A lot has been happening! What follows are highlights from the past three weeks.

Business Studies

Mr. Freeman’s Business Studies class has requested a Wiki site to use as a knowledgebase. Called Adopt-a-Business, each student will investigate core aspects of high profile Australian companies. Mr. Freeman will use QANTAS as a case study to which students can compare the strategies and performance of their companies.

Maths

Ms. Culey’s Year 8 maths class continue to use Web-based resources as they study topics like speed, averages and ratios. Several Web activity pages have been created to support this: How Fast is That? Hotlist and an enhanced Subject Sampler on the importance of numbers. Newly developed is a Maths Weblog that acts as a main online gateway for their work. Cuurently called the Number Crunchers, about half the students met today with Mr. March to begin brainstorming important topics related to numbers that students could focus on to create a ClassAct Portal. We will continue to meet on Fridays to grow this site and our contribution to the world of numbers.

History / Geography

Mr. Freeman and Mr. March continue to meet regularly to develop technology enhanced approaches across the humanities curriculum. A draft document outlining the scope of a common set of thinking and learning themes for use across the years and content areas may be part of the outcome of these discussions. This kind of approach will likely inform the professional development day on October 16.

Science

Mr. Bevan continues to steam ahead on his use of Weblogs. His Year 7, 8 and 10 students share resources they find online and then comment on their value. Take a look at the general Science Blog to see an example.

English

A proposal has been tabled to the IT Committee for Mr. Graham who wants to enhance his presentations with interactive media. Music, video, photographs, artworks, historical documents are just some of the Rich, Real and Relevant ways Mr. Graham will infuse technology into classroom learning.

ICT

Mr. Bright has been very helpful getting the latest versions of the FireFox browser installed in Lab 18. This will help students use features that many Web sites offer that aren’t supported by older versions of Internet Explorer.

The Library

Mrs. Anderson has requested a Weblog for the David Wright Library where she can post updates about new acquisitions and items related to the life of the college library.

Curriculum

Mr. March has begun sketching out a potential interdisciplinary project for Year 9 called MyPlace.com. It’s inspired by the phenomenon called MySpace and the whole online experience many of today’s students engage in. Furthermore, the project will seek to expose students to significant issues that will have an impact on their lives. These include topics like Globalisation, Australian demographics, technology and current geopolitical events. Stay tuned for more on this topic shortly.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 2:17 am and is filed under updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.