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

Skwirk Refreshed

Your favorite Skwirk portal is getting a major upgrade. Months in the making, stay tuned to a brand new and clean interface with loads of new features. Features that will allow you to make the most of Skwirk resources and achieve student success!