Articles

Kids' online creative writing platform enlists Aussie authors and offers free resources Littlescribe is an Australian online educational writing platform which kickstarts school childrens’ writing by linking them with published authors. The platform is now making literacy services free to teachers and parents working to keep home learning on track.

No failure learning in military instruction Because failure to learn may have dire consequences for military students, the American Department of the Army (1954) firmly asserts: “if a student failed to learn, the instructor failed to teach” (p. 5). Whew! That puts a different spin on our teaching doesn’t it?

2020 Commonwealth Bank Teaching Awards give a nod to 12 outstanding teachers The diversity of teachers given the 2020 Commonwealth Bank Teaching Award highlights the importance of vision in bringing great education.

Free weeks of homeschooling plus tips for parents Just to be on the safe side many parents are keeping their kids home or getting out of the city altogether, that means keeping up with their learning.

Osmo Coding Jam and Kaleidoscope Osmo is a good way to introduce some constructive play and makes for a better use of the ipad than watching SSundee or Ryan’s Toy Review endlessly. There’s a couple of new offerings in the series which lets kids animate and interact with the Osmo world on the ipad and Amazon Fire tablets.

Schools getting cryptojacked Just in case you haven’t had enough of viruses, here’s some digital ones. This is a nice 21st century problem; increasingly hackers are attacking schools to hijack their computer power to assist in the memory heavy activity of cryptocurrency mining.

Teachers need to be included in classroom design Billions of dollars are being spent on new-build schools each year, but one vital piece is missing: input from teachers themselves who are very qualified to inform the design of innovative learning spaces.

A letter from an early childhood educator As a skilled industry, we are used to putting other children’s needs above our own. Please know that we see this as a part of the job – caring for little people, often at cost to ourselves.

Schools should be incubators for entrepreneurs After the company I founded (JobCapital) reached $50 million in revenue, I went back to my primary and high schools in south-western Sydney to pay it forward. I wanted to inspire students, girls especially, that entrepreneurship is an exciting, rewarding career open to them, but there was one glaring problem: almost no-one knew what an entrepreneur was.

COVID-19: An opportunity to listen, learn, and lead with our children As the world continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, the implications for schools and families remain front and center. During this unprecedented time, we are hopeful that parents will remember the critical importance of listening to and learning from their children. 

Australian teacher named in the top 50 shortlist for us $1 million Global Teacher Prize 2020 Maths teacher Ashley Stewart from Newton Moore Senior High School, Bunbury, Western Australia, has been included in the top 50 shortlist for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize 2020 in partnership with UNESCO. Now in its sixth year, the US$1 million award is the largest prize of its kind and the 2020 winning ceremony will be held in London

NAPLAN cancelled NAPLAN is the latest Covid 19 casualty and will be cancelled this year because of the virus as well as the high absenteeism it is causing.