News from Grok Academy

Hello ,

The year is rocketing by! Can you believe we over halfway through March already?! 😲

The NCSS Challenge is almost over!

The latest students can submit answers and still earn points is 9pm Sunday March 21 AEDT. It is not too late to join, if you want to jump in and see what all the fuss is about: click here.

Would you like to host face to face professional development at your school?

The ACA team is planning to run some one and two day workshops at schools in NSW between now and the end of April. Our workshops unpack the Australian Curriculum:Digital Technologies. Teachers leave the workshop with a deeper understanding of the key concepts in the curriculum and a range of hands-on activities they can immediately incorporate into their teaching.

If your school would be interested in hosting a workshop (with teachers from other local schools able to attend) and you are located in NSW, please get in contact with our team.

Host a workshop

Bundaberg Workshop Bookings Open Now

Speaking of professional development, we're visiting Bundaberg, Queensland on April 29 and 30 for two days of focussed Digital Technologies learning.

This workshop is for primary and secondary teachers. It includes:

Case studies showcasing existing practice, and school-wide scope & sequence, incorporating Grok Academy resources
Hands-on experiences with free, classroom-ready resources that target the Digital Technologies curriculum
Introduction to various programming tools available, including visual and text-based programming, and object-oriented approaches
Deep dive into Blockly / Python / JavaScript programming, covering coding aspects of years 5-6 and 7-8 curriculum, focusing on defining and decomposing real-world problems, designing algorithms and implementing programs

The workshop runs from 8:30am - 4:00pm on both days and costs $100. If you're a member of QSITE you are eligible for a $60 ticket. Contact QSITE for a discount code before you purchase your ticket. Pre-service teachers can purchase a ticket for only $30: send us an email for a discount code.

New resource spotlight: ACA teacher resources

With so many resources available from the ACA and Grok Learning teams, we know it can be tricky to find the perfect online or unplugged activity for your students. We’ve created a handy resource for teachers with a recommended sequence of activities using the ACA’s DT Challenges, which you can find here: Sequence of Learning.

This is part of a larger group of resources to support your Digital Technologies teaching. Explore our teacher page to find webinar recordings, classroom posters and other activities.

Web.Comp: Get creative and learn HTML at the same time

Web.Comp starts May 10. This exciting competition combines design skills with HTML and CSS. Students will learn the fundamentals of creating visually appealing and easy to use websites and have the option to enter a design tournament to compete against other students. We are rolling out some new exciting changes to the Intermediate stream of web.comp this year to include greater alignment to the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies. We will provide you with more information shortly - but for now, save the date and get ready to create!

Leading the Way in Digital Technologies

Our new feature article "Leading the Way in Digital Technologies" was recently published on Education HQ. In it, we share our thoughts on rolling out DT at your school. Read the article here.

If you have any questions about signing up to Grok, learning pathways, curriculum mapping, or you just want to chat, send us an email.

Thank you for your patience as we implement changes with our way of invoicing schools: we're working really hard to get back to everyone who has questions, and to get everyone set up as quickly as possible.

Happy Coding!

Christie and Nicola

Grok Academy

Call us: 02 8627 8686

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

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