science | OpenSTEM Pty Ltd

Online Teaching

The OpenSTEM® materials are ideally suited to online teaching. In these times of new challenges and requirements, there are a lot of technological possibilities. Schools and teachers are increasingly being asked to deliver material online to students. Our materials can assist with that process, especially for Humanities and Science subjects from Prep/Kindy/Foundation to Year 6. We also have some resources for a few high school subjects.

Fully aligned to the Australian curriculum, we have hundreds of resource PDFs. Teachers have used these for literacy practise in English, as well as resources for the Humanities and Science curriculum. They have even been used for NAPLAN preparation!

Full units available

We also have full lesson kits – divided into four units per year level (one for each term). These comprise a teacher’s handbook with complete lesson plans for each lesson; a student’s workbook which takes each student through all the requirements of each lesson, complete with assessment; a curriculum plan which indicates which curriculum items are being addressed in the unit and a complete assessment guide with criteria sheet, to match curriculum strands. Our use of continuous assessment, provides both formative and summative assessment points and means that there is no need to arrange proctoring of an exam in order to gain a full assessment. The assessment guide can be used to populate the report, if needed, each term.

The units make use of the PDF resources. These can be distributed with the student workbooks, to each student, via email. The entire unit can be undertaken without the need for a virtual classroom if required, with the support of a parent or home tutor, and phone calls to the teacher as required. Students could email back a scan of the completed student workbook, and any additional material they have written. The teacher could also deliver video presentations, which students could download, and students could upload videos or audio recordings of themselves delivering their material.

The units can also be used within a virtual classroom setting, or via a video conference link, with the teacher discussing the unit and requirements with students and then sending them off to work through their workbooks. Students could present finished bodies of work online in later session. The OpenSTEM® units could be undertaken with just one such online session a week, again assuming some input from a parent or person at home with the child, given that we are talking primary school children.

Some of our more extensive units (such as our Ginger Beer unit) address more than just Humanities and Science, covering Maths, Business and Economics and English curriculum items as well. These would need the active participation of a parent to assist the child at home and we would recommend arranging a call with us to deliver the initial stages of the project.

Virtual Classrooms vs Video Conferencing

So what is a virtual classroom and how does it differ from video conferencing?

We are all familiar with video conferencing programs such as Skype. These are growing more sophisticated and now include the capacity for screen sharing, type chat boxes and other tools to make having an online meeting or conversation easier.

Virtual classrooms (like BigBlueButton) are different because they have tools specifically for replicating classroom activities. As well as video and text chat, one can show a presentation, image or other document in the centre of the screen. The teacher or students (subject to permissions decided by the teacher), can write on pages of the presentation. So teachers can annotate slides, students can answer questions etc. Students can also be assigned into groups (anything from one to any size) and placed into “break-out” rooms, where they get their own copy of the presentation/document. Thus students can answer questions either individually or in groups, or discuss a topic, just as they would in class. The teacher can move between the groups to monitor activity. Break out rooms can be ended by the teacher after a set time, or at any time.

Timers can be used in the main room, e.g. to give students 10 minutes to write notes/answers. Or to allow the break out rooms to exist for only a certain length of time. Students are then returned to the main room to share what they discussed. Students can also chat in a side bar, to answer questions, or use an icon to “raise a hand” if they wish to ask something. Students can either type to reply or the teacher can allow them to contribute verbally by activating their microphone permissions.

Teachers have a lot of control in a virtual classroom. Trouble makers can have their permissions revoked and be silenced immediately. They can also be segregated to a room on their own, but still see the lesson material. Without an audience to play to, most behaviour settles quickly.

Email us for assistance if you want to know more about virtual classrooms.

You’re Not Alone!

Remember, there are a lot of people out there who have walked these paths below. We can assist you with resources, units, assessment, advice on virtual classrooms and many other aspects of online learning, including what works and what doesn’t. There are many other online communities that can also assist. Do reach out and let’s support each other through these trying times.

School-wide Understanding Our World® implementations

Are you considering implementing our integrated HASS+Science program, but getting a tad confused by the pricing? Our subscription model didn’t not provide a So nowstraightforward calculation for a whole school or year-level. However, it generally works out to $4.40 (inc.GST) per student. So now we’re providing this as an option directly: implement our integrated HASS+Science program school-wide from just $4.40 per student. Easy!

Just like with the subscriptions, we do price on the basis of at least 100 students, which means that very small schools see an effective higher cost per student compared to the above stated. However, we’ve done a few projections and because of composite classes and the like this approach often still works out cheaper than the old subscription system. Plus, our materials provide for multi-year integration which are a lot of work to achieve. So you get proper solutions for your education needs, and at an unbeatable price.

Try our calculator with the numbers for your school!

Rising sea levels and our children’s future

Global warming and sea level rise sometimes seems like a lot of hype bandied about by the media and politicians. However, it has a different level of importance for scientists in a range of disciplines around the world. The Australian Curriculum emphasises that students should study sustainability and environment issues in HASS and Science subjects, from lower primary school up. This is not just because its fashionable at the moment, but rather because even casual reading of the science tells us that these are going to be some of the most critical issues faced by our children in years to come. The world has already lost inhabited islands to sea level rise, with communities being moved out of their flooded homes. Eight of these islands are in the Pacific. In the Solomon Islands one inhabited island has already lost 75% of its houses to the sea, since 2011.

Global warming and sea level rise are related because a warmer global environment melts the ice at the poles and causes the sea level to rise. The same thing happened at the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. In a paper just published in the respectable journal, Nature, Australian scientists (with some international colleagues) present two alternatives for the future of Antarctica (and thus for the future sea level rises around the world). The two lead authors (from the CSIRO and Monash University) have also published a slightly simpler version of this paper, highlighting the key points. The two scenarios explored are based on the kind of action that we all take now to reduce global warming, greenhouse gas emissions and human impacts on the fragile polar environments. The authors argue that actions need to take place within the next decade.

Scenario 1 has us take sudden, urgent action to reduce global warming and greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, as well as putting policies in place to control and reduce human impacts on the poles, and Antarctica in particular (reducing numbers of people in Antarctica, as well as their impact there). The situation 50 years from now (a time scale chosen to reflect the lifetimes of today’s children) has Antarctica enjoying a similar environment to today. The ozone hole has been repaired and the climate remains similar to that of the 20th century. The rate at which the ice has thinned has remained constant, instead of accelerating, and the acidification of the sea water has been kept low. The sea ice has decreased by “only” 12% and the ice on land by “only” 8%. Marine animals and birds show only small declines in population. Antarctica has been protected from invasive plants and animals through decreased human access and impact and maintenance of the harsh climate. Global air temperature has risen by less than 1 degree Celsius. Overall the sea level will rise by just under 1 metre, of which only 6cm comes from melting ice in West Antarctica.

Sea level rise Ade — Sea level rise in Adelaide.

Scenario 2 has us take very little to no action to reduce global warming, greenhouse gases and human impacts on Antarctica. Fossil fuel use and deforestation have continued and there has been no regulation of human access to Antarctica. Global air temperatures have risen by more than 3.5 degrees Celsius. The oceans have warmed and become more acidic – at levels that corrode marine shells and the exoskeletons of marine animals. Ice shelves in Antarctica have collapsed, accelerating the melting of ice and icebergs pose a continual risk to fishing, tourist and commercial shipping fleets. Sea ice is reduced by almost half. In this scenario, global sea levels rise at rates similar to that at the end of the Ice Age, gaining 3 metres by the year 2300 and more than half a metre in the first 50 years alone. Fisheries around the world are collapsing, and animals (such as penguins, seals and whales) who depend upon fish are in sharp decline. Antarctica has been colonised by invasive species of plants and animals, further disrupting the ecosystem and preventing ice from reforming in some areas. Antarctica is also being denuded of its original nature by rampant harvesting of resources, including mining, and the arrival of about 1 million tourists per year, who come to try to catch a glimpse of what Antarctica used to be, before it all disappears.

Sea level rise B — Sea level rise in Brisbane.

This sounds like a doom and gloom scenario, but it is one of the most likely scenarios, with the impact on our way of life being severe. Websites are now available to examine what sea level rises mean for our coastal cites. The impact varies in different cities, with Adelaide and Cairns being amongst the worst affected, although Brisbane’s port and airport are also in trouble. None of our coastal cities are exempt. These pictures show a 1.1m sea level rise by the year 2100 – close to the best case scenario mentioned above! They also do not take into account storm surges, erosion and other effects as our weather systems continue to be disrupted by the changing world environment. Now imagine 3 times that amount of impact, as forecast by the worst case scenario!

This is our children’s future. We need to prepare them well for handling these disasters. They need to understand how these have happened and what can be done to mitigate the effects of these changes. It is the job of all parents and educators to guide our children to develop the skills to interpret, understand and act in creative and innovative ways when tackling problem-solving and to start discussing these issues of their future now. Science, and the Scientific Method in particular, is an essential tool and the only hope that we have of both tracking what is happening and monitoring the efficacy of possible solutions.

Be Gonski Ready!

Gonski is in the news again with the release of the Gonski 2.0 report. This is most likely to impact on schools and teachers in a range of ways from funding to curriculum. Here at OpenSTEM we can help you to be ahead of the game by using our materials, which are already Gonski-ready!

The latest review of “Educational Excellence in Australian Schools” (known colloquially as “Gonski 2.0”) by a panel chaired by Mr David Gonski AC is now available and once again the media has jumped onto the decline of Australian student outcomes and the description of the educational system as “industrial” and out-of-date. The report also mentions “multiple calls on the time of teachers” and “assessment regimes… focused on periodic judgements of performance, rather than continuous diagnosis of a student’s learning needs and progress” (Gonski et al. 2018:ix). The report highlights three core priority areas with five specific recommendations. The first of these recommendations is:

“Embed a focus on individual student achievement through continuous learning progress…”

This emphasis on tracking “continuous learning progress” is repeated in recommendation #4:

“Introduce new reporting arrangements with a focus on both learning attainment and learning gain…”

(in order to track learning gain, we need to provide continuous assessment). This change has been highlighted in the media – suggesting a move away from periodic exams to a system of continuous assessment.

Here at OpenSTEM, we have long known that continuous assessment is a better route, especially in the primary years. Continuous assessment allows teachers to track their students’ progress and understanding and identify areas of concern quickly and effectively. Continuous assessment means that students are working more effectively towards their learning outcomes, teachers are aware of each student’s progress towards those outcomes and thus time is more efficiently used by all parties. Teachers can provide the timely feedback advocated in the Gonski recommendation #10. Teachers are also spared the giant load of marking a whole class’ worth of assessment pieces in a few days at the end of term, in time for reporting. A few minutes each week spent checking each student’s work means that by the end of term both teacher and student are aware of how the student is tracking and their grade for that term.

The OpenSTEM® Understanding Our World® program for HASS + Science has always provided for continuous assessment for all curriculum items for years Foundation/Kindy/Prep to Year 6 for all HASS and Science subjects. By using this program for these subjects, teachers and students will reap the benefits of continuous assessment. This program also directly addresses recommendation #7:

“Strengthen the development of the general capabilities, and raise their status within curriculum delivery, by using learning progressions to support clear and structured approaches to their teaching, assessment, reporting and integration with learning areas”

These issues are at the heart of the Understanding Our World® program: all of our units contain all of the general capability skills for each curriculum area; progression is maintained through a series of linked units that build upon earlier work; and integration is fundamental. Our Teacher Handbooks and Assessment Guides provide clear and structured information to teachers to guide them through teaching, assessment, reporting, and, of course, integration.

So be Gonski-ready! Use the OpenSTEM® Understanding Our World® program for HASS + Science now and be future-proof in your classroom and school!

Vale Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo Galilei‘s death (8 March 1942), and died on the anniversary of Albert Einstein‘s birth (14 March). Having both reached the age of 76, Hawking actually lived a few months longer than Einstein, in spite of his health problems. By the way, what do you call it when a set of unrelated facts match up like that? That’s right: coincidence!

While Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time” is apparently “the most popular book never read”, I own it and have read it. While it’s definitely not easy-going, he did have a good stab at making the complex physics understandable, and I found it very worthwhile – a fascinating read.

I think Hawking was a great scientist because he came up with grand ideas, but was quite happy to be disagreed with. Often the matter wouldn’t be settled for decades, and once it was, he was also quite happy to concede if he was wrong. Sometimes he’d even even declare himself wrong on one of his own earlier hypotheses. This approach is an excellent example of how science advances. Explanations can be improved, proven wrong, or strengthened through observations and calculations. Many complex matters cannot be proven “correct” directly, so a hypothesis can often only be disproven – that is, when an observation is made that doesn’t match the hypothesis, and that observation is repeated by others and thus validated, then either the hypothesis needs to be tweaked, or discarded.

Hawking was also an excellent role model for many young students as apart from his excellent attitude towards scientific research and good sense of humour, he was a key example of how having a serious disability does not necessarily preclude one from doing great things. He was also adventurous, and sometimes quite reckless driving his wheelchair.

Melbourne artist, Mitchell Toy, has produced a beautiful image to commemorate Hawking’s passing.

Welcome Back!

Well, most of our schools are back, or about to start the new year. Did you know that there are schools using OpenSTEM materials in every state and territory of Australia? Our wide range of resources, especially those on Australian history, give detailed information about the history of all our states and territories. We pride ourselves on having a resource on every topic in the Australian HASS and Science curriculum for primary school, so if you find something that you think is missing, please let us know and if it’s not there already, it soon will be!

This year we are preparing a new suite of Understanding Our World® HASS + Science Units for anyone who wants a bit of variety. If you are interested, do let us know and we might even be able to give you a sneak preview. Remember, all our Understanding Our World units run for 9 weeks per term, giving a bit of leeway for those crazy early weeks of the year!

There will also be some new resources coming out, and some substantial updates to some more familiar resources. Much of our material has been updated for the new year already, so make sure that you update your copies, especially with the 2018 licensed material.

Last year, after requests from some of the teachers we work with, OpenSTEM® started developing resources to assist with the Maths curriculum. Our Diced Maths® resources have been so popular that some students have even asked if they could swap from computer-based Maths programs to the Diced Maths resources! Students report that these resources make them feel more in control of their own learning and love “playing” with the funky dice. Many don’t see the activities as “doing Maths” at all. These activities develop students’ problem solving skills, whilst practising all their basic Maths concepts and operations at the same time.

Stay tuned for some exciting specials coming up in the next few weeks, as well as some more in depth exploration into a range of topics.