Never mind beautiful failures. University of Melbourne academic Tim Mayfield has deemed Australia a spectacular failure in terms of learning languages. Mayfield, who is executive director of the university’s Asia Education Foundation, noted that there has been a drastic decline ...
More »In The Classroom
‘Social media is the biro of today’: education expert
Just south of the border between England and Scotland and west of the rugged Pennines lies the University of Cumbria. There, this week, director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute professor John Hattie urged teachers to give social media a go in ...
More »Minecraft goes to school
The world of Minecraft is not flat, nor round. It’s square. Even the cupcakes at the computer game’s promotional stand at EduTECH were square. But, despite their unusual shape, the baked goods weren’t the focus. Rather, teachers’ eyes were glued ...
More »EduTECH: how to cultivate tomorrow’s leaders
Lee Watanabe Crockett strode onto the EduTECH stage to a track filled with electronic bleeps and loops. Wearing a Steve Jobs-like all black outfit and black-rimmed glasses, he looked and acted the part of a digital change maker. As president ...
More »Canberra Grammar students augment reality
Schoolkids may be eagerly awaiting the release of Pokémon GO’s new Fire and Ice event but students at Canberra Grammar School are already toying with augmented reality. Unlike Pokémon GO, however, Pearson’s HoloLens is educational and doesn’t require a mobile ...
More »Films and Auslan helping deaf voices be heard
One school’s decision to establish an Auslan program has proven to be a sound investment. On a Monday night in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, hundreds of primary school children, parents and teachers packed a cinema for the sixth annual KidzFlicks Sydney ...
More »USYD alumni seek to inspire, inform girls’ post-school choices
You probably wouldn't follow your careers advisor on Snapchat, but you might friend ENID Network. Sydney University graduates Nina Khoury (commerce and law) and Adriana Stefanatos (commerce) created the network: an all-female careers advice and networking platform for high school and university students. Instead of content-heavy formats or one-on-one interviews, ...
More »Support programs and out-of-hours learning essential to teaching kids from refugee backgrounds
According to the 2016 Census, there are currently around 9,200 refugee students enrolled in more 600 Victorian government schools. Five years ago, the Department of Education and Training (DET) initiated the Refugee Education Support Program (RESP) with the aim of ...
More »NAPLAN: a force for good or evil?
“I always say in jest to people, if you type NAPLAN in a Word document or on the computer, it autocorrects to NAPALM, which I think says it all.” Associate professor Michael Nagel, an educational psychologist at the University of ...
More »NAPLAN content might be discriminatory
Australia’s schools and their students are on trial once more: annual NAPLAN testing will be held next week. This year, however, an education lecturer wishes something would change. Dr Kathy Bates of Western Sydney University scrutinised how NAPLAN writing papers may ...
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