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This week's newsletter is about resting and recovering from term 3 and planning for term 4. We've included some self care recipes and binary activities. Use them with students to convert numbers from binary to base 10 and back again.

A reminder, term 4 is a great time to get some Digital Technologies into your classroom. There are 35 online coding challenges to try, from short Scratch challenges through to our biggest challenge of all: the Chatbot. Take a look at the whole range here.

What questions have we not answered?

As we wrap up term 3, we've added a final webinar session which is different from the others - it's an open Q&A, or office hours session. Come along, ask away, and our education specialists can answer questions about curriculum, assessment, coding challenges, hands on teaching and our Master of Education (Digital Technologies). We can't answer questions about your next Netflix series sorry (but this does look pretty good for when you get back to school.)

As you settle down at the end of term and curl up with a good book or the latest series, try one of these self care mug recipes. We could link this back to algorithms, but holidays are coming up, so maybe not.

Chai

Good black loose leaf tea
2 cloves of cardamom
Small piece fresh ginger
Star anise (optional)
Milk
Sugar

In a saucepan, add 1.5 cups of cold water and 3 tsps of black tea and bring to a rolling and vigorous boil. In the meantime, crush cardamom pods and ginger in a mortar and pestle and throw into the saucepan just as it has come to the boil. After it has boiled for about 30 seconds, add 1/2 cup or so of milk, turn the heat down and gently heat till you see small bubbles. Take off the heat, strain, and add sugar to taste.

Mug Brownies

1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk (regular or almond)
1/2 medium-sized ripe banana, mashed
1/2 tbsp nut butter
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Optional: chocolate chips

Combine dry ingredients, then add mashed bananas and remaining ingredients into a mug.

Stir and microwave for 2 minutes - check and cook for longer if required, then enjoy!

Exploring Binary

Binary can trip up teachers and students alike. We asked for tips on teaching it in our Facebook group last week. While it's not a curriculum requirement in the Australian Curriculum at the primary level, binary is something which can be fascinating to explore.

We've created a Scratch project which connects base-10 and base-2 numbers visually, and can be used to ask students to create any number between 0 and 31.

We also love this app which is kind of like a binary version of tetris.

For senior students, we went a step further and built a micro:bit binary to base 10 converter. Build out a number in binary by shaking the micro:bits and see the number scroll in base 10 at the end. This project uses the micro:bit radio to work and is best implemented on physical micro:bits.

You can get the code to make you own from here. After editing, you will need to enter it into a micro:bit code editor so that it can be converted to a .hex file and downloaded.

What do you think about our new features and initiatives?

We worked with our partner Grok Learning to introduce many new initiatives over the past few months, such as Expert Tutoring, free access to all online school content during Term 2, Webinars, Student Messaging, Live Classroom, the GrokAssist 33% discount for part-year subscriptions, DT@Home resources, and Narration on more online courses.

What did you think of these initiatives? We’ve put together a survey to gather your feedback and suggestions.

The first 100 respondents* to this survey will receive a collector's item Grok pin and an ACA lanyard as a massive thanks for your input. Subsequent respondents will receive Grok and ACA sticker sets (as many as we can until we run out!). You will need to have an account on Grok Learning to complete this survey. If you don't have one already, it only takes a moment to create.

*AU and NZ addresses only - due to prohibitive postage costs we will be unable to post internationally.

Do the survey

Fitting DT into primary teaching in 2020

With so much lost teaching time this year, and the ups and downs of remote learning, we're hearing from teachers that it's really hard to fit in digital technologies, especially in the younger years where there's a need to catch up on missed literacy and numeracy face to face instruction time.

We've taken a look through our challenges to find the ones which will get the most impact quickly, so that you can move DT lesson prep and teaching from your to-do list to your done list.

Blockly: Get Started is a great general programming course for year 3 and 4 students, covering key curriculum programming concepts.
Scratch: Get Started is a quick course to get students familiar with Scratch. No need to create accounts on the Scratch platform itself, just use single sign on within Grok Learning, and students can learn to code, their progress is saved, and with multichoice check point questions, you'll be able to see how students are progressing on your teacher dashboard.
Blockly Wombot is a great beginners course where younger students give a cute Wombot simple instructions to move it around a grid.

It's all about the video

Did you know we now have over 100 videos uploaded to your YouTube channel? With playlists for cyber security, DT Challenges, guides for computer-free activities and professional development webinar replays, you'll be able to find useful resources to answer your questions.

Take me to YouTube

Like what we do? Please leave the team a review on our Facebook page or Google.

Join our powered-up Facebook group to chat about all things DT and your changing teaching needs.

Thank you for your support, as always, and stay safe.

We're all in this together,

The ACA team

Ways to stay in touch:

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Call us: 02 8627 8686

Drop us an email: help@aca.edu.au

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