Articles

New HSC music program puts Australian composers centre stage HSC music students and teachers are being given access to the thinking and methods of some of Australia's leading composers in a new program developed by education academics at the University of Technology Sydney.

ACEL 2018 Conference theme is 'Trust your experience – setting the learning agenda' The venue for next year's Conference is the Melbourne Convention Centre from 3–5 October. The meeting will discuss the process of learning through experience, providing delegates with an opportunity to develop their professional knowledge and apply this knowledge to schools and systems.

Make My Idea winners will have clever concepts prototyped Make My Idea is a national competition for student inventors. Winners will see their innovative idea transformed into an early stage prototype model, or 3D or 2D design, and have their ideas shown live on YouTube.

Context, context, context: implementing coaching in schools Prof Christian van Nieuwerburgh (van Nieuwerburgh, 2012, p.17) defines coaching in education as: … a one-to-one conversation that focuses on the enhancement of learning and development through increasing self-awareness and a sense of personal responsibility, where the coach facilitates the self-directed learning of the coachee through questioning,

NAPLAN tests and technical requirements online Teachers, students and parents can become familiar with NAPLAN Online by completing mini-tests available on the NAPLAN public demonstration site, located within the NAP website. Visit the NAP website to find out the minimum technical requirements for completing NAPLAN Online.

Early childhood investment wasted without quality educators A new paper by Mitchell Institute at Victoria University finds that quality is lagging in key early childhood education and care areas and improving teaching should be a top priority. Highly skilled educators are the most important ingredient but many early childhood educators don’t receive sufficient training or support.

‘Equality’ trends in school yard conversation Oxford University Press has announced the 2017 Australian Children’s Word of the Year and it's... equality. Primary school children were invited to take part in the inaugural competition. Participants nominated their ‘Word’ through a piece of free writing up to 500 words based on their chosen word.

MLC girls win in VIC Formula 1 STEM Challenge Three student teams from Melbourne's MLC have placed 1st, 3rd and 4th in the VIC regional competition. F1 in Schools in the world’s largest STEM competition, involving over nine million students who design, build, test and race miniature F1 cars.

Islamic School of Canberra loses federal funds Following an internal review by the DET, the Islamic School of Canberra will lose its Commonwealth Funding effective 16 December. The decision, announced by Minister Simon Birmingham on Friday 27 October, upheld the original decision to revoke the authority’s approval under the Australian Education Act 2013.

Indigenous students failing to make the maths grade Indigenous students are eight times more likely to fall behind in maths by Year 9 than non-indigenous students, dampening regional innovation according to AMSI's 2017 Discipline Profile of the Mathematical Sciences.

New suite of STEM experiences at Vic Scienceworks Museums Victoria has announced two new permanent exhibitions and a suite of parallel programs at Scienceworks to prepare the next generation for a world of science, technology, engineering and maths. Beyond Perception: Seeing the Unseen will open in April 2018.

Getting to know parents A friend who was employed in a large retail store for almost 20 years told me that the first lesson she learned from her manager when she started was “A lot of customers are sometimes right.”      She said this realisation made her able to deal effectively with the difficult customers, the impatient customers, the angry customers – as well as with the lovely ones.