Weblog 8 - Professional Support Links

 
 

Professional Associations

ACCE - Australian Council for Computing in Education

The council provides a rich resource for teachers across Australia, with an independent association in each state.  On becoming a member, you receive a complimentary Journal subscription to Australian Educational Computing.  The site doesn't only cater for teachers, as to receive the best benefits from the site (such as perusing their databases) can only be accessed by members.  However if your only aim is to become a member for an online community, this site suggests 7 of them!

EdNA is primarily to be used as a resource to be used by the education community across Australia.  It encourages communication between education sectors.  Anyone can use the resources provided here, and are also encouraged to add to the site (after requesting to do so).  The site covers many areas of education, from providing online projects for students to complete, to facilitating adult education and higher education projects for the smart beans to continue on with.  There is also provision for schools wishing to collaborate in a joint online project (fantastic stuff).

This section of the Education Queensland website is mainly helping  teachers deal with a variety of issues that may come up in the classroom, and giving access to programs that help deal with the situations in all teaching areas, and ages (primary school) such as a program in grades 6 and 7 to help students make a decision about smoking.  There are also a list of resources that can be ordered and sent to Queensland State Schools, also for both secondary and primary schools.  There is also provision for teachers to make resource exchanges.

This site is dedicated for world-wide use of peer networking for Information Technology.  ISTE also provides books and programs, as well as professional development workshops etc., regarding educational technology on an international level.  From the examples of the Online Teaching Resources, there are a variety of Curriculum areas with tools or project ideas that may be helpful in learning topics within the areas, all with links to the resource source on the Internet.

• This sites is dedicated for the use of sharing resources for professional development opportunities.  However, people have to become a member.  It is a good resource for teachers, especially first year out, to get help on what computing teachers can to do in their classroom, and getting feedback on what work they have done (and posted).  The site makes use of drop boxes to navigate around the main points in the menu (somewhat disorientating at first).  People can become free members of their online community by just subscribing to their list.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Education Services - Australia Now Curriculum Activities

This is a project undertaken by the bureau to create lesson plans for teachers and activities for students in the Key Learning Areas.  As such the lessons are aimed at lower and middle secondary schools, but can be used to base lessons on for higher secondary school classes.  The site urges teachers who use the plans to read their monthly newsletter as lesson support material.  The lesson plans are listed under either Key Learning Areas or by Theme.

New Basics Project

• New basics is a project that aims to help teachers keep up to date with the current issues in educating the youth of today, in the world of today.  The site tries to provide teachers with the resources to keep their skills up to date, and inform them about the new discourses emerging from current trends in pop-culture and technology.  The site provides new teachers with help and advice on how to deal with everything, as well as providing for long service teachers a way to reflect on their teaching practices.

How Do Things Work?

This site was made to provide information on a myriad of subject areas, but this is linked to the computing and internet areas that they have provided.  The author(s) of this area go into extreme detail - even to the circuitry - of the subject being discussed.  A few example topics may be, How A Hard Disk Works, How Keyboards Work, and How Computer Viruses Work.  Included at the bottom of the page is a series of questions that are asked all the time, that also may help in teaching ideas.

• A site that allows teachers to create their own teaching tools, or to borrow one made by a different teacher from all over the world.  This site also provides space for your own classroom website, to include links to the activities you have made.