Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

Sleepy students improve grades with individual schedules
Do you have a night owl or a daytime finch or maybe a morning lark in your class? Whichever category students fall into has big implications for their performance as matching class schedules to an individual’s circadian rhythm means that each can perform at their best.
A new study from UC Berkeley and Northeastern Illinois University tracked the personal daily online activity profiles of nearly 15,000 college students as they logged into campus servers. Read more

National Youth Science Forum 2019 Year 12 Program applications open
It’s all about STEAM at the minute but it’s a huge area and students need some help navigating where they might go in the field.
There’s a variety of occupations within STEAM, and the fact that many are not generally ‘traditional’ means that parents and even career advisors often aren’t fully up to speed.
This uncertainty is amplified as students face final exams. Read more

Disadvantaged student performance has most impact
We know that falling student performance impacts negatively on the country but a new report says that the underperformance of the most disadvantaged students has the most pronounced effect as their performance fell farthest.
The actual dollar figure of academic under performance is $118.6 billion over six years, $20.3 billion of which can be attributed to growth in inequality. Read more

Maths classes drone on
Holy Spirit Community School Year 5–6 teacher and eLearning Leader Ben Lannen will show next week’s TeachTechPlay conference how drones can teach maths and team work.
He has his primary school pupils coding instructions for drones to learn about coding, angles, distance, space and height.
Lannen, 32, spent five years as a video game designer before moving to teaching and won last year’s TeachTech Play Nathan Jones Award for innovation in the first five years of teaching. He says the $150 drones are a big hit. Read more

Only way is up for Melbourne inner city schools
As Melbourne expands, schools in the inner city are heading upwards with the soon to open Prahran High School being the latest to take a vertical format.
Opening in 2019, Prahran High School will cater for 650 students and the new principal, Nathan Chisholm has already been appointed. Read more

Leadership actions matter: It begins with you! – Tamara Sullivan
Recent years have brought a crescendo of support for today’s schools to facilitate the development of new skillsets and mindsets that will enable students to thrive amidst the changes and challenges of the 21st Century. The most forward-thinking schools will continually assess the opportunities that emerging technologies bring to the process of teaching and learning.
How can school leaders lead improvement and drive innovation? Read more

Largest ever global study finds kids not active enough
New research confirms what many suspect about the ipad generation’s activity level.
The largest global study to examine physical activity in children aged between two and five years old has found that 66% are not getting the nationally recommended three hours of daily physical activity.
Led by the University of Western Australia, with funding from Healthway and the Heart Foundation, the study tracked the physical activity of 1600 children. Read more

Trinity flautist first Australian at elite Paris music school
Overachieving 2017 Trinity graduate Brian Kim is the first Australian flautist ever to be accepted for under graduate study at at the prestigious Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.
Still on a high from achieving 44/45 (an ATAR equivalent of 99.85) in the International Baccalaureate last year, Kim did not rest on his laurels, practising vigorously and winning a place at the Conservatoire, where he will be taught by Prof Phillipe Bernold, one of the world’s top flute teachers.
Read more