Drawing the Lines 2009 political cartooning competition for school students

The 'Drawing the Lines' political cartooning competition for school students is once again being run by the National Museum of Australia.

This competition is held in conjunction with the National Museum of Australia's annual exhibition Behind the Lines: The Year's Best Cartoons.

The competition requires students from Year 4 to 12 to submit a cartoon dealing with a recent political issue of national significance. Prizes will be awarded in three categories: Year 4 to 6, Year 7 to 9 and Year 10 to 12 as follows:

First Prize
iPod touch 32GB + $100 iTunes voucher
$500 for the school of the winning student
A trip for two (winner and parent/guardian) to Canberra, including return airfares and one night's accommodation.

Second Prize
iPod Nano 16GB + $50 iTunes voucher

Third Prize
iPod shuffle 4GB + $50 iTunes voucher

Highly Commended x 3
$50 iTunes voucher

Entries must be postmarked on or before 23 October 2009.

Link: http://www.nma.gov.au/education/events_and_activities/drawing_the_lines_2009/

Contact: education@nma.gov.au

National History Challenge

The National Museum of Australia is once again sponsoring the National History Challenge. The theme for 2009 is 'Triumph over Adversity'. In this challenge you are being asked to consider this theme particularly through Australia's social history. This provides a tremendous opportunity to investigate events, objects, documents and other historical experiences of adversity and to examine the various impacts on Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures, society, environment and government.

http://www.nma.gov.au/education/events_and_activities/2009_national_history_challenge/

UK curriculum review: social media to be taught in primary schools

Whilst we are in the throes of determining our own national curriculum, it's interesting to note some of the findings from the recent overhaul of the UK primary school curriculum:

Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.

Children to be able to place historical events within a chronology. "By the end of the primary phase, children should have gained an overview which enables them to place the periods, events and changes they have studied within a chronological framework, and to understand some of the links between them." Every child would learn two key periods of British history but it would be up to the school to decide which ones. Schools would still be able to opt to teach Victorian history or the second world war, but they would not be required to. The move is designed to prevent duplication with the secondary curriculum, which covers the second world war extensively.

Reference: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/25/primary-schools-twitter-curriculum

The Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum: Final Report is available from http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/primarycurriculumreview/

Distributing digitised Museum content into schools

The following paper was recently presented at Museums on the Web 2009: Building Digital Distribution Systems For School-Based Users Of Museum Content: New initiatives in Australia and Canada.

It features Scootle, a pilot project which the National Museum contributed to last year, and the Canadian Virtual Museum which brings together learning resources from across the cultural sector on a Teacher's centre web 2.0 platform.

National curriculum foundational documents

The National Curriculum Board has completed the key foundational documents that will shape the national curriculum: http://www.ncb.org.au/communications/publications.html

Museums to receive more prominence in revised national history curriculum framework

It appears likely that references to museums will be strengthened in the revised national history curriculum framework document which is expected to be published shortly by the National Curriculum Board. The first draft of the framework document mentioned the role of museums only sparingly.

If correct this will be welcome news to the Museums Australia Education National Network which made a lengthy submission in response to the Board's original framework document. In its submission the network congratulated the Board on the broad intent and structure of the new curriculum but made numerous suggestions for how museums (broadly defined) could further support and assist the learning to be undertaken in a national history curriculum. To this end it was keen for the framework to be more explicit about the role and usefulness of museums and their collections, and the capacity of museums to aid students in the study of history.

Once approved, the revised framework will become the blueprint that will inform the writing of the national history curriculum itself.

The Education National Network is delighted that Professor Barry McGaw, the chair of the NCB, will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Museums Australia conference in Newcastle on 18th May. Professor McGaw will give an update on the state of progress of the national curriculum and later in the day enter into a dialogue with museum professionals on how best the museums sector can assist the development and implementation of the new national curriculum.