Articles

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.

Junior game designers create a reaction at PAX Gaming industry experts have commended winners of the 2017 Australian STEM Video Game Challenge for their remarkable levels of creativity and technical skill. This year's competition required students as young as 10 to design and build a video game addressing the theme 'reaction'.

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.

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.

Noel Pearson's literacy program funding extended Noel Pearson's Good to Great schools program, designed to boost remote students’ literacy and numeracy has been backed with a further $4.1 million from the Turnbull Government, following the release of an independent report highlighting its positive impacts.

‘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.

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.

Virtual puzzles can teach kids to solve real-world problems Swinburne researchers have shown that children can apply the skills they learn on a tablet to the real world. The research shows that when four to six-year-olds learn how to solve a puzzle using a tablet, they then apply this learning to the same puzzle in the physical world.

Neil Bramsen and Brett Mckay receive Prime Minister's Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary and Secondary Schools are awarded for excellence in teaching in any area of science that is part of the teacher’s state or territory science syllabus. The prize is awarded to teachers who have made an outstanding contribution to science education.

2.5m maths activities completed in Mathletics Challenge Over 6000 schools from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa took part in the recently completed 2017 Mathletics Tri-Nations Challenge. 1.5 million students were registered for the event and completed over 2.5m maths activities. Over half of the students on the winners list were Australian.

Notre Dame MA (Writing) to aid NSW teachers with English syllabus A new writing course introduced by The University of Notre Dame will equip NSW teachers to deal with major changes set to shake-up the English HSC syllabus next year. The new Master of Arts (Writing) program will play a key role in answering the professional development needs of English teachers

Confessions of an IT Manager It is clear that our students are moving into a workforce that is both unpredictable and precarious. With constant reminders that computers and automation will replace many jobs, we are being urged to ‘teach differently’. Schools are being challenged to create young minds that are rich in interpersonal skills, minds that are creative, collaborative, and above all, resilient.     What does this mean, and how can we achieve these objectives while addressing the needs of the curriculum