Poetry Corner

Little Brothers

by Lily B.

Little brothers steal all of the attention but they are so silly, 

They only play the play station and footy even when it is chilly, 

They will never leave you alone from the time they can crawl,

And from then they don't seem to have any common sense at all, 

They don't care about dresses, makeup, bling, or gloss, 

They fashion sense but that's their loss.

They are really bad at faking being sick but get a day of school anyway,

And when his sister tries the same she's told that she's going to school that day, 

That's when little brothers tease and pull faces without their parents knowing, 

And even if the sister tells him she'll dob, his face is still glowing,

And when she does tell her parents they'll believe their innocent looking son, 

Then his sister will glare at him the parents never realise that he's the naughty one.

Little brothers don't scream at the sight of toads, bugs or even dirty pigs at the petting zoo, 

And instead of seeing the fashion shows they watch sport and scientific stuff about goo 

They don't have sense! They keep their hair short and let their nails grow too long,

If you admit that he looks terrible (because he does) he will tell you that you are wrong.

Little brothers are super annoying and selfish and brainless and they stink, 

They're silly and tasteless and don't even like beautiful colours like pink, 

Everybody who has one that I know wishes that they don't,

You'd like to hope that he will stop annoying you when you know that he won't.

It is unguessable what they have in their head,

Lucky for me I have a little sister instead.

Australian and Japan

Students in Year 6 have Japanese lessons with LOTE teacher, Sensai Flynn, each week.

Lily B. explains her latest LOTE project:

"Our task was to create a report about the differences between Japan and Australia. We had to inform the audience about the demographics of Japan and Australia to compare them, explain the cultural elements of Japan and how they are represented in Australia and write a bit about the global issue of whaling with our own solution."

Here is Lily's very comprehensive report:

Introduction

Japan and Australia have a relationship where they trade and help in times of disaster. This relationship surprisingly started off badly with Australians being afraid of Asians who were living in Australia for a better life. The Australians feared invasion. There was also a war between them but soon enough after the federation of Australia, more people were needed for the country, not only Europeans, so Asians were allowed and a relationship formed. It was quite easy for them to become trading partners since they are close neighbours. They are different in some demographics but similar in others. 

Japan is loved by Australian tourists in fact just over 80% of people surveyed would love to go to experience the Asian culture. They have many reasons why they'd like to go including the scenery, food and the manga characters that some Japanese enjoy to draw. Unfortunately an issue regarding whaling is being debated about at the moment but Japan and Australia will hopefully keep the relationship that they have now in future even if there is an argument going on. Although Australia and Japan are different in many ways, they are allies and are ready to help each other at anytime. 

Comparison Table

Populating with almost 127 000 000 people, Japan has over 5 times the amount of Australia's population of 24 000 000. Although Japan has a larger population size, Australia is over 20 times larger which results to about 336 people every square kilometre in Japan . This is massively more crammed than Australia with 3 people per square kilometre. Nearly 350 more people live in a square kilometre in Japan than a square kilometre in Australia. Even though Japan is larger in population, Australia is a larger country and has much more space.

Only about three years apart life expectancy of both of these countries are similar and so is the per capita income. The average life expectancy for Japan is almost 85 years and has the 3rd highest life expectancy in the world. For Australia the age that most people live up to is just above 82 years and is ranked to have the 10th highest life expectancy. The per capita income for both countries is quite similar too, even though there is about a $5,000 difference between these two country's per capita income. This is because if you were to compare differences there are other countries that have tens of thousands of dollars less than Japan and Australia such as India, Pakistan, China and North Korea. Some countries also have per capita incomes above Australia's like America. 

Culture

Because Australia was found by Europe, Australia doesn't have much of its own culture, it just shares Europe's however after federation Australia soon was filled with other cultures. There are things like Indian restaurants, festivals like Chinese New Year and many people learn different languages at school. Some of the only things that identify Australia not Europe are the animals, vegemite and aboriginal culture. Australia is a mix of a lot of different cultures including Japanese.

Japan has many cultural elements that are shared with Australia of which one is the food. Japanese food is enjoyed by many Australians, especially sushi. Sushi is a seafood dish with seaweed, rice and your own choice of seafood and vegetables. The seafood and vegetables are in the centre and surrounded by rice which is held together by the seaweed. This makes it a cylinder shape. With many selections of seafood and vegetables in the middle, sushi has become quite popular over Australia. In order to keep sushi popular in Australia there are over 100 sushi stores just in Brisbane.

Another cultural element that is shared by both countries is language. In Japan it is important to learn English in fact sometimes to get a job they need to be able to speak English fluently. Some Australians also learn Japanese but not all Australians do since it doesn't usually make a difference in what job they get. Both countries often have exchange students from the other country, where students from one country stay at somebody from the other country's house in another for a certain amount of time so they can study that culture. Being able to communicate is a big part of their relationship.

Manga is another cultural element of Japan. Manga is a popular style of drawing done in Japan and is the Japanese traditional type of art. It is very unique and most of the time it is difficult to see what is being drawn until it is complete. Not many Australians draw this style but a few manga tv characters like hello kitty and pokemon are well known by Australians. This is an important feature of Japan.

Martial arts are originally from Japan and now are sometimes done in Australia. Martial arts are Asian types of fighting, which are usually for self defence, it includes karate, jiu jitsu, ect. This is mostly done by boys but some girls do it too. Even though not too many Australians fight in these styles, some of these types are very well known. It will likely grow to be more popular in Australia over time.

Origami is another cultural element of Japan which is also done in Australia. Origami is the art of paper folding and is quite popular in Japan. Many Australians do it too just not very often. It is mainly a girl thing but lots of boys and girls enjoy making a paper plane, folding paper into a bird shape or creating a colourful mini hat. Sometimes origami is done with beautiful coloured paper though other times it is done with white paper. It has to be done with square paper so then all sides are equal. It is an important part of Japan's culture.

Although there aren't many cultural elements of Australia, and Japan doesn't have any Australian restaurants, Australian food is quite popular in Japan. These foods include vegemite, lamingtons, barbecue food and hot cross buns. Japanese come to Australia to eat them since they aren't sold in Japan. They're quite popular among Japanese and are rarely eaten but one of the most common questions in Japan at the moment is, "Where is the nearest place that I can buy vegemite?" Unfortunately the answer is always Australia. One day in the future there will hopefully be Australian restaurants in Japan.

Sharing Japan's culture, Australia has a lot of things that Japan has. This relationship will hopefully change to both countries sharing each other's culture. I think that both countries have great culture yet very different to each other's. They will hopefully grow to be stronger
allies and share more culture of each other. 

Whaling in Japan

Did you know that some species of whales have a tongue that weighs about the same amount as an elephant? As mammals they have lungs yet some can stay under water for over 2 hours at record breaking depths of over 3km down.The Baleen whale eats an animal called plankton, which is a creature without a back bone, it is very small and is at the bottom of the food chain. Whales migrate to waters surrounding Antartica during the warmer months then migrate to warmer waters as it gets colder. During their migration times they are often sighted breeching, leaping mostly out of the water and twisting to land on their back, or squirting water through their blowhole along the coastline of Australia. Unfortunately Japan is hunting these unique creatures in the Antarctic.

Whaling is done by the Japanese for many different reasons. It is part of their culture to eat seafood such as whale and sushi. Another reason they whale is for the products that can contain blubber, a layer of fat below a whale's skin, such as soaps, candles and cosmetics. Although there was a whaling ban in 1986, the Japanese claimed that they were killing the whales for research but it turned out to be an excuse to make their whaling seem legal. Many Japanese people are keen to keep on whaling and are going to try to continue whaling no matter what any other countries think or do.

Although Australians are telling the Japanese to stop whaling, Australia used to whale quite often. Australia used to have a large industry for whaling but over time opinions changed and now Australia chooses not to whale since species had started to become endangered. Some people argue to the Japanese that you don't need to kill whales to research them. Although Australians are trying to convince them to stop, the Japanese are still continuing to kill about 1000 whales a year.

Trying to protect the whales, Australians are building whale sanctuaries along their coastline. The sanctuaries were built to protect endangered species of whale, from the whaling ships, while their species recover. So far this isn't working too well since in order for good results to be shown, Japan would have to reduce the amount of whales they killed so that the population of whales would grow. Some Australians have also attempted to catch the Japanese whalers as being illegal which they have. Unfortunately with or without the sanctuaries and being caught illegal Japan is still letting the whale populations die.

In order to save the whales in future, a group called The Sea Shepherd have been keeping watch of all whaling ships. The goal of The Sea Shepherd is to save marine life for a better future. They are trying to save whales by ramming whaling ships or boarding them and fining the drivers. Although this may be helping whales slightly it is very dangerous for The Sea Shepherds and there has already been a few accidental collisions between them and other ships including one Japanese whaling ship. Even though they are just trying to help the marine animals, The Sea Shepherds can be violent to other ships and this may make Japan think that Australians have sent these ships to attack them.

My opinion is that Australia could mark a border of where their waters are and charge all whaling ships that pass the border a certain amount of money for each whale they caught, depending on how endangered the species that they killed are. It'd probably cost them more to kill the whales than to sell the meat or products. This would be good for Australians because whaling in the surrounding waters would lessen but it still may not save all the Antarctic whales. On the other side the Japanese might be upset by this and may see it as an unfriendly sign which might stop the relationship between them and Australia and may even cause war. It could be difficult for the two countries to regain trust and may take time. It could also be very dangerous for all the boats that would be watching and fining whaling ships because that is a lot like what Sea Shepherd does so there might also be collisions. It probably wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Another solution would be to reduce the legal amount of whales that are allowed to be killed to a much smaller number. Australians would be glad that not as many whales would be hunted and species could be saved. Although this is a possible solution, the Japanese may chose not to obey that rule and whale as many whales as they like. It seems like this idea might be worth trying but Japan may fight in a war against Australia, stopping the trading between them. Even if that didn't happen, it is again like Sea Shepherd, boarding whaling ships.

Whaling is causing species of whales to become endangered and will likely continue until they are extinct unless something more is done about it. It isn't just Japan whaling a lot, Norway and Iceland do it too. I think that whaling should be stopped instantly so that in the future whales will still be around for as long as they possibly can. 

Conclusion

Australia and Japan are trading partners with different cultures though Australia shares some of Japan's. They are very different in population and country size but have a similar life expectancy and per capita income. Even though Japan is in the Northern Hemisphere and Australia is in the Southern, they are still some of the closest neighbours which is a likely reason of how they became trading partners. Although most of the time they work well together, there are things that they don't agree on like the whaling issue though they have still managed to work together after previous problems. I think that the relationship that Australia has with Asian countries is unique because Australia shares some of their culture. Even though Australia didn't have much of a culture it has developed a unique culture of mixing other cultures and will hopefully never let go of this relationship with Japan. 

Leaving St Catherine's?

Students who are leaving St Catherine's at the end of the year (boo hoo!) and are not enrolling elsewhere at another BCE school, you will lose access to your BCE student account (including LIFE, email, MySite and School Portal) after December 31st, 2015.

Bye bye BCE student accounts!

So.... If you are moving on to another Catholic primary school in Brisbane, or a BCE secondary school such as Clairvaux Mackillop or Seton College, then you can relax - you will keep your BCE student account for as long as you are enrolled at that school.

If you are moving on to a State or other independent school such as Villanova, Loreto, St Laurences, All Hallows, Redeemer Lutheran or Lourdes Hill (for example), you will no longer have access to your BCE student account after the last day of 2015. We recommend that once school finishes, you retrieve any files, messages or information currently stored with your BCE accounts that you want to keep, as soon as you can and definitely before December 31st.

You are also advised to change the primary email address on your Apple ID, if it is currently your BCE student email address. You can change the primary email address on the Apple website.

We're sorry to see you go!
Come back anytime, we'll always be here...

Keep Your iPads "Holiday Safe"

Today, Brisbane Catholic Education staff informed schools of the following:

In the process of delivering the Virtual Classrooms Activities in 2015, the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner has become aware of two apps that are causing some concern for school communities. These apps are Animal Jam and Subway Surfer. These apps contain an in-built global chat facility, which enables anyone in the world to make contact with users of the apps. The potential for children to be exposed to phishing scams, grooming and cyberbullying is substantial.

 

The Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner maintains an excellent resource page that assists parents to better understand these apps, along with a range of others that may be of concern for young users. 

Do you retain control of your child's Apple ID? 

Do you have some system in place at home whereby you can evaluate apps for potential issues before your child installs them? 

Are you aware of what apps your child is using on their iPad? 

Once school ends for another year and the lovely long Christmas holiday break is upon us, children may be given extended access to iPads and other devices for recreational purposes. Please ensure that you have safety measures and responsible use practices in place at home. Remind children about measures they can take when using screens and digital devices, to maintain their own online safety, posture, muscle & eye health and privacy of information.

New-Look Login for BCE

Tonight, rather than catching up on the latest episode of The Block, Brisbane Catholic Education's Information Services team will be finishing an upgrade to their web portals for school users.

The improvements will make the systems even less vulnerable to unauthorised access and therefore, safer for all.

The two major changes that students and parents will see from tomorrow (Wednesday 21st October) are:

1) A new login page for BCE online services. You will see a background image and the following prompts:

New login screen for BCE services

No prizes for guessing that  you have to click/tap 'Brisbane Catholic Education', then follow the instructions. Usernames and passwords will not change.

2) You no longer need to use ‘catholic\’ before your username. This requirement has been removed to make the login process simpler.

The Power of Infographics with PicCollage

In an age of Big Data and Information Overload, the ability to read and to create visual representations of complex sets of data are becoming increasingly important skills. Such visual representations are often called Infographics and learning how to interpret them is a mandatory element of the Australian Curriculum for senior primary students.

During the term in History, the Year 6 students have been investigating the wave of immigration to Australia over last century. One of their culminating tasks was to study census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, from 1910 (when information about immigrants' countries of origin was first collected), to the present. Each student was asked to select a country and represent immigration statistics in graphic format, to make the data more meaningful and easier to comprehend. They then had to write a paragraph interpreting the data and suggesting reasons for the wave of immigration.

Students could use any app they wished to create their Infographic. Some students discovered PicCollage which they put to use very effectively to make the task straightforward and fun.

PicCollage is available FREE in the App Store

Here you can see the Year 6 students hard at work on their Infographics in the library.

Below you will see some of the impressive infographics created by Year 6 students:

Infographics1 from Maria Mead

Infographics2 from Maria Mead

Expressionism in Year 6

In Art this term, Year 6 students have been looking at 'Expressionism' and how line and colour can invoke particular moods or ideas. They have created some impressive pastel drawings, inspired by a character in Aaron Blabey's book, The Brothers Quibble. 

Check out the 6 Blue artworks in the video slideshow below (created in the Mac Photos app):

New App for LOTE Lessons

Sensai has found a great new FREE app to help you learn Japanese. She would like all students to please install the app, called Kana Tutor, on their school iPads. It would be fantastic if you could all have this app ready to go for this week's Japanese lessons.

Kana Tutor by Twin Pines Software

Social Media Policy at St Catherine's

We have been seeing a few social media apps popping up on children's iPads at school. A reminder that as all children in our school are currently under 13 years of age, no current student should be using Social Media sites or apps such as Instagram, Facebook or Kik.

Our 1 to 1 Parent Handbook - Policy and Guidelines contains guidelines for Acceptable Use of ICT to which all parents and students have signed their consent. The Student Agreement for Acceptable Use of ICT Resources (page x. of the Parent Handbook) clearly states in Section 3, Point 4:

"I will not hold accounts or participate in any social media sites intended for people 13 years and older (such as Facebook and MySpace) without express written advice from my teachers to my parents/guardians that such an account is required for learning and teaching purposes."

We ask parents to ensure that social media apps are never installed on school iPads while your children attend St Catherine's. The actions of even a few students and families can affect many others in our community. We thank you for your prompt attendance to this matter.

[Image Source: "Social Media" by Yoel Ben-Avraham via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0]

Holiday iPad Tasks: "Spring Cleaning"

Even though it's not Spring in our hemisphere, it is certainly time for a clean out of your school iPad. Many of our 1 to 1 students have been experiencing sluggish iPad performance and some of their apps are refusing to start up altogether. The most common reason for issues like this is that your iPad is crammed too full of "stuff".

Please take some time on the holidays to check your Usage. Delete photos and videos you no longer require and, definitely before you come back to school in term 2, uninstall the games and movies you've been using over the break.

Remember, the iPad is first and foremost a learning tool for school. You may enjoy using it for recreation on a rainy day, but games and movies should not be taking up valuable space and preventing optimal performance for your learning tasks.

How do I check out what's taking up most space on my iPad?

Go to Settings > General > Usage

Now tap "Manage Storage"

This screen will tell you how many Gigabytes of storage space is available on your iPad. Regardless of the total capacity of your iPad, you need AT LEAST 10% of free space for the device to run properly. When you use an app, it uses the available free memory to work.

Check out the list of apps you have installed. The apps taking up the most space will be at the top. Usually, Photos & Camera app is near the top of the list.

Go to the Photos app and delete any photos and videos you no longer need. You can connect your iPad to a computer and upload any photos and videos you wish to keep.

You can tap any app in the list to delete it from your iPad. Deleted apps will still be associated with your Apple ID. This means you can install them again without having to pay.

Last minute holiday tips...

Remember never to leave an iPad in the car if it's parked in the sun. Overheating can ruin your battery and shorten its lifespan. If you are going away and won't be using your iPad, leave it in a cool, safe place. Your iPad prefers to rest at half charge (50 - 80%). Turn it off completely so the battery won't run flat.

We look forward to seeing both you AND your cleaned out iPad back in Term 2, ready to learn and perform at optimum level!

A Window into Year 6

Time for a sneak peak at life in the Year 6 learning spaces...

Students may choose to read eBooks during silent reading time. eBooks have additional functions such as iBooks' built-in dictionary, highlighting tools and a Search function to look for words and terms in context.

Some eBooks also have multimodal features such as image manipulation and video features to assist with comprehension of meaning.

Kira has provided this retrieval chart. She has used one of the graphic organisers in the Tools4Students app to organise her ideas and information. These notes can now be used to structure a piece of writing or oral presentation, or to make a more informed judgement about an issue.

The SMARTboard allows teacher and students to access and annotate documents while the class views the processes being demonstrated.

Students can use the whiteboard to share their thought processes as well. Often students will capture a photograph of the whiteboard for later reference.

The SMART Notebook app allows students to view the teacher's lessons on their iPads as well. They can review the content as many times as they need to, away from the classroom and outside school hours.

New App Required for LOTE

Our lovely LOTE teacher, Mrs Amy Flynn, would like to use a free app called Kana Quiz in her Japanese lessons with years 4, 5 and 6. Would you please assist your children to install this app at your earliest convenience. Unfortunately the app called Fotopedia Japan (published on our free apps list last year) is now only available in the United States but Sensai will be able to keep her classes very busy and engaged with Kana Quiz.

Here's the icon and a link to the app on iTunes:

Kana Quiz (FREE)

The iPad as a READING Tool

Parents, despite what your children may tell you, they will never have to be on their iPad for school purposes for extended periods each evening or weekend! Homework which must be done on the iPads will rarely exceed half an hour and don't forget, you can use a 4-finger swipe (upwards) to check which apps are running at any time. If most of the running apps are games, then chances are homework has not been the main priority in the last little while...

However, one activity that can often be enhanced by a digital device, is READING. Nothing will ever replace the look, feel and smell of a real life hard copy BOOK. But a few digital enhancements can make reading on the iPad an especially valuable experience, especially for developing readers.

[Image Source: news.blogs.slv.vic.gov.au]

For children who have difficulty reading subject-orientated texts, or website content, the iPad also has a useful "text-to-speech" function which will literally read any selected text to them. Admittedly the 'voice' is a little robotic and sometimes makes pronunciation errors, but this feature can open up a world of text for children who would normally be dependent on a real life adult to read to them.

To turn on "text-to-speech", go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech. Turn Speech Selection ON. You can adjust the speaking rate here as well. With Speech Selection turned on, when you select text in an app (such as iBooks or on a webpage in Safari), you will see a Speak option (see sample below).

Screenshot from iBooks

We published the following post about the iBooks app a couple of years ago for our first iPad classes. We're posting the information again here as it has some useful information about borrowing eBooks from the Brisbane City Council libraries. If you would rather hear about this process in person, staff at any of the Council libraries will be able to take you through it. Our own lovely Teacher Librarian, Mrs Monique Hegarty plans to show the students how to borrow books through Brisbane Catholic Education's Overdrive account. However, they need two (free) apps to access these books: Overdrive and Adobe Digital Editions:

Overdrive

Adobe Digital Editions

The children can also widen their literary experience by listening to audio books. This is not 'cheating'. It is a valuable experience for students approaching the latter half of their primary years to be able to enjoy a book in an area of interest, even though decoding the text may be beyond their current reading skills.

Using iBooks on the iPad

The built-in iPad dictionary allows young readers to check word meanings within the text with a quick tap (no searching for dusty dictionary volumes) and font size can be adjusted to suit personal preference. If less text on the page is less daunting for your young reader, they can increase the font size and enjoy a more positive reading experience (see screenshot below).

Screenshot showing features in iBooks

Buying eBooks and Audio books can be as expensive as purchasing the printed copies but did you know you can borrow eBooks and eAudio book recordings through Brisbane City Council libraries? Using any BCC Library card, you can log in to the Digital Media site and browse Juvenile and Young Adult titles.

Click here to browse the Digital Media Collection

You can borrow titles for up to 21 days at no cost. A borrowed book simply disappears from your shelf once the borrowing period has expired so you will have no concerns about accumulating overdue fees.

[Image Source: www.stylingyou.com.au]

Some cautions:

• Due to the wide variety of digital media file types on offer, you may need to install a couple of extra FREE apps to allow you to read or play borrowed files. Follow instructions in the Digital Collection site and be assured that Overdrive and Adobe apps are perfectly safe to download from this site.
• Parents please supervise students and check what they are borrowing. As in any public library, there are many adult titles available. The above link will take you to the Juvenile and Young Adult section but does not restrict access to these sections.
• Finally, a reminder that unfortunately it is not advisable to read eBooks in the bath!

[Image Source: techli.com]