Powering a lightbulb: Infographics

Are you looking for some dandy graphics to explain ideas to your students (or are your teaching colleagues looking to you to do this??)?

Good.is has some useful transparencies, including this one.  Site link.  Image only.
Share this with your Science, Geography, Maths etc teaching colleagues, then investigate what else you can find on the site to share among their infographics (some fairly US-centric, but not all).

Cheers

Ruth

The Joy of Statistics

For all the dross and muck and pointless stuff on YouTube, there are also gems.  Here's one to share with your colleagues in Maths, Science, Social Science, and anyone else teaching students about statistics - a one hour BBC documentary with Dr Hans Rosling.  Free and available on YouTube.  Bargain.

EDITED: Hmmm.  YouTube playing games; this seems to have gone 'private' since I drafted this blog entry.

You can find the video embedded here:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/
and it played when I just checked it.  Other related videos on that page, too.



Original YouTube link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOmqHzkkOo

Remind your teachers to load this ahead of the lesson, so they're not waiting for it to load as they show it.

Found via the Laughing Squid.

Cheers

Ruth

Draft National Curriculum

The Draft National Curriculum is being launched today by Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard.  Here are some quick links.

• Federal Department of Education National Curriculum page (just a brief outline, then refers you to ACARA)
• ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, responsible for the documents)
• Want to get involved in the consultation process? Click here.
• Want to read resources, including information sheets from ACARA on each subject? Click here (or if you just want one subject's information sheet: English, Maths, History, Science).

Curriculum drafts:

• Draft Maths curriculum pdf
• Draft Science curriculum pdf
• Draft History pdf
• Draft English pdf

PDF copies of the draft curricula in Maths, Science, History and English are from this Melbourne Herald-Sun article.

(The SMH is apparently very preoccupied today with Spencer Tunick's photography at the Sydney Opera House).

Cheers

Ruth

Skerricks in the world: the maths teachers love us!

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It's always kinda fun to see the referrals to this blog - how people are finding it.  The major answer is often googling.  A recent mention from a maths blog, however, was a lovely coup (maths teachers not always being the most frequent users of libraries).  Mathsclass.net has an entry about 'DERing with Year 9' (great verb - to der!) which mentions my seven things to try week 1 list from this blog entry.  Thank you linesmen, thank you ballboys!  Not only does the Mathclass.net blog entry have other useful web links, it's one I'll be able to share with our teachers - not just the maths ones.  One of the useful things about referrals is the chance to find out about great new online resources.
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Cheers

Ruth
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PS. I've just written a piece for SLAV on the seven things list - it will be out in their journal early next month.  It seems to be a useful list that's finding a bunch of friends, which is great.
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Big Mac Index

There was discussion about the Big Mac Index on the oztl list last week, and so here are two sites for making this comparison (cost of a Big Mac hamburger vs. exchange rate etc):

• Big Mac Index at Nationmaster.com - shows a bar graph ranking from most expensive to least
• The Economist's Hamburger Standard at Oanda.com - alphabetical spreadsheet listing with cost in local currency, $US and also shows purchasing power

And whaddya know?  Just as I'm writing this blog entry, a Maths teacher comes by who's just about to do a topic for which this is great.  Bingo!
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