NAPLAN Resources

Most Australian teachers of literacy and numeracy know that last 2 years of NAPLAN tests are online at http://www.naplan.edu.au/

You can print out a test and give it to the students and see how they go... but that is a lot of marking to do and then entering it into spreadsheets for analysis.

The other option is to use TurningPoint Anywhere and have the questions projected on screen. As most of the NAPLAN is multi choice it is perfect for gathering this type of data. Then it is just a case of running the report to get the marking done.

This has just hit my radar as well - http://www.naplanonline.net.au/ - if you have some lab time you can get the students to do a couple of these - again all marked for you.

Take the stress out of NAPLAN preparation.

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So much to tell you!

Very busy weekend - did a public demonstration of Ed-e at Scitech on the weekend and during some down time found a whole heap of resources so it's going to be a list today.

www.storylineonline.com - Popular picture/storybooks read by famous actors and with excellent multimedia and subtitles

http://www.brightstorm.com/ - Videos for high school mathematics, liturature and writing - for those who need the visual and aural.

http://www.samanimation.com/ stop motion animation the easy way.

www.yacapaca.com - LMS hosted for free.

Schoology - LMS hosted for free

Pixton - comic creator

vozme.com - online text to speech.

Kidsspell.com - online games based on spelling lists

animasher - easy animation with your own media

Myths and legends - stories and online software to create your own.

Creative kids central - Classical music lessons and interactives


Have a play with this lot - see what you think.

The New Literacy Generation

Image via Wikipedia

I just read an article from Wired magazine regarding the literacy of this generation. It seems that Stamford University has done a huge study and found what a lot of us who work with technology in education and blogger generally) already suspected.

Students are writing more now than ever in the history of education and large amount of it is outside the classroom mandated essays and coursework.

emails, blogs, facebook, review sites, Wikipedia... the list of ways that people write and use text is huge and it is all with an audience in mind, usually people we don't even know if it is a broadcast.

What is also interesting is that the style of writing adapts as the writer writes for different purposes and audiences so the smiley face has not crossed over to the essay or term paper.

There are a couple of important things we must as teachers take from this.
1: Literacy is more important now than ever before in society - we are moving from Read Only to Read/Write. This includes written, video, sounds and images.
2: People / students will write for an audience, especially if the audience is more than just a teacher.
3: That the purpose must be authentic for writing to be enjoyable.

View the full article here - http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson

English langauge PowerPoint Files

Image via Wikipedia

I got this from Larry's blog.

Barry Fun English
This site has a large range of PowerPoint files specifially focused on english language for either lower primary or ESL learners. These lend themselves to be integrated with TurningPoint ARS to make them even more interactive.

It is great to see some very good interactive resources devoted to english and literacy - instead of 1000's of printables.

Barry also has a range of flash games and tools that can be used online or with eBeam Scrapbook. - I do like his version of wheel of fortune.

Two new ones from other bloggers

I've written about Wordle before - this is slightly different and rather than being just Art - Wordsift adds visuals, context and a thesaurus -

The other website is for all those who need to convert a file quickly and without downloading software...

Zamzar will convert documents, video, images and sound to just about any format you need and email you the results - up to 1G files.

This is great when you are behind a firewall or you just can't download and install other programs - DET I'm looking at you.

This is great for teacher tube, teacherstv and of course youtube - a great work around when you are blocked at school.