow, reports on efforts to guarantee rights for the blind and others with reading disabilities to gain access to the printed word. It's happening at the UN's World Organization for Intellectual Property, and it's the first time they are working on rights for copyright USERS in addition to copyright HOLDERS. Read about how U.S. negotiators have opposed this protection for disabled. It's an important issue for educators worldwide, but especially for those in the U.S., whose copyright law has been written to strongly favor corporate interests.
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