NSW Public Schools - Critical Elements of Curriculum Design (1)

A useful extract from: Curriculum Support for teaching in English 7-12. Volume 14, No.4, 2009

This overview is an extract from a segment in this publication relating to programming for Gifted and Talented students. It is in fact the template for effective programming for all students.

Curriculum design
"The design process should first specify what students are to achieve. The BOS syllabuses determine the scope and sequence of learning, and before a unit of work begins, teachers should decide how they will know whether students have achieved the outcomes. The syllabus outcomes are the minimum that students are expected to achieve, and can be modified or extended to meet the learning needs of gifted and talented students. If the outcomes are modified, the teaching and learning activities and assessment must also
be modified.

The second element of curriculum design is the NSW Quality Teaching (QT) model, which is a generalised model of pedagogy based on teacher effectiveness research (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2003). The dimensions of the QT model, Intellectual quality, Significance and Quality learning environment, need to be interpreted in the light of the needs and characteristics of gifted and talented students.

The third element of curriculum design is the use of curriculum models such as those of Bloom (1956), Maker (1982) and Williams (1993), which provide ideas for the modification of curriculum content, instruction, students’ products and learning environments to develop engaging and challenging activities. "

Teaching and Learning in a Digital World (3)

This post includes thoughts on teaching practice, digital literacy and online safety.  You may want to catch up with the previous post in this series of loosely related topics.  I also have a series of posts with a focus on online safety.

How to evaluate the best toolkit for your class by Dean Groom.

UK teacher union supporting teachers when they have problems with social networking websites.

K-12 web 2.0 debate. Learning to communicate.

Curriculum teaches digital literacy and citizenship by Larry Magid.  This may be a repeat link and it worth reading.

Privacy chiefs keep watch over Facebook. 


Digital learning and teaching is a topic that is attracting a lot of attention and creative thinking.

More UK Learning Resources - Worth an Explore

In my previous post, I introduced a number of excellent UK websites with numerous useful learning resources.  You may want to explore these first. UK Learning Resources - So Many Gems
I have since done a little more exploring and found some more must-visit websites.

Birmingham Grid for Learning

Devon subject and specialist areas

Riding LEA- lots to explore here

Hertfordshire Grid for Learning

Thinking about thinking

The London Grid for Learning

Luton - teaching resources

Kent ICT subjects

Middlesbrougth Learners resources

South Gloucestershire learning

Welsh Grid for Learning


Enjoy ...

Writing Well Online in the NSW, Department of Education and Trainng

The Department has reminded all users about effective communication guidelines for online publications.  There are several files for download.

Well worth a read.

Online communications guidelines

Teaching and Learning in a Digital World (2)

This post is a bit of a mish-mash of links on topics that I feel are linked to this braod issue.

Effective teaching and learning - quick start guides provide an introduction to a range of practices.

Report from the learning and the brain conference

Teachers are learners too - an interesting blog post.

Transforming Learning ... No, Really an interesting post by Will Richardson.

Adobe Creative Commons resources released after the recent Adobe Leaders Conference.

Paul Wilson prezi for a School Development Day provides inspiration for teachers to update their practice.

Our children telling us how they want to learn. Links to the recent Kaiser Foundation Report.

An initiative from Calgary, Canada: High schools aim to have every pupil using a laptop

Classroom set-up tool another interactive from Scholastic.

"Wolfram|Alpha is a free online computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base."
Check out the educators page.

The issue of who leads with school libraries

Teaching only to where the teacher feels comfortable.

Social networking in schools - benefits v risks

Check the hype - there's no such thing as "cyber"


I have put this post together over time.  Please let me know of any dead links.

"Hands-On" Learning with Laptops and "i"devices (4)

Generation i will grow on touchscreens and the Gartner Report that is the source of this article.

Iowa 1:1 Institute, Van Meter initiatives.

Not a lot of new initiatives reported lately, I'll open the post and add to it as they appear.

#ACEC2010 - Gary Stager - Views on Australian Education

DERNSW - Gary Stager's view

... and yet more, a post by Martin Levins on Gary Stager's views.

Reflections from Jenny Luca.

Others have since posted about the value of the conference with no reference to Gary Stager.

and I say ... does anyone really care!

Go public education ... the Digital Education Revolution is happening now in a public school near you.

Online Safety - More about Key Concepts (3)

Read all my previous online safety posts, to start your exploration.

Young adults care about online privacy

Facebook has done more work on this topic a with a new Safety Center.

Teaching about web includes the troublesome parts. A post that reports on the value of the new Common Sense Media materials on online safety. Please note this is a New York Times article and will be archived by the paper.

Building ethical learning communities - a hotlist on preventing plagiarism by Teacher Librarian, Audrey Nay

ipad family safety tips

More online safety and policy tips to consider:

• Loss or disclosure of confidential information – this needs to be considered from the organisation's perspective and also their clients' perspective
• Discrimination claims – from within and outside the organisation
• Reputation risk – who is saying what about you or the organisation
• Vicarious liability- liability through a third party
• Privacy breaches
• Defamation

Educators are always writing on this topic, look out for another in this series.

The unsurprising story of ning - Remember, it's all about money.

 ning social networking groups have been a favourite with educators for several years now.

There seems to be surprise, disbelief and even horror spreading among early adopters in the education community.

I wonder, do educators forget that these services and products belong to businesses? You have to make your money somewhere if a business is to be sustainable.  Even Twitter has a business model ready to launch. Etherpad has been swallowed up by google.

The story so far in the blogosphere:

A post by Steve Hargadon ning changes and the impact on educational communities

The company has written: ning update rolling out in full

ning eliminates free networks, we think.

Alternatives to ning by Wes Fryer

ning gives educators the heave ho!

RIP ning: Is that such a bad thing?


Will be interesting to watch developments.

Will the company be influenced by the outcry of educators.

What's on the Horizon for Ed-Tech in K-12? - Digital Education - Education Week

What's on the Horizon for Ed-Tech in K-12? - Digital Education - Education Week:

Education Week reports:

"The Austin, Texas-based New Media Consortium, in conjunction with the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking, released the second annual Horizon Report: The K-12 Edition Monday. The report is written by a board of international experts in educational technology who identify key trends and challenges facing K-12 ed-tech, as well as outline which technology trends are most likely to affect K-12 students in the next one to five years.

Not surprisingly, cloud computing and collaborative environments made the cut, with the experts predicting that both will be adopted into mainstream education within the next year. Game-based learning and mobile devices will be adopted within two to three years, the report says, and augmented reality as well as flexible displays are expected to be adopted within four to five years."

Now, click the title to check out the whole report.

What do you think about how this affects your teaching and professional learning?

Blogging with Students - A Powerful Literacy Activity

Using blogs with students is still a hot topic.

Sue Waters posted this earlier in the year. It is a guest post by Kathleen McGeady.

Students needed to be skilled to make contributions to class blogs. Providing guidelines or scaffolds to ensure that student comments are of good quality is a starting point that will contribute much to student literacy development.

Blogging in class is about literacy and learning.

Particularly, at the secondary level, if students are to learn (content and skills) from having their own blogs, then the process needs to be scaffolded by each teacher to suit the learning outcomes of individual subjects or key learning areas.

A model reflecting the types of texts that students need to succeed in each subject will ensure maximum improvements in reading and writing skills.

Top 10 YouTube Videos About The Web

Top 10 YouTube Videos About The Web:

Another ReadWriteWeb gem, the company writes:

"Our selection of the 10 most popular YouTube videos about the Web is of course based on page views. But we also filtered the results for videos that are most true to explaining the big-picture version of what the Web is. The selection includes some of the most creative ways the growth of the Web has ever been explained."


Follow the title link and have a look. Some are very well-known now.

Online Safety - More about the Key Concepts (2)

Take a look at my previous posts on this topic. If you are a teacher, are these ideas known to you? What model do you use?

Evaluating websites for "classroom" use: What classroom is that?

Student Learning in Digital World - Online Safety

Students registering to use web2.0 tools at school

Google makes YouTube Safer

When evaluating websites, first recognise that websites today are not just static content.

Websites that involve media creation and sharing require thorough review. A checklist will require these basic requirements and risks to be assessed.

• child protection - personal information security
• age-eligibility requirements that may be hidden in lengthy documents
• privacy relevant to age
• duty of care - online bullying opportunities
• data security - security of the enterprise's intellectual property
• network security - security of access
• location information - geo. services showing where people are
• ungrouped objectionable content that cannot be effectively blocked

Browsers may not be aware that websites expose them to threats including: phishing, malware, spyware, viruses, botnets and many new techniques developed by criminals each day

So you want your students to play subject-related learning games ...
A games website often has lots of games, many not useful for student learning. In fact, the website may be more designed to raise advertising revenue. Games on a website may redirect to different websites and this is often not obvious.

It is a professional responsibility of all teachers to be aware of these factors and keep up to date with the dynamic, unpredictable nature of an evolving internet