After five weeks of helping Chinese classmates I fired off a furious email. (Also, the problem with group assessments)

https://www.smh.com.au/national/after-five-weeks-of-helping-chinese-classmates-i-fired-off-a-furious-email-20190827-p52l8f.html

A new front in the education wars is set to break out over whether schools should focus on skills such as problem solving over teaching facts and figures as the state government begins the biggest overhaul of the curriculum in a generation. Advocates of so-called soft skills such as critical thinking argue they are more relevant in an age when facts can be easily found on the internet, but opponents say hard knowledge is an essential foundation of higher-order thinking.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/hard-facts-v-soft-skills-a-new-front-in-the-education-wars-20180831-p5010n.html

NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes has scrapped the state's most controversial education policy and will no longer force year 9 students to score three band 8s in NAPLAN to qualify for the HSC. Under the changes, HSC students will still have to meet a minimum standard through short online tests in reading, writing and numeracy.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/stokes-scraps-controversial-year-9-naplan-policy-20180222-p4z180.html

THE END OF DYSLEXIA Innovations in brain research and AI-fueled assistive technologies could level the playing field for those with language-based learning disabilities. Grammarly, a free cloud-based software extension that you add onto a web browser. The plug-in is billed as a "writing assistant," but I mostly used it as a spell-checker, a task at which it proved nearly omniscient. Grammarly could help me spell even the words that regularly flummoxed MS Word and Google.

https://www.wired.com/story/end-of-dyslexia/

Meet the woman who calculates every NSW student's ATAR

https://www.smh.com.au/education/meet-the-woman-who-calculates-every-nsw-student-s-atar-20180531-p4zipm.html

No experience needed: Pass this test and runway success could be yours

https://www.smh.com.au/national/no-experience-needed-pass-this-test-and-runway-success-could-be-yours-20180522-p4zgt2.html

The Gonski plan: an online tool to stop children falling through the cracks

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-gonski-plan-an-online-tool-to-stop-children-falling-through-the-cracks-20180504-p4zdbg.html

Malcolm Turnbull backs Gonski report call to move from mass learning to tailored education. Too many Australian children are failing to reach their potential at school because of the restrictive nature of year-level progression, the report said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/gonski-recommends-australian-schools-move-to-individualised-lea/9708984

A new teaching method, where explanations of a subject are delivered online at home and the usual homework becomes classwork, could be piloted in NSW high schools within two years. The inverted model of teaching, best exemplified by the teachings of maths ''super teacher'' Eddie Woo, is being trialled among 70 preservice teachers at Macquarie University

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/flipping-teaching-on-its-head-20180327-p4z6gr.html

Children from India, the Philippines and China are outperforming their Australian-born classmates by significant margins, according to a global education report.

http://education.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/2820509/migrant-children-at-the-head-of-the-class-in-australia-oecd-report-finds

HSC students abandoning high-level subjects

https://www.smh.com.au/education/hsc-students-abandoning-high-level-subjects-20180323-p4z5yn.html

17-year-old whiz-kid slams schooling system for being too outdated and closed-minded. “Someone who is an IT person doesn’t stand next to a plumber and tell them how to do their job, so why is the government telling teachers how to teach?” she asked.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/17yearold-whizkid-slams-schooling-system-for-being-too-outdated-and-closedminded/news-story/b5bf14740845eaf23df1abf0143bd671

No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/01/no-grades-no-timetable-berlin-school-turns-teaching-upside-down?CMP=share_btn_tw

Students in NSW will not sit NAPLAN tests online until schools are confident they are ready to move from pen and paper, according to the Education Minister Rob Stokes, who said he supported the use of handwriting in exams and was "very aware" of the concerns of teachers. Mr Stokes' comments come as the NSW Teachers Federation began collecting feedback from teachers and principals about the school readiness tests, which are under way in thousands of schools across NSW to assess whether schools will be in a position to move to online NAPLAN testing from next year. But data collected by the NSW Department of Education show that the students who sat the school readiness test last week reported that they liked doing it on a computer. Of the 12,500 responses from students, more than 77 per cent were positive.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/we-do-not-have-enough-computers-teachers-criticise-naplan-online-20170821-gy0uex.html

THE BEST WAY TO TEST STUDENTS? MAKE THEM EXPLAIN IT ON VIDEO

https://www.wired.com/story/the-best-way-to-test-students/

Australia looks to China for maths, science lessons

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/australia-looks-to-china-for-maths-science-lessons/news-story/63f74b5a7f010143d39e867ec1a33629

What Elon Musk, Richard Branson and 8 other successful people ask job candidates

http://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace-relations/what-elon-musk-richard-branson-and-8-other-successful-people-ask-job-candidates-20170731-gxm36z.html

The highly competitive entry tests for NSW selective schools will be overhauled as the state government moves to address concerns that wealthy families are gaming the system by engaging tutors for their children. "Parents can spend more than $20,000 a year on preparation for [opportunity class] or selective high school tests," NSW Department of Education secretary Mark Scott told the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children conference in Sydney on Friday.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/selective-entry-test-to-be-overhauled-amid-coaching-concerns-20170721-gxfpxq.html

A makerspace can be any place where students can get creative, whether a classroom, library or garden. It's not about the space, but the innovation mindset that the space promotes. In this article, we unpack everything you need to create your own collaborative makerspace at school.

http://splash.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/2576587/how-to-set-up-a-makerspace-at-your-school?WT.tsrc=Email&WT.mc_id=Innovation_Innovation-Splash|Secondary_email|20170705

More than half of all students starting a bachelor degree at an Australian university are now admitted on a basis other than their Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR), despite this cohort having one of the highest dropout rates. Nearly 56 per cent of students commencing bachelor degrees were admitted based on criteria other than ATAR in 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/australian-universities-admitting-56-per-cent-of-students-without-atar-20170613-gwq0yr.html