Skwirk blog – late May 2013

Skwirk blog – late May 2013

Hi there Skwirkers,

As the cold weather sets in the team at Skwirk HQ have been learning all about online videos. Our new site has the ability to link to or embed video content from a range of video sites ranging from YouTube and Vimeo to TeacherTube and the TED website. We are looking forward to implementing this functionality to help teachers and students find more and more resources to increase their teaching and learning.

Meanwhile, your fearless Education Content Manager is heading to Uluru and Kata Tjuta this week for a brief holiday; I look forward to experiencing these unique World Heritage Sites and (hopefully) snapping some Skwirk-worthy pictures to be uploaded to the site!

New and updated content on the Skwirk Site

The Australian Curriculum is the hottest topic of conversation amongst the teachers we speak with at Skwirk HQ. We’ve unleashed more state-specific content for a national audience as schools all over Australia continue to prepare for the ‘big switch’ next year. Some of the new units of work you’ll be seeing on the Skwirk site include:

-        Cultural and Historical Science – Featuring 11 chapters of content, all with our custom-created Skwirk animations,  this unit for students in Years 5 and 6 is a great resource for teachers looking for ideas for the new ‘Science as Human Endeavour’ thread of the national Science curriculum. The unit covers the major fields of Science and the role Science plays in areas ranging from Medicine to Art!

-        The Great Barrier Reef – A great compact unit of work for lower Secondary students, this Geography unit can be used to examine marine biology, the role of tourism in World Heritage Sites, and managing a fragile marine ecosystem. The unit features over three dozen images, animations and videos and a handy unit summary.

New rewards on the Skwirk Store

The evil geniuses at Professor Plum’s have outfitted us with some awesome pocket-sized prizes for you to take anywhere with you. Check them out below:

Sherlock Magnifier

Elementary, my dear Skwirkers! Keep this great magnifying glass on hand to examine insects and solve crimes. We have already used one of these in Skwirk HQ to solve the Mystery of the Missing Tim-Tams (it was Jordan).

IQ Fit and IQ Puzzler game packs

Did your iPod touch run out of battery? Is there a blackout at your house? Are you tired of not being able to throw game pieces at your annoying siblings? Then rejoice! These great portable brain-testers slip into your pocket or backpack and provide hours of challenging puzzles from easy to expert difficulty levels.

Podcast of the week – A History of the World in 100 Objects

Originally broadcast in 2010 on BBC Radio, this podcast tracks human history across time, space and place using artefacts from the vast collection of the British Museum. Hosted by Museum Director Neil MacGregor, each podcast last for around 15 minutes and features experts in fields ranging from biology to fabrics. There is also a lovely companion site with an interactive time-line.

Video of the week – Sir Ken Robinson on escaping education’s ‘Death Valley’           

Education theorist Sir Ken Robinson is one of a number of world-renown speakers who will be presenting at the EduTECH Conference in early June. Speaking here at the TED Talks Education Special in April, Sir Ken makes the case for thinking about education as an organic system that can be grown and adapted, rather than a mechanical system that needs to be fine-tuned.

Skwirk blog – Early May 2013

Hi Skwirkers,

With Term 2 officially underway it’s time for students to break out the winter uniforms, teachers to start thinking about mid-year reports, and EVERYONE to get excited about the new Skwirk site. We are talking non-stop with the development team to make sure the Skwirk 2.0 will combine all the existing features you love with a range of new functions, including a powerful custom-made lesson creator tool for teachers.

New partnership: Digital Farm TV

Skwirk is delighted to announce our latest partnership with Digital Farm TV. DFTV is an online news platform for the Australian agriculture industry, with connections to farmers and regional advocacy groups all over the country. Skwirk will be using DFTV footage and reports to develop video resources and increase student awareness of the historical, geographic and commercial role of  farming in Australia.

DFTV has already provided us with two video great resources, including a video from Canegrowers Australia that details the “paddock to plate” processes for growing Australia’s second largest export crop. You can see it below:

Skwirk @ EduTECH 2013

As we mentioned last month, Skwirk will be in attendance at the upcoming EduTECH conference on the 3^rd and 4^th of June. We’re now proud to announce that in addition to showcasing the new site to teachers from all over Australia, your humble Education Content Manager will be giving a seminar on cross-curriculum connections in the new Australian Curriculum. This is one of a series of free seminars that will be taking place in the exhibition hall over the course of the conference, so if you are attending the conference or stopping by, feel free to join us!

We’re also terrified delighted to announce that after years of working behind the scenes our mascot, fearless leader and benevolent overlord Professor Skwirk will be joining us for EduTECH. The Professor will be wandering the exhibition hall handing out treats and challenging the conference-goers to the ultimate battle of wits – GIANT CONNECT 4. Be sure to give him a high-five!

Website of the week – The Girl Effect

All over the world girls are being born into circumstances that lessen their chances of being healthy, getting an education or earning a living. The Girl Effect website exists as a collection point for a host of data, videos and inspirational stories about the steps you can take to raise awareness of this massive global issue. The website’s approach to sharing content is incredibly generous, stating repeatedly that ‘this site is yours’ and offering zip files of themed resources.

App of the week – Fotopedia Heritage for iPad and iPhone

The UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites is a comprehensive catalogue of the greatest natural and cultural locations on Earth. Every continent (except Antarctica) is home to dozens of these amazing places, and they are a central part of teaching key concepts for both History and Geography. Fotopedia Heritage allows you to explore World Heritage Sites using images sourced from the global Fotopedia community and linked to explanations from both the UNESCO site and Wikipedia. And if you are feeling inspired to visit them in person, the app also integrates information about local accommodation from TripAdvisor !

Skwirk Blog – Late April 2013

Hi Skwirkers,

It’s fun and games in Skwirk HQ – not only have we had to deal with the end of daylight savings (our office manager Alice has been contemplating bringing a doona to work), but the early Easter has led to different school holiday times all over Australia! So:

·       Welcome back to our Skwirkers in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory,

·       Happy holidays to everyone in New South Wales, the ACT, and South Australia, and

·       Hang in there for everyone in Western Australia and Tasmania – nearly at the finish line!

 New content for national site

As we align our content to the Australian Curriculum we’re continuing to remove the geoblocks on content that was previously only available to a few states. This month we’ve got some great content for students across years 5-10:

Media: Representation and Global Identity – this unit for Years 5 and 6 presents a great overview of how people form groups and how those groups in turn create cultures. It includes chapters on stereotyping, the role played by the media in the portrayal of various groups and how Australians have been represented in the past and the present. A great unit of work for media-savvy students who have been looking at Communities in Geography or text types in English. Includes over a dozen animations and over 40 colour images

 Stereotyping Animation

Reduce, re-use or recycle – this compact unit for Years 7 and 8 Geography students is an excellent addition to studying the ways humans interact with the environment. The chapter introduces an extended ‘waste hierarchy’ to help students think beyond ‘Reduce / Reuse / Recycle’ and considers the huge variety of materials we throw away on a daily basis. Great for linking Geography to the Environmental Sciences or investigating global citizenship.

Industrial Revolution – with the Australian Curriculum’s redesign of secondary history, this great unit now gets to shine on the national stage. Includes over 70 images ranging from maps of Britain’s global resources to diagrams of the machines that reinvented the production of everything from clothing to metal. This unit also examines the political and social events of the period and the effects on housing, employment and social structure. Podcast summaries at both the unit and topic levels provide teachers with a great tool to introduce or summarise the topic.

Website of the week – National Geographic’s The Genographic Project   

This. Site. Rocks. Showcasing a project that launched in 2005 and is still going, the Genographic Project combines bleeding-edge science with the ultimate story of discovery – mapping the origins and spread of humanity across the globe. The website includes an interactive ‘Human Migration Map’ and HEAPS of resources for educators. If you have EVER wanted to design a series of lessons that combine History, Geography and Science, look no further.

App of the week – World of Goo for Android and iPad, around $5

Forget Angry Birds. This four-year-old game (originally designed for the PC) is the best physics emulator game in the known universe. Help the insanely cute little Goo balls get to the end of each level by making them into structures that can traverse each level. The game has a perfect difficulty curve and students get immediate feedback on how well built and well-balanced their creations are. Add several doses of sweet, wacky humour and you have an amazing game that parents can play with their kids. I know at least one Science teacher that uses this game in his Year 10 Physics class!

Skwirk Blog – Early April 2013

 Skwirk Blog – Early April 2013

Hi Skwirkers,

Well, here we are already nearing the end of Term 1 (how did that happen?). I hope you enjoyed the long weekend over the Easter period and haven’t eaten too much chocolate! Things are rolling along at Skwirk HQ, March saw a number of brand-new schools sign up for whole-school memberships, and a spike in teacher subscriptions. Welcome aboard to all of you!

Our mighty General Manager spent all of last week onsite with the development team for the new website and has come back incredibly excited about everything it has to offer. I’m personally looking forward to the new system for adding and updating site content, which I was told is ‘as easy as updating the blog’.

Great new media content for Stage 4 Science

The Science content for Years 7 and 8 includes units across Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Earth & Environmental Science. Our ‘Ecology’ unit is a monster – over 12,000 words spread across 16 chapters, with plenty of cross-curriculum connections for Geography.  We’re adding a heap of new media to this, including dozens of hi-resolution images, animations and videos, including content from the ABC. If you’re subscribed as a high-school teacher or student, head over and have a look!

Achievement unlocked – achievements!

Just before I started writing this I hit ‘send’ on the email containing the first 20 achievements that will be a part of the new Skwirk site. These achievements will cover a range of activities on the site and will be TOP SECRET on the launch date. The only way to unlock achievements will be by using the new site and looking around. And yes, there will be some prizes!

Professor Plum Rewards

Our recent additions to the Skwirk Store have been a huge success with all of the Liquifly Rockets and Construct-a-Clocks being claimed in a matter of days! Our friends at Professor Plum’s were delighted and will be providing us with more ace stuff in the coming months. Don’t forget that if you live in the Sydney area and are looking for some fun activities for the coming school holidays, the Professor Plum team runs science workshops that you can check out here.

Skwirk at the 2013 EduTECH conference

EduTECH is the largest education technology event in Australia. With over 3000 delegates from all states and territories coming together to hear from the likes of Alan November and Sir Ken Robinson. The Skwirk team is delighted to announce that we will be at the conference in force, showcasing the new Skwirk site and demonstrating everything that you can achieve with Skwirk. If you are going to the conference, please swing by and say hello!

Website of the week – The Opera House Project

The Sydney Opera House has always had a great sense of history. In 2011 the Ships Song Project combined an intimate look at the famous building with an all-star cover of the legendary Nick Cave song. 2013 is the 40^th anniversary of Australia’s most iconic building and the SOH has teamed up with partners including the State Library and the National Film and Sound Archive to create a stunning virtual site tour. The website includes full-length documentaries, interactive timelines and 3d modelling of the building at every stage of construction.

App of the week – WWF Together for iPad

The WWF is a global voice for endangered animals of all shapes and sizes. They’ve released a lovely app that provides stories, information and gorgeous images of a broad range of these at-risk creatures. Every fortnight a new animal is unlocked, many with unique features – try using your iPad camera for ‘Tiger Vision’.  For an added bit of fun each animal is rendered in origami, along with instructions on how to fold your own! The WWF Together app is now available on the iPad. It’s free!

Skwirk Blog - Late March

Skwirk Blog – Late March 2013

Hi Skwirkers,

A few people have asked me recently how I’m finding my new job here as Education Content Manager. My response has always been “I had no idea how much stuff there was on the site, now I manage the site I can see EVERYTHING – it’s amazing!”.  Finding out how many videos, animations, worksheets, podcasts and quizzes we have has been a real eye-opener. I hope that in the coming weeks and months you take a few minutes to have a look at everything Skwirk has on offer.

Access to English secondary content

Previously on Skwirk we’ve kept the English content for Years 7-10 in two separate groups based on age level. However, with more and more teachers and parents wanting the flexibility to compare texts or extend their more able students, the new Skwirk site will make all of our English text resources available to all year levels. We’ll also be linking our three Shakespeare text studies to our great overview of Shakespeare’s world which examines everything from the fashions and law of the time to the language and themes that helped make the Bard’s work so timeless.

New rewards in the Skwirk Store

Skwirk is delighted to announce a new partnership with Professor Plum’s. Based in Sydney’s Lower North Shore, this AMAZING store has a huge range of toys, games and gadgets that are ideal for the young scientist (or anyone who enjoys explosions!). They also run great workshops for primary-aged children during the school holiday periods, covering everything from electricity to medieval warfare. We are celebrating this great new relationship with two new rewards in the Skwirk Store:

Primary students reward – Heebie Jeebie’s Construct-a-Clock

This great activity can be put together in as little as ten minutes, with the finished product being a working clock complete with swinging pendulum! The clock is spring-driven so it requires no batteries. A great project and the perfect way to teach children basic mechanics.             

Secondary students reward – Liquifly water-powered rocket

ROCKETS! We need someone to claim these quickly before our office manager Alice starts firing them off inside Skwirk HQ. This is a complete DIY rocket kit that only requires water and air to send it flying – it can reach heights of over 30 metres! If there’s a more fun way to combine a day in the park with some basic lessons about water pressure, I can’t think of it.

Website of the week - National Geographic’s new “Found” tumblr

Everyone in Skwirk HQ is a sucker for some great National Geographic photography. As part of their 125^th anniversary celebrations, the Nat Geo team have launched their “Found” photo page via the microblogging site Tumblr. This site showcases some of the fascinating images from the National Geographic image archives, most of which have never been published. Needless to say, any teacher looking for stimulus material for English or primary sources for History should check this out. Just be warned, they’ve put the “purchase prints” button in easy reach.

App of the week – ‘Explain Everything’ for iPad

Sometimes a tablet app comes out that blows my mind, something that glues together several different basic functions to make something genuinely different.  Explain Everything is a screencasting tool that allows you to import just about any kind of file from a host of local and cloud-based sources, and then tie them together into a presentation that you can record for later playback, complete with audio. You can also pre-plan a presentation and edit it together as a short movie. The app is currently $2.99 in the App Store. I’d suggest an iPad 3 or later to take full advantage of everything it can do - there’s obviously some heavy-duty processing going on.

Mid-March 2013

Hi Skwirkers,

With Term 1 more than half-gone (how did that happen?) the team at Skwirk HQ has been super-busy getting registrations out for all of our users. In fact, we are proud to report that February was our biggest month EVER – a huge welcome to all our new Skwirkers!

New and updated History content

As a national education resource, Skwirk has always tried to offer different content in keeping with each state’s syllabus requirements. The upcoming Australian Curriculum has given us the chance to make sure this content becomes available to all our users. Some of the units of work you’ll be seeing on the new Skwirk site include:

-        Exploring the unknown: ocean voyages – this unit for Years 5 and 6 covers the Age of Exploration, including profiles of Columbus, Magellan and Vespucci and details of their voyages in search of fame fortune and hidden lands. Features lots of maps and sketches from the period.

-        Origins of the Olympics – looking to combine your Ancient Greece studies with an upcoming sporting event or school Athletics Carnival? This unit for Year 7 and 8 students gives examines both the ancient and modern Olympics, the Melbourne and Sydney Olympics, and a number of famous Australian athletes who have competed over the years.

One of our Olympic Animations

-         The Russian Revolution – a great depth study for teachers or parents looking to extend Year 9 and 10 students studying World War I. With over 60 images from the period including dozens of primary source photographs, this unit covers the rise of the Bolsheviks, the fall of Tsarist Russia and the eventual descent into Stalinism.

Achievement system for new site

As a huge gamer, I’m delighted to announce that when our new site launches later this year we’ll be making an addition to the points you can earn for completing quizzes and home work (homeSkwirk?). These achievements will be TOP SECRET so the only way to earn them is to have fun with the Skwirk site and discover everything we have to offer. There may even be some prizes for our most adventurous users…

Happy Skwirking!

Bill Cohen

Education Content Manager

Skwirk blog – March 2013

Hi Skwirkers,

Things are getting pretty exciting over at Skwirk HQ as we continue to work on the new site. We’re delighted with the ideas our amazing development team are coming up with!

Concept Artwork for the new Skwirk homepage

We’ve got some great features that will be ready to go from Day 1 of the new site:

-        Australian curriculum alignment – we’ve been hard at work linking our HUGE amount of English, Science, Maths and History content to the Australian curriculum. You will be able to search for content by curriculum codes to make sure your transition to the new national curriculum is smooth and simple. We are also making sure that you can find great content that links to new focus areas like sustainability, digital literacy and Australia’s relationship with Asia.

-        Teacher features - We’ve had great input from our schools and teachers over the last few years, and we want to make sure your Skwirk experience reflects YOUR school and YOUR classroom. The new site will allow you to control your class access, embed additional content in pages, and create your own site-specific Skwirksheets (yes, that’s we are calling them).

-        Mobile site and Skwirk app – online education can happen anywhere you have a screen. The new site will offer a mobile version to make Skwirk a great option for on-the-go learning. We are also developing a Skwirk app for release later in the year – email us if you’d like to be part of our testing team!

Concept Artwork for the new Skwirk App

For our loyal Skwirkers who are worried about not being able to find their favourite subject content post-migration, never fear! We are making sure that all the animations, games, videos and podcasts are making the journey to the new site.

Video of the Week: Different Environments

Finally, don’t forget to check out our YouTube Channel. We are always adding new content, including hi-res ‘remastered’ versions of our favourite videos and animations. It’s a great way to find out what kind of content is available for other subject areas and year groups. You can find this here.

Happy Skwirking!

Bill Cohen

Education Content Manager