Web Resources for Queensland Teachers

Core Sites in Education

Queensland Studies Authority

Use the Queensland Studies Authority website to find Queensland syllabus documents and support materials, for Kindergarten to Grade 12. The QSA site also offers an Assessment Bank, and information about the implementation of the Australian Curriculum in Queensland.

The Learning Place

Education Queensland teachers use the Learning Place, on the Education Queensland website, to find resources for teaching and for the use of ICTs. See their brochure for an outline of what's on offer in The Learning Place.

Note: There are special arrangements for university students and staff who would like to access The Learning Place. If you are interested, please contact the UQ School of Education.

aussie educator

A privately-produced website with a great wealth of material for Australian teachers. Under the menu heading "Curriculum Information", find resources for teaching in all subject areas.

Prac Resources Wiki

The Prac Resources Wiki is a site for sharing teaching resources with other student teachers, librarians, and practising teachers in southeast Queensland and northern N.S.W. You are very welcome to add your own recommended sites to this wiki.

Databases for Teachers

Where can you find databases, journal articles, and other library materials as a teacher in a Queensland school?

Alumni membership of UQ Library provides borrowing privileges and access to selected databases, including thousands of fulltext journals from off-campus. Membership is free for the first year after graduation. Apply using the online form.
Eric, the world's largest education database, is available free on the internet.
Teacher Reference Center, is a free database for teachers, provided by Ebsco. It indexes over 260 titles from the most popular teacher and administrator journals, periodicals, and books.
Education Queensland libraries, provide several libraries and online databases for Queensland teachers, including a Curriculum Collection (58,000+ items), and a Professional Collection (40,000+ items). Browse their lists of resources by topic. Check their brochure for more information.
Your school library. Ask your school librarian about resources available in your school. Some schools have their own subscriptions to databases.
Free databases. This list of free online databases is provided by QUT Library.
Resourcebank. (UQ login required to obtain password.) A collection of online, class-ready tasks, organised by curriculum topic, that can be used as extensions to lesson plans. From the Australian Council for Educational Research. Schools' access is by subscription.
Scootle. Interactive teaching materials available free to all Australian and New Zealand schools. UQ staff and students can create an individual login via this link. Scootle's interface aligns learning materials with the Australian National Curriculum. (formerly The Learning Federation)
Australian Historical Newspapers Free full-text searching and pdfs of newspapers published in each Australian state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s. From the National Library of Australia.

Public libraries offer access to online resources, including databases, and free internet access to members of the public, including school students.

Brisbane City Council Library Services provides access to a number of databases through their webpage. These resources are available to all members of the BCC Library Service; membership is free to residents of Brisbane.
The State Library of Queensland provides a range of information services state-wide. This includes online databases (eresources), some of which can be accessed Queensland-wide.
Free databases from the National Library of Australia, including great resources such as the Factiva newspaper database, and the complete Oxford English Dictionary online. Hundreds of free databases, plus access to licensed databases -- free registration required to access licensed resources. Registration with the National Library of Australia is available to anyone residing in Australia.
The Queensland Museum offers attractive online interactive learning resources on scientific and cultural subjects. The QM Loans statewide lending service offers educational kits on many topics (for example, the "Journey of Understanding Refugee Kit"), as well as objects such as fossils, stuffed animals, artefacts such as rain sticks -- explore their catalogue of items for loan (use the search box at the bottom of the page). In Brisbane, you can borrow in person; loans are provided to schools in regional areas from depots, located throughout Queensland.

Teachers Associations' Websites

Teachers' professional associations' websites can be a source of teaching resources, as well as providing professional links. Many offer discount membership rates to student teachers.
aussie educator provides a good collection of links to Australian teachers' associations' websites, organized by subject area.

Examples:

The Australian Teachers of Media (Metro Magazine) website offers free study guides for feature films. Click on Study Guides to access them; for example, Ten Canoes.
The Primary English Teaching Association of Australia (PETAA) is a publisher of very useful books and magazines. Some free resources are offered on their website; for example, the Global Words materials.
Websites of teachers' associations from other countries can also be useful. The NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (USA) offers this site Illuminations: Resources for teaching math, which is full of free lesson plans and online activities, for years K-12. Try their Dynamic Paper tool!

Subject Gateways for Teachers and Students

Aussie Educator
Links to a wealth of online materials grouped by subject. Teaching resources for particular subject areas are under "Curriculum Information", and under "Resources" > "Teaching Resources" from the left-hand menu.
UQ Cyberschool
Selected, high-quality internet sites relating to each of the key learning areas in the curriculum.
Homework Help
Information sources for Queensland school students, arranged by subject area.
Net Links
Authoritative, adult-level information sources, on subjects most often requested at the State Library of Queensland.
Kids Click!
Subject gateway of sites for children, selected by public librarians in the U.S.A.
Internet Public Library
A subject gateway for all ages, which aims to be "a public library of and for the internet community".
UQ Library Quick Reference
Online dictionaries and encyclopedias, and sites for quickly finding statistics, maps, government information, and more.

Resources for Using Technology

Education Queensland -- Smart Classrooms
Education Queensland's gateway to ICT resources for teachers.
The Learning Place
The Learning Place is Education Queensland's e-learning environment. Each region has a Principal Advisor eLearning (formerly Smart Classrooms Mentors) to support teachers.
Google Sites
A handy free tool for creating a simple webpage with links and publishing it instantly.
Web Publishing for Schools
Guidelines and support for Education Queensland school websites.
Gayleen's Bookmarks
Collection of Web 2.0 sites from Gayleen Jackson, of Education Queensland's ICT Learning Innovation Centre
Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools
Sites collected by Lenva Shearing, a deputy principal and ICT facilitator for schools in New Zealand.
Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything
Global Education - including Global Projects Online

Teaching Teachers for the Future - aims to enable pre-service teachers to become proficient in the use of ICTs in their teaching
Online projects inviting students and teachers to collaborate world-wide.
Yahoo WWW Beginners' Guides
Web Monkey
A wealth of resources for website developers.
EduBlogs.
A free, secure site for setting up blogs for classroom use.
WikiSpaces
Set up public or private Wikis. They can be set up to be ad-free and accessible only to people you nominate.
PB Works
A free, secure site for setting up public or private Wikis. Home to over 300,000 classroom wikis. See their Education page.
Getting Tricky with Wikis
Practical steps for customizing your classroom Wiki, from Lenva Shearing.
Stay Smart Online
This Australian government site offers the free "Budd:e" interactive materials, for young people to learn how to stay safe online. A fun way to explore issues of cybersecurity and safety. Budd:e has primary and secondary school versions, plus support material for teachers.

Resources for Using Multimedia

National Film & Sound Archive - Digital Learning
Free filmclips from Film Australia productions, and teaching guides, for use by teachers and students.
Metro Magazine
Website of the Australian Teachers of Media.
Informit TVNews (UQ only). Database of Australian TV news and current affairs programmes, to view and download. Some schools subscribe.
Scootle
Online, interactive teaching materials for Australian and New Zealand schools. UQ staff and students can create an individual login via this link.
ABC iView
TES - Videos from Teachers TV
3,500 free videos from the former Teachers TV (UK)
Teachers TV Australia Australian video material, plus selected content from the U.K. channel, "Teachers TV". Free registration required.
PBS Learning Media. (formerly Teachers Domain) (U.S.A. content). Over 20,000 digital resources including videos, games, audio clips, photos, lesson plans, and more. Stream or download videos. Free to educators, free registration required.
The Crew: "behind the scenes with Aussie youth"
Invites participation by senior high-school students and class groups Australia-wide, in making their own videos to be shown on the SBS program "The Crew". Includes free online lesson plans on video production.
Enhance TV
EnhanceTV is a resource for Australian educators, providing information on educational TV programs and films, as well as free study guides and feature articles to help you teach using television in the classroom.
Find podcasts (video and audio) with PodcastAlley.com.
Finding Videos, Audio and Images on the Web: Search Tools by Cindy Shamel. Try Tubesurf for finding videos.

Resources for Networking

Online collaboration

Education Queensland's The Learning Place hosts Professional Learning Communities.

Discussion lists

Discussion lists can be found on teachers' associations websites, and on the major Education sites including Education Queensland.

Education Queensland discussion lists are for staff of Education Queensland only.

Book raps

Book raps are web conferences or online discussions for talking about books.

Youth writing sites

TeenSpace from the Internet Public Library provides a Teen Poetry Wiki, and a collection of sites for teenage writing.
Teen Ink online magazine.

E-penpals

These sites facilitate email links between school classes around the world.
E-Pals Global Community

Information Literacy

Policy statements on Information Literacy

Statement on Information Literacy - Australian School Library Association
Information Literacy Framework - University of Queensland Library

Resources for Information Literacy

The Big 6 provides a wealth of resources for teaching specific information and research skills.
Noodle Tools
QUICK: The Quality Information Checklist

Search Tools

Subject gateways

Intute
Intute is a free subject gateway providing access to high quality web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Browse or search Intute: Education and Research Methods to find websites in the Education field. Note: Intute will not be updated after July 2011.

Pinakes: a Subject Launchpad
Pinakes is a collection of subject gateways in science, philosophy, music, psychology, humanities, architecture, and others.

Search Engines

When using the search engine Google, try the Advanced search screen for more control over your search results.
Use quotation marks " " to search for an exact phrase when searching Google.
To find pictures, search Google Images . Or Flickr.
To find scholarly articles, try Google Scholar. (Access to fulltext will depend on your library's journal subscriptions. To optimize your access to UQ-subscribed content, search via this link.)
Search within books, using Google Books.

Referencing and Evaluating

Referencite: Academic Referencing Resource Includes videoclips of students and researchers who talk about referencing from a range of points-of-view. Includes a Quick-cite tool.