Gracing our currency’s $50 note is an iconic figure from the early 20th century who became known as the ‘Australian Leonardo da Vinci’. History knows him as David Unaipon, a Ngarrindjeri man. He was an Indigenous polymath who gained a reputation ...
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Award-winning app gives early alerts about autism
A new app designed to detect autism early in life, offering hope to the thousands of families with young children pending diagnosis, took home honours at the Australia Information Industry Association iAwards. ASDetect is available free and operates on both iOS and ...
More »How Australia’s schools produce ‘Beautiful Failures’
It’s her manifesto on everything wrong with Australia’s education system. In Lucy Clark’s nonfiction book Beautiful Failures, she examines “how the quest for success is harming our kids”. Clark says the intense pressures and stresses of high school led to ...
More »Victoria allocates $27 million to train STEM teachers
With federal Labor pledging $393 million to train 25,000 specialist STEM teachers, its Victorian state counterpart has already allocated $27 million to train these teachers – via a program to be rolled out through Deakin University. The Victorian education minister, ...
More »‘Sound Storm’ game helps kids fight hearing issue
Some parents may now want their kids playing more video games. Well one game anyway. The federally funded National Acoustics Laboratory (NAL) has developed "Sound Storm", a game app that it says improves the listening ability of children with spatial processing disorder. ...
More »Recognise teachers’ areas of excellence vary: Rickards
Excellent teachers need to be recognised for their work and for their strengths in various areas, but not with performance pay, the dean of one of Australia’s top teacher schools has argued. Melbourne Graduate School of Education professor Field Rickards said good ...
More »Refugee advocates lobbying for student loan changes
One of the leaders behind a program mentoring high school students from refugee backgrounds is marking this year’s World Refugee Week by calling for those on temporary protection visas and asylum seekers to be eligible for federal government assistance to meet ...
More »The ‘difficult’ children need teachers the most
"They’re never going to do well on NAPLAN or any other goddamned level of academic excellence, but they still matter.” That’s Maggie Dent, a former high school English teacher – now an author and parenting specialist – calling on teachers, ...
More »Abolish homework, punishments and rewards: Kohn
‘Let’s get rid of homework and grades.’ Any teacher who told a classroom this would probably become very popular with the kids. ‘Now let’s get rid of giving rewards if you do what I tell you.’ The kids may scratch ...
More »Can smartphone apps solve Georgie’s long list of problems?
Georgie, aged 16, has depression. She also has frequent panic attacks, she’s very stressed out, she just broke up with a high school sweetheart, some of her friends have depression, she doesn’t often sleep, and when she does, she snores loudly. Georgie ...
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