edna.edu.au

edna for schools is an edna newsletter published fortnightly during the Australian school year.
The newsletter calendar is available at http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/schooled/schools_news/pid/210

Theme - Sanitation
Diary dates
KLA focus - Music
Getting to know edna
Opportunities
Featured sites
News from our sponsors
Recently added resources
Just for fun

Newsletter theme: Sanitation

World Toilet Day is declared on November 19 of each year. The purpose of this day is to have people in all countries to take action, to increase awareness of the toilet user's right to a better toilet environment, and to demand for it from the toilet owners. As such, it is also the toilet user's duty to contribute towards its maintenance, cleanliness and hygiene.

edna has compiled a collection of quality resources related to the teaching of sanitation and associated health and disease. The theme page is available at:
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/schooled/school_theme_pages/sanitation

Diary dates

World Hello Day, 21 November 2008
http://url.edna.edu.au/fV3a

Last Day of Spring, 30 November 2008
http://url.edna.edu.au/WShn

National Coastcare Week, 1 December 2008
http://url.edna.edu.au/h6qr

Worlds AIDS Day, 1 December 2008
http://url.edna.edu.au/jYtf

Conferences and events in Australia

Intensive IWB Training, 17 November 2008 - ACT
http://url.edna.edu.au/NRFr

Sounds of Language Phonological Awareness and Language Development, 24 November 2008 – VIC
http://url.edna.edu.au/pFK4

Student Leadership, 24 November 2008 – Online only
http://url.edna.edu.au/ZJN5

Removing Barriers to Achievement, 27 November 2008 – QLD
http://url.edna.edu.au/DrZE

View all conferences and events listed with edna:
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/events

Conferences and Events Overseas
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/events/pid/2015

Early Childhood Events
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/ece/ece_events

Online Conferences and Events
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/events/pid/2016

KLA focus - Music

edna’s music theme page presents a collection of resources within the edna repository to songs, editing software, lesson plans and interactive sites.  These resources are available at:
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/schooled/school_theme_pages/music

Getting to know edna

A collection of short videos have been produced to help users get started and gain the benefits of me.edu.au, edna’s social networking site for educators.
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/help/me

Opportunities

First Australians DVD and study guides
A special educational DVD set of this landmark documentary series will soon be available. First Australians chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia from the perspective of its first people. The DVDs provide 18 minutes of extras for each episode, plus a 70 minute interactive section for the series. Price is by request depending on the institution, via Marcom on (07) 3340-8900 or online at:
http://www.marcom.com.au/product_details.php?prod=6SBFAUS

Study guides have also been produced and are available to teachers nationally via the Australian Teachers of Media at: http://www.metromagazine.com.au/studyguides/study.asp

Special Forever project – Registration open
http://www.specialforever.org.au/
Special Forever is an environmental communications project in which students engage in learning based around one of the project themes of managing resources, living together or time and change. Students are required to create written, visual or multimedia texts based on their learning to share with a wider audience through publication in the annual Special Forever book or on the project website. The project is open to primary schools in the Murray Darling Basin.

Teachers TV
http://www.teacherstv.com.au
Teachers TV stories are now available on Digital Channel 47 in the Sydney region. The aim of Teachers TV is to provide a valuable resource that helps teachers continue their professional development and glean inspiration from peers.   Teachers located around Australia can access the videos at www.teacherstv.com.au

Featured sites

OzProjects - December celebrations around the world
http://www.ozprojects.edu.au/course/view.php?id=51
This project has been created as place to share information and link to useful resources about December celebrations around the world. The project includes an online quiz, a link to Kerpoof Studio with an OzProjects log in so that we can create a gallery of pictures and links to many quality interactive resources about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, St Lucia's Day, Ramadan and Japanese New Year. Most of the resources are suitable for use on an interactive whiteboard. The project also encourages students and teachers to add information about their own December celebrations to a shared glossary.

News from our sponsors

Free PD from edna and Education.au
http://www.educationau.edu.au/
Owners of edna Groups and creators of OzProjects projects now have free access to the web conferencing tool Live Classroom, part of a suite of Voice Tools from educational technology company Wimba. Live Classroom is similar to conferencing software like Elluminate and Centra in that it allows for application sharing, web sharing, a shared whiteboard, text chat, voice chat and video chat.  It is the integration into the Moodle course management software upon which edna Groups and OzProjects is based that makes it an attractive option for our users. The edna team is offering free training to people who want to run Live Classroom sessions on their own.

Recently added resources

Additions to School Education
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/schooled/pid/17
This feature at edna allows visitors to check what has been added to the edna repository recently. The link above relates to additions to the school education part of the repository. For additions to the whole repository use http://url.edna.edu.au/wfsU

Australian sites

Dingo Creek
http://schools.ema.edu.au/
This resource is centred on the fictitious town of 'Dingo Creek.' The online game allows students to identify risks from natural disasters, face the effect of severe weather emergencies, reduce the risk to their communities and stay safe with their families.

Responding to young people disclosing sexual assault: A resource for schools
http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/wrap/w6.html
This resource from the Australian Institute of Family Studies provides information about young people's experiences of sexual assault, the barriers they face to disclosing such experiences, the process of disclosure for young people, and what you and your school can do to support somebody who has disclosed sexual assault.

International sites

Middlespot
http://www.middlespot.com
Middlespot is a search interface that allows users to see search results as screenshots, and save and annotate relevant individual results to collections in their own workpads.

Cassiopeia project
http://www.cassiopeiaproject.com/
The Cassiopeia project is an effort to make high definition science education videos available for free to anyone who wants them. Users are able to edit the videos for their own use, download clips and access video transcripts.

Just for fun

Hard Spell
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hardspell/hardspell_game.shtml
Hard Spell is a game in which students have to identify words spelt incorrectly.  Players can gain bonus points by spelling the word correctly within a time limit.

 

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The edna for schools newsletter does not seek to be comprehensive or authoritative and views expressed here are not necessarily the views of edna's stakeholders.

 

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