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Our free PL-in-a-Box initiative supports professional learning (PL) of Digital Technologies in your school or community. We’ve created ready-made PL resources designed to support you or your team in delivering free professional learning sessions, workshops or events for Digital Technologies.

We’ve designed a new Pl-in-a-Box pack for delivering a workshop on Makerspaces! The workshop covers:

  • What is a Makerspace?
  • Why Makerspaces?
  • Example Maker projects suitable for the classroom.
  • Maker activities, as linked to key thinking skills: Design Thinking, Computational Thinking and Systems Thinking.

This workshop was delivered by the SA CSER Team recently in partnership with the University of Adelaide’s Children’s University Program. The feedback was very positive and so we’d like to make this workshop accessible to you! The PL-in-a-Box pack comes with:

  • A downloadable, customisable slide deck with speaker notes
  • Activity ideas for a Makerspace PL workshop
  • Embedded videos and content that support you to explain and unpack Makerspaces
  • Links to further resources and support on Makerspaces

To access the free resource please visit our PL-in-a-Box website. If this is your first time visiting the site, you will just need to register (free). You’ll find our new Makerspace pack under the Themed Workshops.

 

Thank you to Google Australia who provided funding to launch PL-in-a-Box!

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By Pam Niewman, St Robert’s School, Newtown, VIC

Dear CSER Digital Technologies Education Team

We wanted to let you know what a great resource the Beebots, accessories and lesson plans were, and just how much better the learning became when we were able to share one robot between two students. The great thing was that every grade in school from Prep to year 5/6 looked forward to their sessions with the Beebots.

Parents also contacted me to find out more about what their children were talking about – with one actually joining in a Year 1 class lesson and more dropping by to try the Beebots out after school. As well, our Principal came and joined a class, and even programmed a maze challenge to present on our Facebook page.

One Grade 1 boy in his learning reflection, mentioned that although he had learned to code on the Beebot app previously, using the actual Beebot had solved some of the problems with turning directions he had experienced.

Some of the learning experiences included – basic coding, creating algorithms, writing code, programming, testing, debugging, applying strategies and solving challenges.

We used a range of activities and challenges including coding number shapes, creating Chick-bot dances, playing various Maths games and literacy games using grids, creating and navigating mazes, solving problems and challenges, writing a program for others to follow, using large maps and charts etc.

Our most popular sessions were the Beebot Winter Games with 9 modified Olympic challenges, and also Senior Beebot task (Design and record a sequence of instructions for two Beebot robots to perform a synchronised dance, design and make costumes, film the performance, find copyright free music, insert video and music into iMovie, create and present the movie).

Several of our classroom teachers have shown interest in the Beebots and our next step is to work with the teachers to incorporate beebot into their STEM projects and classroom curriculum (unfortunately back to our own 6 beebots now).

Once again thank you for the opportunity to enhance our Digital Technologies program through the CSER Lending Library.

From Pam Niewman, and the students and staff of St Robert’s Newton

Thank you Pam for sharing this experience with us! Pam has produced some great blog posts about the use of the CSER Beebot Kit at St Robert’s and you can read more about it here.

The CSER Lending Library is made possible through funding from the Australian Government Department of Education and Training.

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By Lauren Stanhope, CSER Project Officer, Queensland

Behind every great teacher is a wonderful Teacher Aide! Over the years, as a teacher, I have worked with some amazing assistants in the classroom and around the school. They always amaze me with their dedication to the students that they work with, their creativity and their flexibility. I really have no idea how a school would operate without these wonderful people.

During my time as Queensland Project Officer with CSER, I have also worked with a number of dedicated aides who are keen to delve into the Digital Technologies Curriculum. Upskilling Teacher Aides has been an important way of implementing Digital Technologies curriculum in small schools, but also in remote schools that sometimes experience higher teacher turnover. The Teacher Aides on Thursday Island have been some of the most engaged, dedicated and happy people I have worked with over the past two years when presenting CSER Professional Learning.

During Term 2, I travelled to the most northerly point of Australia, hopped on a passenger ferry and found myself on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait Islands. Tagai State College is a Queensland State School that provides education from Pre-Prep through to TAFE, across 18 community-based campuses. The school covers 48,000 square kilometers and has campuses on 15 different islands. It really is a unique school to visit.

I had travelled there to present at the school’s Teacher Aide conference. The school had organised for all their wonderful Teacher Aides to travel from the different campuses to Thursday Island, or TI as the locals call it, to develop their skills further. During the two day event they attended a number of workshops on a variety of topics. I was lucky enough to introduce them to Computational Thinking, as well as the ever-popular Bee-Bots! We explored this thinking through a variety of hands-on activities. It was great for the Teacher Aids to be engaged in Computational Thinking and experience the types of lessons they might see in the classroom as part of the Digital Technologies curriculum. I am sure they all went back to their respective islands with lots of ideas and fun ways to engage students in this new curriculum area.

I also visited a number of classrooms while I was there, both on Thursday Island and Horn Island. I was able to support teachers, in the classroom, with the implementation of the Digital Technologies Curriculum. We were able to explore the CSER Lending Library kits and had fun teaching many of the Torres Strait Islander students about Makey Makey, Ozobots and Beebots.

I am really looking forward to hearing about how Tagai College continues to implement Digital Technologies across their school.

Lauren’s visit was featured in a recent Tagai State College newsletter and we’ve included some snippets below:

Lauren has a series of workshops scheduled throughout Semester 2 across Queensland. Find out more at her Eventbrite page. You can also contact Lauren to discuss tailoring a workshop to suit the needs of your school.

 

 

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The following events are planned for the near future. If you would like to have a CSER Digital Technologies professional learning workshop at your school, please contact us via https://csermoocs.adelaide.edu.au/professional-learning/ to register your interest. We are able to work with schools from Foundation to Year 10. QLD Events with Lauren Stanhope: 28 – 29  August 2018, F- […]

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Submitted by Frank Fabri, Deputy Principal Digital Technologies Leader, St Paul’s the Apostle School, Doreen, VIC Recently our students had the pleasure of extending and building upon their coding skills using Beebots from CSER’s Lending Library. The Beebot kit was especially chosen in light of our school being very new and in many ways, starting […]

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Below are some upcoming events across Australia. If you would like to book a workshop with a CSER Project Officer, please follow this link to make a request and a Project Officer will be in contact with you shortly. CSER Project Officers are located in every State and Territory. New South Wales (these events are […]

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Submitted by Karen Jordan, Digital Technologies Teacher, Prosperine State School, QLD In Term 2, 2018, Proserpine State School was lucky to be able to borrow the Ozobot kit from the CSER Lending Library. The children have had an awesome time using the Ozobots in their Digital Technologies lessons. Every week, each child has a Digital […]

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On Thursday 19 July, a group of enthusiastic Children’s University Adelaide Coordinators from a variety of South Australian schools took part in a school holiday Makerspace workshop with CSER. The morning was spent discussing makerspace environments, pedagogical approaches and having hands on fun creating Rube Goldberg Machines with little bits and lots of craft materials! Taking a […]

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Submitted by Meredith Grove, Assistant Principal, St Francis Catholic Primary School Digital Technologies is an area that can be both exciting and daunting for a classroom teacher. Through the generosity of the CSER Library at the University of Adelaide, the path forward has been engaging and positive for the students (and teachers) at St Francis […]

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Below are some upcoming events across Australia. If you would like to book a workshop with a CSER Project Officer, please follow this link to make a request and a Project Officer will be in contact with you shortly. CSER Project Officers are located in every State and Territory. New South Wales: 25 June 2018, […]

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