CMIS Evaluation WACE Courses

©Elisabeth Fall

ELIZABETH BLACKBURN has become the first Australian woman to win the coveted Nobel Prize award. The Australian science community is celebrating along with the recipient. There have been 10 previous Australian recipients - 9 for Science and Medicine plus 1 for Literature – Patrick White.

Professor Blackburn, whose research is conducted at the University of California San Francisco,  shares the award with Carol W. Greider, from John Hopkins University and Jack W. Szostak from Harvard Medical School. The award in the field of physiology or medicine was given for the discovery of telomerase, an enzyme that plays a key role in normal cell function, as well as in cell aging and most cancers. The research leading to this award has been carried out over a period of more than 25 years when Professor Blackburn first made the discovery.

Elizabeth Blackburn was born in Hobart and studied at Melbourne University High School. An inquiring mind, mentored by her chemistry teacher and inspired by reading the life of Marie Curie, Professor Blackburn has shown the Science Lab can indeed be a “woman’s place”.

Find out more from the following links and News articles:

• The TIME 100
• Australia Prize 1998
• Wikipedia Article
• Science of Aging Timeline
• Women@Google
• Press Conference

The announcement of the award was made by video from the Nobel Institute

Related Links:

• The Prime Minister’s Prize for Science
• Women in Science [Wikipedia]
• WA’s Chief Scientist – Professor Lyn Beazley

The State Library of WA is making quiet study rooms available during September and October.

Past papers and study guides are available.

Open

Monday to Thursday 9:00am to 8:00pm

Friday
9:00am to 5:30pm

Saturday and Sunday 10:00 to 5:30pm

Image CC MC Quinn

This event will be held at the Perth Town Hall from 25 September to 5 October.  Entry to the exhibition is free.

Find out more details and view catalogue-size images of the 2009 finalists on the  City of  Perth  Black  Swan Prize for Portraiture website.

City of  Perth  Black Swan Youth Portraiture Prize

Go to the City of Perth Black Swan Youth Portraiture Prize web page for information on the 2010 portrait competition. The competition is open to young artists from Western Australian secondary colleges and high schools.

$1000 prize for Years 11-12 category winner

$500 prize for Years 8-10 category winner

From the Links page of the City of Perth Black Swan Prize for Portraiture website, you can access Art-Search, a network for locating ‘people, businesses and websites’ in Australia, NZ, UK, USA and  Canada in fine arts, entertainment arts, and arts and crafts industries.  

There is also a list of  arts-related websites of interest to the general public, professional artists and students.

Teachers of Politics and Law and their students may like to check out the State Library of New South Wales HSC Legal Studies: News Watch blog.  Its purpose is to provide “information about recent changes to the law, recent cases, new legislation” and to identify relevant new publications.  Two of its recent posts deal with Lorana Bartels’ paper The Status of Laws on Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in Australia and the issue of taser stun gun use in NSW.

Traditional history textbooks take a back seat to this highly creative presentation of the facts in DK’s Take Me Back. Read Captain Cook’s Blog or Napoleon’s social networking site, not to mention the myriad other formats you will discover in this book, which is thoroughly satisfying in its visual appeal and imagination. Wonderfully inspiring for graphic arts. Definitely one for the school library and for the coffee table at home.

第40 回日本語弁論大会
The 40th Japanese Language Speech Contest

The Japan Foundation is again holding its Speech Contest for Australian students. This is the 40th year of the contest and is open to Year 11 and 12 students across the country. There are several different divisions covering all levels of competence.

Prizes include return airfares and accomodation packages to Japan. State winners in each section are expected to proceed to the National Final.

Guidelines and other Contest information is available from the Japan Foundation Website

The WA Final is on July 30th and the Western Australian contact for the contest is:

Chris Graham
Japanese Language Teachers’ Association WA
PH: (08) 9495 7439/ FAX: (08) 9390 4082
Email: chris.graham@det.wa.edu.au
WA State Final: Thursday 30 July
Please visit JLTAWA website
http://www.jltawa.org.au

Other information for Teachers of Japanese is available on the CMIS WACE Pages Japanese : Second Language

The latest edition of the Japan Foundation’s Omusubi newsletter is now available. It features Sensei’s Pages where teachers can learn about exciting programs for schools. These include a Speech Contest, a website contest, new resources and video production contest.

The newsletter includes information about the Prize Donation Program which was developed by the Japan Foundation, Sydney to support schools staging any kind of Japanese language-related event and can be primary or secondary schools in any part of Australia.

The CMIS Japanese Language for WACE studies page contains useful information for schools studying Japanese.

© MODIS Image Feb 11 2009

Teachers of Geography and Earth and Environmental Science can utilise this image and other information from the MODIS website to enhance their teaching.

The above map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008. Information regarding the temperature anaomaly is explained on this website. Data collection for this map was from NASA’s Terra satellite and shows that whilst southern Australia was experiencing above average temperatures – northern parts of the country were on average, several degrees cooler.

Images from the MODIS site allow viewing of a myriad of images displaying all sorts of geographical, environmental and weather phenomena.

WestOne Services have recently released new resources for selected WACE Courses.  Information about three of these resources can be found on our CMIS database:

• Indonesian. Unit 1A

• Italian. Unit 2A

• Italian. Unit 3A

For a list of WestOne WACE products currently available see New Secondary Course Resources.

Products may be purchased online or on site at WestOne Services, 1 Prospect Place, West Perth.

Thanks to Rod Blitvich for permission to use this email which he posted to the echalk email list. Do you have information you would like to share with other teachers? Let us know via the comments button at the bottom of this post.

I am working on my new Human Biology Course Of Study and was looking for resources.

Last night I got onto the iTunes store

(You need iTunes installed on your computer – download iTunes here)

• Quicklinks on the right

• Power Search

• Under “All Results” select “iTunes U”

• Then type a few words in the “Description” column eg Biotechnology or Fertility or Reproductive Technology etc.

• Then check out the resulting finds

Some will be university lectures, may be audio only, some will be full featured short movies. After checking through you will find some useful stuff.
It is all FREE!!!
It seems many US Universities (and now some Australian unis) have put heaps of their lectures/course material onto iTunes U for free.

As a Human Biol teacher struggling to find new stuff for my new Course of Study, in the short time I spent looking I found and downloaded the following very useful movies/podcasts (see below)

“DNA”
Cassiopeia Project, Biology
3:24 movie
keywords: DNA, Molecule, Blueprint, Chromosome, Strand, Helix, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, Guanine

“Genes Are Made Of DNA”
Biology 1A|Fall 2008|UC Berkeley
48 min movie
keywords: Crossing over, recombination, gene maps, sex linkage

“Cell To Embryo”
Cassiopeia Project, Biology
4:13 movie
keywords:  Cell, Embryo, Ovary, Egg, Fallopian, Fetus, Fetal, Blastocyst, Uterus, Placenta, Pregnant, Pregnancy, Fertilize

“Strategic Alliances in Biotech”
Texas A&M Faculty
41 min podcast audio file
Talks about the Biotechnology Industry

“Advances in Fertility”
Yale University audio podcast
9 min
Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, Director of the Yale Fertility Center discusses advances in egg freezing, male fertility and deciphering the genetic make-up of human eggs at various stages of maturity.

Remember – they are FREE!

iTunes is a free download for Mac and Windoze from Apple and runs on macs and PCs

Tunes U is a part of the iTunes Store featuring free lectures, language lessons, audiobooks, and more, that you can enjoy on your iPod, iPhone, Mac or PC. Explore over 100,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, museums and public media organizations from around the world. With iTunes U, there’s no end to what or where you can learn Here is a short trailer explaining iTunes U:
http://www.apple.com/education/guidedtours/itunesu.html

Perhaps you may experience some bandwidth/ Internet quota issues when downloading from iTunes.
My ISP is iiNet. Their iTunes downloads are free. Also they have an Off-Peak time between midnight and 8am which creates additional quota.

Regards
Blitto

And of course teachers in other Learning Areas will also find valuable resources here.

THANKS ROD