Welcome to Scootle News!
In this edition: new FAQs, seven iPad apps, the Australian Curriculum available on your mobile, new resources on Scootle and a useful link for teachers.
New FAQs
Scootle's FAQs are now even more user-friendly. The new FAQs have been designed to be more responsive to the questions most frequently emailed to us about Scootle.
The new features include numbered questions, more specific queries, the option to jump to the relevant answer rather than scrolling, links to regularly updated sections of the website (such as the contact details for jurisdiction administrators) and links to the user guides for easier reference. The guides may also help you to learn more about using Scootle and will provide further information not directly covered in the FAQs.
New iPad resources
Six new apps are now available free to Australian users on the App Store. These apps have been converted from learning objects, and follow the publication of
Pirate treasure hunt and
Birthday buzz, which have been available through the App Store since last year.
New resources in Scootle
M009553 SpatialGenie gives you access to highly interactive map resources. It incorporates map layers that relate to many disciplines, including geography, mathematics, science and history. The tool is instantly available via the web, and is simple enough for non-technical users and those without geospatial domain knowledge.
SpatialGenie incorporates street, terrain and satellite maps and imagery, as well as Google's Street View, to offer contextualised data and overlays on familiar landmarks. It allows students to annotate and mark up maps, and it includes measurements of area and length – a critical area of the mathematics curriculum.
The tool is specifically designed to support curriculum objectives, and has a bias towards Australian data, making it unique among spatial tools used in education. Component datasets are also available directly through the following resources.
