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Creating a beneficial garden: planting

Planting flowers with food crops increases biodiversity, and is known as beneficial planting. Beneficial planting not only makes our garden beds look more attractive to us, it also makes gardens look more attractive to pollinators and predators, which in turn, help to fertilise and protect crops from pest invertebrates. ...

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Creating a bee hotel: construction

As we clear land for urban development, and for broadacre farming, we remove the spaces where bees nest and find their food. With no food, and nowhere to produce their young, native bee populations are under threat of local extinction. In this activity, we will look at providing nesting spaces for native bees which mimic ...

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Ladybirds

This program encourages people to observe and identify ladybirds in their own backyard. There is the potential to discover a new species or identify an introduced and harmful member of this group of insects.

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Dugongs

This 6 minute video segment from Catalyst explains how the dugong, a vulnerable to endangered species is protected and that very little is known about it. Biologists are capturing animals to get baseline information about their blood and tissues in an effort to find out more about them and to secure their future. They are ...

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Daniel O'Doherty

This 5 minute video segment from Catalyst describes how a school student conducted his own scientific investigation. Daniel O'Doherty was intrigued to find out what was the carbon impact of travel to and from school each day, and what could be done to reduce this impact. His project won the 2008 Action Against Climate Change ...

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Pivots and Levers: animation

Students use this resource consisting of one page with a diagram of a lever whose length can be varied. A weight is then applied to the lever and students can see whether the force was sufficient to lift a crate. This demonstrates that forces can cause a lever to turn about a pivot and that the turning effect of a lever ...

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Robot biomimicry

This 9 minute video segment from Catalyst shows how inspiration from the world of animals has helped in the mechanical design of robots and adhesive materials.

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How to build a Mars rover

Imagine if you were building a robot to help you explore Mars. That's exactly what these engineering students are doing. Watch this video to find out about their design process. How important do you think it is to test and review the final product after it has been built?

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How to Use Scratch: Changing Colours of objects in Scratch

Make the images and objects in your project change colour when they are clicked!

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Different types of telescopes

You can find both refracting and reflecting telescopes at Sydney Observatory. How are they different in the way they work and look? What can you find in nature that is like a telescope? Which type of telescope is it like?

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MathXplosion, Ep 46: Can you solve the Three Cups Problem?

Find three cups, place them in a line and turn one cup facing down. Can you get all three cups facing down after making exactly three moves? The one rule is: for every move, two cups must be flipped simultaneously. Since the goal is to get all three cups facing down (an odd number) and you start with one cup facing down ...

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Hour of Code: Saloni on the If/Else block

The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. In this video, Saloni explains what an If/Else statement is and looks at how If/Else blocks can be used to program the movement of a zombie character. This is the fifth of seven clips in ...

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Why every day should be Hour of Code day

Doncaster Gardens Primary School students participating in Hour of Code tell us what they love about learning coding and programming, and why they think it's important to learn for their futures. Their teacher, Carey Baldwin, offers some great starting points for both teachers and students to improve their skills – at any ...

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How do robots work?

Ever wondered how robots work? Watch as students and Robogals members Claire and Stefan introduce you to one of their robots. What does Claire say about robot languages? And what does Stefan say about how the robot knows what's in front of it?

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Harvesting and cooking murnong

Murnong is an edible Australian native plant that was prolific in south-eastern Australia. Which part of the murnong is eaten? Why was it so abundant in certain parts of Victoria? Watch Aunty Julie to learn how murnong is harvested and cooked.

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Building a weather satellite

Designers and engineers improve upon existing products all the time. How important do you think it is to update and enhance something like a weather satellite? Can you think of some other objects that could be improved upon?

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How to Use Scratch: Adding Background Sounds

Record and add your own background sound to your project or choose the sounds from the library like a rattle, a ripple or a pop!

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Learning from design 'mistakes'

Finding the solution to a design problem involves generating creative ways to address a need or difficulty. Design is the key and it often involves an engineer. In this clip, explore what an engineer is and what they do, and see an example of how NASA engineers might plan, create and test an idea to fix a space station.

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Learning programming offline

You don't need fancy technology – or even any technology at all – to learn about coding. ICT teacher Carey Baldwin teaches his students the principles of programming in this great activity. The materials required? Just paper cups and some enthusiasm to learn! This video was produced to coincide with the 2014 Hour of Code ...

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MathXplosion, Ep 48: The most important thing when solving word problems

It's very important to read problems carefully so you can determine the important facts and understand the questions you are being asked to solve. You may find an answer using pictures and numbers, but if you didn’t answer the right question, what seems right can actually be wrong.