Week 4 - Dust Echoes

Today's exercise required students to retell a story from the Dust Echoes site. Dust Echoes is a series of twelve animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem Land in Northern Australia that enables students to explore a range of indigenous related themes such as Dreamtime and Symbolism.

The site is extremely well done with excellent soundtrack and graphics styles. However, the content is quite dark and may only be suitable for the higher grades.

One way to utilise the site is through children creating a storyboard using Inspiration and Paint (my attempt is below). I chose the Brolga Song which investigates relationships and connections with the natural world. In case you can't tell from the sotry board, the story is about Victor (a song man) who has no Father or Grandfather. Without these figures in his life, he lacks a connection to the land and starts to search for the spirit of his Father and Grandfather through the animals. He finally finds the spirits of Grandfather and Father in two Brolgas. They appear to answer his questions and help him regain his connection with the land.

We then investigated the use of M&M's (or anything similar if worried about allergies) in a graph exercise using Excel. I chose an exercise that would require students to sort the M&M's by colour and count the groupings. This information can then be directly placed in Excel or placed on a parer table/chart. Using a pack of M&M's my Chart is below.

This exercise is ideal for investigation into chance and risk activities, data collection and graph development. The M&M website also has a little educational cotnent which may be useful for further extension activies for studnets.

Greg gave another good lesson with some great content which will be really valuable when I get that elusive job.

Week 3 - The Frog Jump

Today we were given a design brief to create a contraption which makes a paper frog. We were told that all we could use was a: paper frog; rubber band; cardboard; and sticky tape. Theactivity was accompanied by an Investigate/Design, Produce and Analyse/Evaluate recording sheet.

Sean and I employed a catapult system design which worked with differing success (see the picturebelow). Interesting to see all the other approaches employed throughout the class. Makes for an interesting activity for the studentsbeing both fun and educational. However, while it was a fun activity, the real valueof this exercise would come from students completing the sheet and developing their higher order thinking skills. Importantly the process is cyclical in that if it doesn't work the first time, or could be improved, students have another attempt. The degree of difficulty could also be increased for those students which finish early e.g. tell those students that they have to redesign their creation to make the frog jump 1 metre.

Today's other activity focused around the use of QUIA which facilitates the development of web based educational activities. Our first task was to create our own quiz.

I chose a native animal quiz (What is My Favourite Animal?) which you see below. Great activity for kids, though the 30 day trial limitation is an issue. Good for kids to get to know each other though may create a bit of competition by having kids have to get the right answer -fear of failure.

We also created a few games on QUIA. I created a politically correct version of Hangman (see the piccy below taken from my phone). Thought this was a great activity for kids to work in pairs with both students developing their own themed hangman and then testing each other - will be great for spelling and creativity!!

QUIA is a great educational tool that can be used by the teacher or the student. Will definitely employ QUIA when (and if) I get a teaching job.

This week's lecture, which wasn't really touched on during the workshop, was on the protection of students online. After reading through the information and trying to monitor children on computers while on Practicum, I realise that this is a huge task! While I can control the information that I provide to chidlren (e.g. verifying the content of a website prior to conducting activites based on the website) I beleive it will be particualry difficult to stop children searching the web themselves and inadvertently coming across inappropriate content. This issue was highlighted to me when my Practicum class informed me that they all had FaceBook accounts. While Acceptable Use Agreements and Codes of Practice are a useful tools, vigilance on behalf of the teacher and parents will still be required.

Week 2 - Getting a Job

Today's workshop provided advice on how to get a job, what to do, and what not to do.

Given the number of students graduating it seems like a mammoth task to get an interview for a job. Having applied for jobs in the public service in a previous life, I know what an effort preparing job applications can be. A good way to think about applications are that they are the cheese in your mouse trap.

So in a perfect world, you do a whiz bang application and the school gives you a call to come in for an interview. It seems like quite a scary process exposing yourself to a selection panel who have likely had years of experience is quite daunting. Greg's advice is to be well prepared (good advice!) and to practice answering mock questions in the mirror. I have done this before, and while I felt like an idiot, it does able you to respond a little more quickly and coherently to the questions posed at the interview. My thoughts are that even if I don't get the job, the interview process is great practice for the next interview, and the next interview. Check out the Victorian Department of Education's website for further information on how to get a teaching job in Victoria.


Greg also provided some interview advise that seems like common knowledge but it is worth remembering. For example, do not wear too much perfume and aftershave, make sure you are on time etc.

After the workshop, I think what is needed most is to sit down and think about the interview process and pitcure what could happen, what questions could be asked etc. I found this on the St Patrick's College website, and though not Australian, is designed for Pre-Service teachers and the interview process. Check it out!


The second half of the workshop looked at the use of MS Publisher by students for an integrated approach to teaching and learning. Our task was to create a tourist brochure about a place where we would like to visit. My brochure was a mock surf safari brochure.



















I found Publisher extremely easy to use, and think it would be a fantastic tool for students to use in the classroom. Greg also showed us how we could use Publisher to develop our own e-portfolio to show at job interviews. While I thought the concept of an e-portfolio discussed in the lecture was a bit cheesy, I will trust Greg's experience on this one and spend some time in the next few weeks to develop my own e-portfolio. I find the Commonwealth Department of Education's website to be really useful in understanding and developing e-portfolios - check it out if your are interested.

Yet another valuable lesson Greg!