Design Brief: Jumping Frog

                                                                                                           02/09/2010

Hello,
In today's lecture and workshop I had learnt about the protection of students online. I had learnt that schools need to; establish a Cybersafety team, appoint a Cybersafety contact person, develop Acceptable Use Agreements (AUA) and Codes of Conduct (this is an age appropriate Codes of Practice for students, teachers and parents to follow), educate students, educate parents and have professional learning for educators. A great teachers resource is (ACMA-Cybersmart): http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/schools/teacher%20resources.aspx

As part of today's lecture we had viewed several examples of what different Primary, Secondary and Tertiary schools have done to ensure their students are protected online. These sites included;
Bayswater PS: http://www.bayswaterps.vic.edu.au/students/internet.htm
Keilor PS: http://www.keilorprimary.vic.edu.au/
and, La Trobe University: http://www/latrobe.edu.au/ict/policies

As part of  today's workshop we had performed and presented an activity to the class, which was to make a frog jump. This activity works towards VELS Level 4 but could also be used in lower year levels, although changes will need to be made to accommodate for the different age groups. The 'design a frog to jump' activity, could be extended broadly over other subjects. For example you could use this activity in  a science class where you could teach the students about tension or forces. It is a great activity to get students to discuss as well as to raise their level of thinking. The activity may be done in pairs on individually. The purpose of the activity is for students to learn and demonstrate ways they could get a frog to jump with the limited resources they are given by the teacher. These resources include; a pair of scissors (depending on the year level), a rubber band, 1 piece of cardboard, a small piece of sticky tape, a glue stick and a picture of a frog. There are some safety issues associated with this activity and they include the use of scissors and rubber bands. It is important to educate and inform students about the use of these instruments. If this activity is used in younger year levels than the teacher will have to already have cut the pictures for them and help the students to use the rubber band. This activity is also fantastic as it teaches students not only to self-evaluate their performance but it also gets the students to come up with other strategies that would make their frog jump further. This can be achieved by getting the students to present their jumping frog to the rest of the class. This activity also allows students to write and express their ideas by filling out a work sheet given by the teacher, this can be seen below. Overall I thought this activity is fantastic to include in my practicum as it could be something I could conduct each week as part of an introduction to my lessons.

Activity Sheet: Design a Jumping Frog

The second part of today's lesson was exploring different types of games using the computer. Today I had created my own quiz and hand man activity based on my chosen theme/topic, 'summer'. I found these games very useful as I had learnt about another program that is a fantastic way in teaching students factual information in both a fun and creative environment. I believe these activities are great to use with students across all ages as it allows them to be creative as they get to create and play games individually and with their peers based on the chosen topic given by the teacher. I found these activities also raise students level of thinking  as well as improve their research skills.