Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking When students return from the Easter holidays this year, it’s looking more, and more like Term 2 will be an entirely online experience for Australian students and teachers. Even though the sudden pivot to online is the most sensible choice, there’s no ignoring the fact that it creates new difficulties and hurdles for students, teachers, and parents to overcome. We’ve spoken to a small group of Primary School teachers from Sydney about the most useful resources and websites parents, and teachers will benefit from when teaching and learning from a distance. First, here are the must-haves for online learning setups. Most laptops these days are going to be able to support word processing and video calls simultaneously without any real issue, so if you do need to invest in a second computer, we recommend opting for a cheap notebook or second-hand deal. However, it’s best to check what your school’s action plan is before going ahead and making a purchase; some schools might be opting for a 1-way video feed, rather than a typical conference setup. There’s a massive selection of digital online learning resources, but there are still a lot of (free) activities that require a good old fashioned printout. Most public schools only print in black and white, so you won’t be forking out the big bucks when your little one chews through cyan cartridges like they’re going out of fashion. And, as always, you don’t have to break the bank on a printer. For activity printouts, just about any will do. Our friends at WhistleOut have put together an incredibly helpful guide on every telco’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak and the support packages on offer. We highly recommend giving it a read to see what discounts and bonuses you are eligible for. In the meantime, here are some of the fastest NBN plans on the market if you need to upgrade. Teachers and school staff will communicate the type of software used, but if you’re looking to do your research, here are a few popular video conferencing options for online learning.
Zoom Google Hangouts Microsoft Teams
If there’s a scheduling conflict with students and parents working from home, students will be able to catch up on lessons via recorded video. Some teachers are going old-school and using a whiteboard to teach lessons, others are using PowerPoint slides and printable activities. We sat down for a chat with a group of NSW teachers and asked for their recommendations on the most valuable online learning resources for K to 12 students, here’s what they recommend. Top Teacher is more classroom-focused, offering fun classroom design ideas and templates, decor packs and labelling resources. Still, it could be a useful resource for parents trying to replicate the classroom vibe in their own homes. Teach Starter’s subscriptions cover all key learning areas for K-6 with printable PDF activities, PowerPoint presentations, ready-to-use units, lessons and full-day plans. Each subscription tier also offers access to the Teach Starter app on iOS and Android. While Teach Starter covers all of K-6, the teachers we spoke to found it particularly useful for upper primary students (3 to 6), thanks to the attention-grabbing apps and colourful resource design. By now, you’ve no doubt heard of Mathletics and its spelling spin-off Spellodrome from 3P Learning. This early-learning goliath is like the Netflix of Maths and English. One of the first of its kind, the Sydney-based 3P Learning has taken its interactive maths and literacy activities global. Its programs are now used internationally, with over 3 million students, 200,000 teachers, and over 14,000 schools active on the platform. Educational games are a tough market to crack; they need to be informative enough without being too dry and fun enough without becoming a distraction. But 3P learning seems to have found the perfect recipe for success as it’s not only beloved by teachers, but it’s the one educational game students go wild for. The teachers we spoke to were quick to recommend Mathletics and Spellodrome for upper primary (3-6) students who might otherwise have difficulty engaging with online learning activities. It’s not all fun and games, though, there’s also a powerful reporting and tracking system in the backend for parents and teachers to track their students’ progress. Mathletics is commonplace in Australian schools, but the program began with home-learning in mind, so it’s a little ahead of the curve when it comes to catering for home-learning setups. For the younger years, 3P Learning has partnered with the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) to create ABC Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress and Mathseeds. The teachers we spoke to say these programs are already offered by many schools and implore parents to make use of the resources on hand. It’s not an interactive learning platform like most of the recommendations above but rather a searchable database of printable lesson plans, worksheets, posters and assessments. Teachers Pay Teachers also offers templates and activities for Google Classrooms, a program used statewide in NSW. Head over to Storyline Online if you want Annette Benning to read The Tooth, or Al Gore to read Brave Irene. The kids might even enjoy it too. There’s also a local version called Storybox Library Online with Australian talent, like musos Dan Sultan, Trevor Jamieson and Missy Higgins, actors Jay Laga’aia and Pia Miranda and, would you believe it, Nick Cave and Tim Rogers. Unlike Storyline Online, Storybox is a paid subscription service. There are separate pricing plans for families and schools, but it comes at a reasonable price for home use ($4.99 per month or $39.99 per year). Still, it’s always worth checking if your school already has a subscription. It doesn’t cost much, but Nick Cave’s gravelly reading of The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek is worth the admission alone. Lastly, if you’re after a purely audio experience, ABC’s Story Time is a great free resource for short-form audio books. We already mentioned Twinkl.com.au’s online PE resources, but for actual physical activity, you’re going to have to get creative. But if you want the best online workouts for kids that YouTube has to offer, the teachers we spoke to recommend Cosmic Kids and Zen Den highly. These channels provide yoga workouts and mindfulness practices themed around classic kids’ stories, like 3 Little Pigs and more recent kids fare, like Moana, Frozen and Trolls. There are also online chat apps, like Discord, that allow parents to set up private servers for kids to communicate through, but that option might require a bit of supervision and a read over Discord’s guide to keeping your kids safe online. And parents, it might be time to relax the house rules on online gaming. Games like Minecraft and Fortnite, get a bad wrap for their respective online communities, but with appropriate supervision and a safe chat system like Discord, it could be your child’s best option for getting in some social time during typical school hours.
