Khan Academy

Resource: Khan Academy

Khan
Description: Khan Academy is free online resource that helps the user develop their mathematic content knowledge. The content ranges from basic early math, such as counting, all the way up to calculus and beyond. Teachers can set up classrooms to monitor how their students are going as the site highlights areas of strength and weaknesses within its users. Not only is this targeted at children, teachers can also use this resource to develop their own content knowledge. Khan Academy has now also branched out beyond maths with its learning content as it now also offers learning areas in Science, Arts, Computing to name a few.

Subject: Technologies
Strand: Digital Technologies
Sub-Strand: Digital Technologies Knowledge and Understanding
Identify, use and explore digital systems (hardware and software components) for a purpose (ACTDIK001)
Year Levels: F-10
Link to Resource: https://www.khanacademy.org/
General Capabilities: Literacy, Numeracy, Information and Communication Technology Capabilities (ICT), Critical and Creating thinking.
Links to other Learning Areas: Mathematics, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, The Arts.
Review: I believe this website is a great technology resource for mathematical learning. I have already implemented this in my classrooms and have found the feedback that it provides very helpful for planning future lesson content. It has been well received by the students so far and they seem to enjoy the points reward system. This website is American based so on occasion there can be grammatical discrepancies between Australian and US English. Also as the content is US based so it does not align identically with the Australian Curriculum. However, as mathematics is universal this is not a problem.

Screenshots:

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Students can use a scratchpad to help them with their working out.

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Khan Academy offers supporting videos and gives hints to assist student learning.

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The videos play directly on the site and students are able to pause, rewind, skip or re-watch the video to their needs.

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Clicking on hints provides support to the student without giving the answers directly.

Video:


References:
Australiancurriculum.edu.au,. (2015). Home – The Australian Curriculum v7.5. Retrieved 10 August 2015, from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/
Khan Academy,. (2015). Khan Academy. Retrieved 10 August 2015, from https://www.khanacademy.org

 

YouTube,. (2015). Salman Khan talk at TED 2011 (from ted.com). Retrieved 10 August 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk

Milk Cycle

Resource: Milk Cycle

Link: http://www.dairy.edu.au/discoverdairy/learning-resources/interactives/milk-cycle

Year level: Years 3 and 4

Subject: Technologies

Strand: Design and Technologies

Sub-strand: Design and Technologies Knowledge and Understanding

Content descriptor: Investigate food and fibre production and food technologies used in modern and traditional societies (ACTDEK012)

Cross-curricular priorities: Sustainability

General capabilities:

  • Literacy
  • Numeracy
  • Information and communication technology capability
  • Critical and creative thinking
  • Personal and social capabilities

Links to other learning areas:

  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Science
  • Health

Resource Description:

This is an animated resource that explains how milk is produced and the technologies involved in getting it from the farm to people at home. This resource explains how cows are milked and then how the milk is stored, transported, tested, pasteurised, homogenised, packaged and delivered as well as the different technologies used at each stage.

Each stage is explained through the use of a description with age appropriate language and an animated diagram. This resource can be used as a whole class by displaying it on the interactive whiteboard and discussing each stage or individually or in pairs by allowing students to access the website on computers and moving through the information at their own pace.

Studystack Study Tool

Studystack 

URL: http://www.studystack.com

“Free flashcards for serious fun studying. Create your own or use sets shared by other students and teachers”

FlashCards, Crosswords, Hangman and other activities to make memorization fun.
StudyStack helps students to memorize anything. Browse the millions of flashcards which have already been added to the site or create your own. For each set of flashcards the site automatically creates several other activities including matching, crossword, hangman, and scrambled word. Many great game options for your flash cards to make study time more fun. Categories of flashcard sets include: Literacy, Mathematics, Science, History, ICT, Geography, Religion, Languages, Arts, Health.

Students begin by setting up their own free account which can be monitored by teachers. This resource can be used as an introductory lesson for a topic (diagnostic activity) or for revising knowledge and testing. Students can create their own flashcards online or use the flashcards given. This site is filled with study tools to help students learn information in a variety of subject areas. Heaps of topics related to geography, history, math, languages, science and more are linked with collections of learning tools that include virtual study cards, matching games, word search puzzles, and hangman games. There is something here for nearly all subject areas and grade levels. Students can select the tool that works best for them and work at their own pace until they are satisfied with their progress. If you can’t find a stack to fit your needs, you can edit existing lists or create customized study stacks. The site also allows you to print out study cards, or export flash cards to study them via iPad or iPod.

Strand: Digital Technologies:

knowledge and understanding:

Investigate the main components of common digital systems, their basic functions and interactions, and how such digital systems may connect together to form networks to transmit data (ACTDIK014).

Digital systems:  The components of digital systems: hardware, software and networks and their use.

Processes and production skills:

Collecting, managing and analysing data

Acquire, store and validate different types of data and use a range of commonly available software to interpret and visualise data in context to create information (ACTDIP016)

Band Level: F- 7

Links to other learning areas:
Literacy
Mathematics
Science
History
ICT
Geography
Religion
Languages
Arts
Health

Strand: Design and Technologies :

Knowledge and understanding:

Investigate characteristics and properties of a range of materials, systems, components, tools and equipment and evaluate the impact of their use (ACTDEK023)

Processes and production skills:

Generate, develop, communicate and document design ideas and processes for audiences using appropriate technical terms and graphical representation techniques (ACTDEP025)

Band Level: F- 7

Links to other learning areas:
Literacy
Mathematics
Science
History
ICT
Geography
Religion
Languages
Arts
Health

Introducing Studystack:

How to get started with Studystack:

Screen Shot 2015-08-06 at 1.37.30 pm

When welcomed to Studystack users can start to create their own FlashCards and share them with others. To start simply click on the large flashcard to flip it over. Then click the green, red, or yellow box to move the current card to that box. Below the flashcards are blue buttons for other activities that you can use to study the same information such as quizzes and games:

 

 

 

Screen Shot 2015-08-06 at 1.21.43 pm

 

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Screen Shot 2015-08-06 at 1.21.36 pm

 

 

StudyStack’s founder, John Weidner, started the web site as a hobby out of his desire to contribute to the educational community. StudyStack has operated as a free advertiser supported business – which is the price preferred by most students and teachers. StudyStack’s plan for the future is to continue to add innovative ways for users to study both on the studystack web site and with apps on tablets and smart phones.

 

Enjoy!

Design and Technologies- resource

Subject: Design and Technologies

Strand: Year 5-6

Identify how designers and technologists address competing considerations and trade-offs in the design of products, services, environments and systems. 

Substrand:

Generate, develop, evaluate, communicate and document design ideas and processes for a range of audiences using some relevant technical terminology. 

Link: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/lessonplans/technology/webdesign.html (lesson plan for this task)

Dreamweaver: http://www.adobe.com/au/products/dreamweaver.html

(downloadable for free)- instructions, links, resources for this app all available

 

Cross Curricular:

All three cross curriculum priorities could be incorporated into the designs created by the students as the information and creativity is selected by the students where they can address any issue or topic relevant.

The resource also requires all seven general capabilities (Literacy, numeracy, ICT capability, critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding) as students can explore different topics through creation.

Other subjects:

Dreamweaver is an application which integrates across all areas of the curriculum as primarily the basis to this app is to create an informational website accessible by a number of audiences therefore can be covering any topic such as science topics, experiments, stories, creative art ideas, history and many more.

Activity:

A suitable activity using this application:

  • Working by yourself or in a team of 2, your mission is to create your own web page. We will use Dreamweaver to create the web pages but you are free to use other programs such as Photoshop & Paint to draw pictures or make fancy graphics.
  • Important things to think about include: the structure of a website, will it be dynamic or a classic tree hierarchy? How are websites viewed on the Internet? (through web browsers on computers, mobile phones etc). Why is it important to make your website easy for others to use? (otherwise they might not visit again). What kind of things can you remember to do to make sure this happens? (easy layout, menus etc).
  • Think of a suitable audience for your webpage and decide on a topic that would be of interest. Using various resources gather information on this topic, sort this information and organise it on the webpage in an exciting and informative way. There can be games, activities, quizes, videos, pictures etc.Science Kids Lesson plan

How to use this resource: After downloading this resource it will give clear instructions on the application and information on the different links and parts to this resource.

Fun activities for teaching technology

Hi,

Here are two rescourses for introductory tasks  into technology that can be altered to fit any year level and ability.

The first activity can be altered to suit any year level. It is a design and technology activity which enables students to work togethor, think creatively and problem solve. The task can be done at any time with minimal preperation. I think the task is a great ice breaker for students at the start of the year, the teacher can start to see how different children interact and communicate and students will have the opportunity to learn from and talk to their peers. The task is done with groups of 2-4 where students are given a bag of objects such as masking tape, cotton balls, cardboard, pegs, pipecleaners, newspaper, match sticks and anything that is readily available in the classroom. Students must then work togethor to plan, design and construct an object/new technology/invention. Groups will then present this to the class and highlight what it is, what is is used for, how it works best, what it is made of? This is a hands on task which students can enjoy doing while using creative thinking, co-operation skills and problem solving.

The link to the task idea is: http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/dt/inventions.htm

The second resourse is a lesson plan for an introduction to ‘what is technology?’ in the classroom. Could be used for students from year 4-10. The lesson involves brainstorming of ‘what is technology? Students then work in groups to list as many technologies that they can think of. This is an interesting activity as students will come up with very different activities according to what they perceive as ‘technology’. Students in groups will then research the history of these listed technologies and find out invention dates and other information. This information is shared with the rest of the class. As class and teacher guided, students then use string to make a technology timeline using the invention dates that students researched about different technolgies. This can then be displayed in the classroom as a good talking and reference point for further learning and lessons in technology.  A timeline digital time line could also be created on the computer as an individual task.

The link for the task idea is: http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/technology-at-work.cfm

These links will be added to the relevant sections of a mind map which deconstructs the Technology curriculum for Australian students: https://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/436738727

Hope this can provide an idea or a springboard for an idea for the teaching/technology world.

Thanks

 

 

 

Welcome to the Technologies Curriculum Resources Blog

Dear Teachers and Pre-service Teachers
I am Dr Jenny Lane  @EduJen

Thank you for visiting our community resource blog. We have set this up as a useful resource for teachers and preservice teachers. Technology is an important part of everything we do. We have a new Technologies Curriculum in Australia and it makes sense for us to work together to find and share the best most useful resources to use in our teaching.

I am an enthusiastic blogger. Community blogging is a great way to work together to benefit all of us and most importantly the students we teach. Please use this blog to build  a set of resources and teaching ideas that we can all use as we plan our teaching in the technologies area. I look forward to seeing your postings and comments. All the work in this blog will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Happy blogging
Dr Jenny Lane and the DTM4260 team