A few words from a Skwirker.

We here at Skwirk love receiving feedback. It is one of the best parts of the job. Not only do we take your ideas on board for further improvements to our resources, we also love to hear how children are responding to our content from around Australia. 

We received the below email recently from Amanda McDougall and it has put a smile on everybody's faces in the Skwirk office :). We would love to hear from other Skwirkers around the country, please email us, info@skwirk.com.au. Parents you can get a trial to our resources by clicking here.

Hi fellow Skwirkers and potential skwirkers! I just wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a bit about our story and journey with Skwirk. My son has been struggling with school and just recently we have made the move to homeschooling. My son has Asperges and found it very hard to concentrate at school. But since being homeschooled using the Skwirk I have seen my son improve in leaps and bounds and we've only just started! My son finds the interactive lessons very easy to use and lots of fun. The lessons are brilliantly planned out and keep the children interested and they actually want to learn. My son's reading and maths has already gone from a year 3 level to a year 5 level with this system. The fact that it is explained so well that he can actually take the time to understand the information and it's presented in a fun entertaining way makes it exciting for him to learn and I even have trouble getting him off it :)

The range of lessons from maths to english to history to geography keeps him so interested that he is once again actively wanting to learn. He has taken huge steps from a child that had no confidence in his abilities to a child that now wants to teach his little brother the things he is learning! 

I highly recommend skwirk to all parents from the ones looking for a bit more help for their kids at school to the ones taking on the homeschool journey. As a mum who is not a teacher, I had concerns about providing a good education for my son but now using the skwirk system and seeing my son's improvement across the board in such a small time, I feel very confident that Skwirk is definitely the right way to go :)

all the best to all the Skwirkers out there! 

The importance of a good teacher

While technology might be revolutionising the classroom, there will never be anything as essential as a good teacher. 

The value of a good teacher - and the way they interact with their student - can never be underestimated. From the ancient days of Socrates interacting with the curious minds of Athens to today's classroom environment, the teacher-student relationship has always been important.

These days, even with the addition of a whole new host of technology to the learning environment, a quality teacher is still essential.

While technological tools are a significant help, kids will always find a guiding presence, such as a professional teacher, or parent teacher, an invaluable tool.

What does it take to be a good teacher?

According to the Department of Education, Training and Employment in Queensland, teaching offers a chance to encourage and support others to achieve their goals. In teaching, there's a strong focus on being able to explain things in simple terms, relating to a wide range of people, having compassion and empathy and the motivation to make a difference. 

Coping well with challenges, pressures and organisation are all other parts of working in teaching. 

Why are these skills necessary in a learning environment?

A lot of these qualities involve factors that technology simply cannot provide or replace. While great online education tools and digital learning can offer plenty of benefits, information and activities, there will always be the need for a real teacher to provide guidance along with it. 

Whatever the subject, whether it's mathematics, history, science or English, there's nothing like having somebody on hand to help a child with questions and to bounce ideas back and forth with.

No matter what kind of technology you're turning to in the process of helping a child to learn, always remember the presence of a teacher or leader is just as essential, as they offer something incredibly valuable to the child.

Skwirk Tutorials

Hi Skwirkers,

The Skwirk Team has created new tutorials covering our new features. You can find out more below:

How to search for curriculum content on Skwirk.

How to bookmark on Skwirk.

More tutorials coming soon!

Term 1 Top Skwirkers!!

Congratulations goes to the two following Top Skwirkers for Term 1, 2014:

Top School Skwirker - Autumn L from NSW

Top Home Skwirker – Joseph L from VIC

Congratulations to all our Skwirkers who visited over 126,000 chapters in Term 1!!

Watch out for our newsletter, due out soon!

Skwirk Blog – December 2013 – SKWIRK 2.0 IS NOW LIVE!

Hi there Skwirkers,

After several months of exhaustive beta testing and input from staff at over 800 schools nationwide, we are delighted to announce that the new Skwirk is live and in the wild!

OK fearless Content Manager, what does this actually mean?

The launch of the new site means that all new school, parent and student subscriptions will automatically get access to the new site. All teachers and parents requesting trial access will also be given access to the new site.

I’m a parent or teacher and my children or school are subscribed already, when do I get access?

We will be migrating user information for existing parents, students, teachers and schools throughout September. Once your account has been migrated you will receive an email from us. This process will be done as quickly as possible, please bear with us!

The search by national curriculum code function is excellent; will you be adding the outcome codes for the NSW Syllabus?

Absolutely! We are already analysing the site content and tagging it with NSW outcome codes. We are committed to having K-10 English and Maths entirely searchable by the 30^th of November, with Science and History on the way.

Features - what’s new?

Here’s a refresher on the new tools we’ve included in Skwirk 2.0:

Universal Bookmarking – Take your content organisation to the next level. Teachers and students can now bookmark anything from single images to entire units of work and save them to customised folders – find what you want when you need it most!

Earn points and unlock achievements – Students can now use Skwirk points to customise their own Skwirk avatars. You can also unlock hidden achievements, but you will have to explore the Skwirk site in order to access them!

Compete against other schools - Every month we will tally the points earned by Skwirkers at schools across Australia. There will be a new theme each month (year group, full-school) with prizes for the top-scoring Skwirkers!

Teacher tools – what’s new?

Content Calendar – Teachers can now assign Skwirk content to a particular date. Need that chapter for next week? Next month? Set the date and it will be waiting for you on your personalised calendar.  Teachers can also calendar chapter and assessments for classes or individual students

Search by curriculum code – We’ve been hard at work linking our English, Maths, Science and History content to the Australian Curriculum. You can search via these codes to make sure your transition to teaching new material is smooth and simple.

Lesson Editor –A powerful web-based publishing tool built into the site, the Lesson Editor allows you to provide your students with customised learning experiences. Create lessons and assessments utilising content from within the Skwirk site and across the internet.

Content – what’s new?

Throughout 2013 we’ve been taking advantage of the National Curriculum to make content previously limited to single state syllabuses available to users nationwide. Here’s a reminder of the new stuff you may find upon logging in!

Years 5 and 6

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.

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.

Indigenous People: Culture and Change – this unit includes 17 animations and videos covering topics that range from the Dreamtime to the 1967 Referendum. This unit will be very helpful for English and History teachers seeking resources for next year’s implementation of the Australian Curriculum!

Years 7 and 8

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.

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 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.

Romeo and Juliet (Full text) - Skwirk loves the work of the Bard. We’re delighted to advise you that our new site features the full text of the immortal tragedy Romeo and Juliet, along with scene-by-scene analysis, images and video clips of the star-crossed lovers, and even a podcast of the entire play, performed by a full cast!

Years 9 and 10

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.

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.

Conflict, consensus and care – Combining the Geography focus area of ‘Australia’s Regional and Global Links’ with a depth study of Australia’s historical relationship with Japan from Federation to the present day, this unit of work for Years 9 and 10 provides an excellent overview of the factors that have defined our dealings with Japan. Features content and images ranging from the days of the White Australia Policy to current debates about whaling.

Skwirk Blog - Late July 2013

Hi there Skwirkers,

18 thousand likes on Facebook! This was the news from our General Manager as we finished work last week. The whole team at Skwirk HQ is delighted that we’ve had such a warm welcome from the education community via social media – don’t forget that you can also find us on Twitter and YouTube.

Skwirk 2.0 news – open beta coming soon!

After an amazing level of interest in the new site we have been bringing teachers and schools online for closed beta testing of Skwirk 2.0. The responses continue to be very positive and we’ve had some schools give us wonderfully nuanced feedback – a special shout-out to the Early Years staff at Mount Pleasant Primary School in Ballarat for putting their feedback into a Word document complete with screenshots! You guys rock!

We are currently working with our development and web-hosting team to move from closed to open beta within the next two weeks. This means that new users will be get immediate access to the new site. We will continue to migrate existing schools to the new site on a state-by-state basis over the next few months.

Skwirk included on resources list for CapThat! captioning website

Two evenings a week your fearless Education Content Manager heads off to learn Australian Sign Language (Auslan). So far I can do little more than introduce myself and give basic directions, but a huge part of the class has been learning about the need take make educational resources accessible for students of all ages who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or have English as a Second Language.

CapThat! is a website run by Media Access Australia, who focus on ensuring people with a range of disabilities have access to all kinds of media content. We recently provided Media Access Australia with access to the Skwirk site and were delighted that they swiftly included the site on their list of educational resources.

Skwirk Surveys and winner of July’s prize draw

The online survey is still providing us with outstanding feedback on both the current and new site. Some of the comments we’ve received in the past month include:

“It's one of the best resources I have used so far and has been an excellent tool to use for my Japan cultural study. It's been fantastic!!! Absolutely love it”

“The kids love the animations and videos while I have really benefited from the text, photos and images”

“The students love the animations, videos and photo. It helped them engage further in the unit of work by helping in visualising Australia in history.”

If you are currently trialling the Skwirk site and want an additional two weeks free access, please take the time to complete the survey when you get the appropriate email. All teachers who complete the survey also go into the running for our monthly prize draw. We’ll announce July’s winner in the next blog entry.

Website of the week – World Without Oil

Waaaay back in 2007, an ambitious project unfolded online – simulate the first eight months of a global oil shock to see what kind of response the online community could create. Participants registered their location and were given regular updates as to how the sudden shortage would affect their home city, state or country.

The response was vast – the website (which now serves as an online archive) has 1500 blog entries, videos, voicemails and images – and the impact was long-lasting. 

A huge number of participants interviewed 12 months after the project stated that their way of life had been changed as a result of playing this ‘serious game’, ranging from new commuting patterns to starting vege gardens. The site has a HUGE section for teachers with lessons about how oil impacts every part of our lives.

App of the week – Edmodo Mobile for iOS and Android

I have so much respect for the team at Edmodo – they have built a really solid social network for use in schools that pairs a clean, familiar interface with a healthy dose of respect for the issues teachers face when communicating online with students. And (for the moment) it’s still free! 

The app keeps all the key features of the site and puts them squarely in the hands of your smartphone-happy students. And HUGE props for launching an Android app side-by-side with the iOS version!

Skwirk Blog – early July 2013

Hi there Skwirkers,

Only a few days remain before most of Australia heads back to school for the start of Semester 2 (except for you over-eager types in Queensland!). Meanwhile the phones are running hot at Skwirk HQ as we bring schools and teachers online using the new site.

Skwirk 2.0 – now in closed beta – site testers needed!

We’ve already commenced tutorials for the site and responses to the new Lesson Planner tool has been overwhelming positive! If you are a school teacher and would like to be one of the beta testers for our new site, then please shoot us an email on teachers@skwirk.com.au. Additionally, we are offering walkthroughs of the new site using Skype’s free ‘share screen’ function to allow for the best possible site tutorial.

Meanwhile, the development team are putting the finishing touches on the Assessment Builder, which will allow teachers to create their own quizzes, cloze passages and extended responses for both existing Skwirk content and self-devised content. We expect these features to be live on the site within the next few weeks.

Another core decision has been to provide teachers with access to the raw HTML of the pages they create and manipulate. This will enable teachers to include a variety of HTML objects (images that function as links, any web video that provides an embed code). Teachers interested in developing some HTML skills should have a look at Code Academy, whilst those just needing a leg up can use this HTML ‘cheat sheet’ to get them started.

EduTECH articles now online over at ABC Technology and Games website

Along with being your fearless Education Content Manager, since 2010 I’ve had a semi-regular gig writing articles for the ABC’s Technology and Games website about technology and education. Our time at the EduTECH conference left me with enough material to write a two-part article about the highlights and focal points of the conference. Both articles are now up, you can find part one here and part two, which includes a discussion about the role that the NBN could play in the future of education, is here.

Skwirk Surveys and winner of June’s prize draw

We continue to have a strong response to the online survey we have asked teachers who are have trials of the site to complete. Over 87% of our teachers passed the trial access into other teachers within the school, and we continue to get great feedback regarding our resources – “interesting, bright, engaging”…“activities that involved even a reluctant student” – and our home-grown content - “It’s great to hear the Australian accent on an educational film”.

If you are a teacher currently trialling the Skwirk site, PLEASE take the time to fill out the survey when you receive the email – in addition to receiving an extra two weeks of access to the site, you go into our monthly prize draw. This month’s winner is Di Allen from Hallet Cove School in South Australia. Congratulations Di! You have won a $50 voucher for your choice of JB Hifi, Officeworks or Eckersleys Art Store. We’ll be in touch later this week.

Podcast of the week – Background Briefing

The Australian Curriculum for English includes a re-classification of text types, formally shifting to the more inclusive categories of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts. Radio National’s weekly current affairs program is an outstanding example of meticulously researched, carefully presented material that is easily approachable for Secondary students. Each program can be streamed or downloaded in mp3 format, and includes a full transcript and  links to sources and related articles.

Video of the week – Life In A Day

On July 24^th, 2010, people all over the world uploaded videos to YouTube detailing the events of their day. The resulting footage was carefully whittled down from over 4500 hours (over 188 days!)  to a 95-minute documentary, capturing the lives of everyday people in over 190 countries. Life In A Day is an amazing spin around the planet, mixing the mundane with the remarkable. The link above takes you to a YouTube microsite that hosts the full movie, along with an archive of the separate clips and a short ‘one year later’ catch-up with some of the more colourful characters in the film.