Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

Not suprisingly Twitter, Delicious, Youtube, Google Reader and Google Docs are in the top ten, more suprising is that Facebook doesn't make an appearance till number 31.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

View more documents from Jane Hart.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Trove: explore Australian collections and worldwide online sources

Trove is a new discovery service focused on Australia, Australians, and items found in Australian collecting institutions. It will provide a single point of access to resources currently discoverable via the National Library of Australia's multiple discovery services, and to digitised material freely available online anywhere in the world.

The primary purpose of this first prototype version is to develop the technical framework to support this new discovery service, and as far as possible ensure that the technologies we are using will provide acceptable performance, especially for record updates. The design so far is based primarily on decisions made within the project team to allow rapid development of the prototype. What is there now will form the basis for feedback, ideas for improvement, and input into the design of new features from a wide range of people.

The system is a work in progress, and the National Library of Australia have made it available for you to follow their development. The prototype will be constantly updated as it evolves into a system planned for release into production in the third quarter of this year.

Try searching for Ethel Turner (author of 7 Little Australians) and see the range of material from newspapers, images, books, journal articles, sound, video, maps, diaries and much more.

What to find out more: http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/gateways/issues/101/story01.html

data.australia.gov.au

data.australia.gov.au is the home of Australian government public information datasets. You can make government information even more useful by mashing-up the data to create something new and exciting! Make sure you pay attention to the licence attached to the datasets you are interested in using. Each licence should make clear what you can and can’t do with the data. If you’re unsure, please contact the contributing agency.

Foreign Language Resources at Learner.org

This is a useful resource for anyone who is learning or teaching foreign languages:

Foreign Language Teacher Resources.

Learner.org is the location of Annenerg Media's teacher resources. They aim to provide multimedia and telecommunications resources to teachers in order to "advance excellent teaching in American schools". The material they provide covers a variety of subject areas and a range from kindergarten through to college students.

The Foreign Language resources consist of a number of television programmes created to teach Spanish, German and French through open learning, as well as workshops looking specifically at how to teach languages in classrooms.

Unfortunately, not all resources can be accessed from outside North America. For example, French in Action can only be accessed from this site by American and Canadian users (which is a pity). However, most of the material is accessible in Australia, and it's worth taking a closer look.

Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators

Across OECD countries, governments are seeking policies to make education more effective while searching for additional resources to meet the increasing demand for education.

The 2009 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance. It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems and represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally.

This year’s edition of Education at a Glance is published at a time when all eyes are focused on addressing the financial crisis and its economic and social fallout. Presenting data up to 2007, this edition cannot yet assess the impact of the crisis on education systems, but its indicators provide insights about how investments in human capital can contribute to the recovery. New features in the 2009 edition include an extension of the analysis of the economic returns to education to social outcomes; new data on long-term unemployment and involuntary part-time work among young adults; an analysis of the spending choices that countries make between factors such as teacher compensation, instruction time and class sizes; an analysis on teaching practices as well as teacher appraisal and feedback based on TALIS; and a review of excellence in education for 15-year-olds based on PISA.

Future of scholarly journals publishing among social science and humanities associations

This site provides free access to the full text of a report by Mary Waltham published by the National Humanities Alliance (ISA) in 2009. The 53 page report discusses recent scholarly publishing trends in the USA. It focuses on the journal output from a number of key organisations including: American Anthropological Association; American Academy of Religion; American Economic Association; American Historical Association; American Political Science Association; American Sociological Association; American Statistical Association; Modern Language Association. Topics explored include trends in scholarly journal publication, the impact of open access upon publication, trends in revenue and income to publishers. Comparison is made with similar titles in the sciences.

http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/hssreport.pdf
Copyright 2006-2009

Griffiths University journalism students to be marked on Tweets

BRISBANE university students are the first in the country to be assessed on the social networking site Twitter.

About 340 first-year Griffith University journalism students have to Tweet ongoing assessment pieces this semester.

Lecturer Dr Jacqui Ewart said she understood Griffith to be the first university to use the social media tool to test students.

"We thought it was important to introduce it because increasingly employers are asking employees to use these kind of (social networking) mechanisms and marketing and promotional devices," Dr Ewart said.

Students were asked to Tweet about the challenges they faced when writing a series of news stories.

"We basically got them to Tweet about the processes they use and to think about the problems they encountered and how they overcame them," Dr Ewart said.

Want to read more

Transforming Indigenous studies through a new teaching approach

In the spirit of Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations, a team of academics from The University of Queensland is set to evaluate how problem-based learning (PBL) is used in the teaching of Indigenous Australian Studies.

Based at UQ's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit and led by Dr Liz Mackinlay, the team has received a $220,000 grant from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.

Project Manager Dr Katelyn Barney said there were similarities between problem-based learning and Aboriginal methods of knowledge transfer, suggesting it was a suitable approach for teaching Indigenous Studies.

A website maintained by the project member at UNSW will share the progress and results of this project, and provide a forum for discussion with other universities that engage in teaching Indigenous Studies on an ongoing basis.

The study will begin in January 2010.

Read more at: http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=19853

ICT and professional learning

This edna theme page is a collection of resources related to ICT Professional Development in each State and Territory of Australia. It includes links to ICT teacher assessment tools, tutorials and related training opportunities in each state

Flow TV

"Flow is an online journal of television and media studies launched in October 2004. Flow’s mission is to provide a space where researchers, teachers, students, and the public can read about and discuss the changing landscape of contemporary media at the speed that media moves."

This online journal has been produced by the folk at the University of Texas in Austin, and it looks like a great resource for anyone studying media or social sciences (not to mention anyone who is interested in working in the television/media industries).

It's something of a student production, as it is "coordinated and edited by graduate students in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and is published bi-weekly", but it's a high class effort and definitely worth taking seriously.

It also provides the ability for readers to join in the discussion by commenting on the stories.

There's an interesting range of articles including movies, television, sport and culture.

Historical Statistics Online @ ABS

In response to increasing demand to access historical statistics on the Web, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has recently digitised an important compendium of Australian and New Zealand colonial data, A Statistical account of the seven colonies of Australasia.

The historical account (and its later title, Statistical account of Australia and New Zealand) was compiled between 1890 and 1904 by the New South Wales Statistician, Timothy A. Coghlan. The eleven volumes bring together statistics for each of the colonies of Australia and New Zealand and are complemented by analysis and commentary. The publication also includes chapters on political divisions, areas and boundaries, climate, parliaments and defence much like in the current Year Book Australia.

Other historical data available from ABS includes the Demography Bulletin which includes detailed population and vital statistics data for the period 1900 - 1971 and Labour reports, covering the period 1911 - 1997. See the full list of titles already available, as well as those which will be available later in the year.

Source: ABS