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ASX Sharemarket Game – Learn to invest like a pro

What is it?
The ASX Sharemarket Game is a free, educational simulation where students receive a virtual $50,000 to invest in over 300 ASX-listed companies, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Listed Investment Companies (LICs). It mirrors real market conditions, providing an authentic investing experience.

Why use it?

Develops financial literacy and investment skills.

Encourages strategic thinking and decision-making.

Offers insights into market dynamics and company performance.

Provides opportunities to win prizes based on portfolio performance.

How to participate:

1. Teachers register: Teachers must register for the game and set up student accounts.

2. Students Log In: Using the credentials provided by their teacher, students can access the game dashboard.

3. Start trading: Begin investing in selected companies, monitor portfolio performance and make informed trading decisions.

Key features:

Access to real-time market data and company information.

Ability to build a diversified portfolio.

Tools to track investments and performance metrics.

Option to participate individually or in teams.

Educational resources:

Quick-start teacher’s notes: Guides for teachers to introduce the game and facilitate learning.

Video tutorials: Step-by-step instructions on navigating the game and executing trades.

Lesson plans: Curriculum-aligned materials to integrate the game into classroom activities.

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Learn about the sharemarket and how it works.

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Explore Business Studies with Kahoot!

What is it?
Kahoot! is a dynamic, game-based learning platform that transforms traditional classroom activities into interactive experiences. Students can participate in quizzes, polls and discussions, making learning about business concepts both fun and effective.

Why use it?

Engagement: Gamifies learning, increasing student participation and interest.

Instant feedback: Provides immediate responses to answers, reinforcing learning.

Versatility: Suitable for individual, group or whole-class activities.

Accessibility: Can be played on various devices, including smartphones, tablets and computers.

How to get started:

1. Access Kahoot!: Visit Kahoot! and log in or sign up.

2. Search for Business Quizzes: Use the search bar to find quizzes by entering keywords like "Business Studies" or specific topics such as "Marketing", "Finance" or "Entrepreneurship."

3. Select a quiz: Browse through the available quizzes and choose one that aligns with your current study topic.

4. Play and learn: Join the quiz using the provided game PIN and start answering questions to test your knowledge.

Tips for Success:

Review before playing: Go over your class notes or textbooks to refresh your memory on the topic.

Participate actively: Engage with the quiz by answering questions to the best of your ability.

Discuss results: After the quiz, review the correct answers and discuss any mistakes to enhance understanding.

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Join a game of kahoot here. Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn – any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages!

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Organise your Business Ideas with MindMeister

What is it?
MindMeister is an intuitive online mind mapping tool that helps students visually organise and connect business concepts. By creating mind maps, students can break down complex topics into manageable parts, enhancing understanding and retention.

Why use it?

Visual learning: Transforms abstract business concepts into clear, visual diagrams.

Interactive collaboration: Allows real-time collaboration, making group projects more efficient.

Flexible structure: Adapts to various topics, from business models to market analysis.

Accessibility: Accessible on multiple devices, supporting learning anytime, anywhere.

How to use it in Business Studies:

Business models: Create mind maps to explore different business models, such as sole traders, partnerships and corporations.

Market segmentation: Visualise different market segments and strategies to target each effectively.

Financial planning: Map out budgeting, cash flow and profit analysis for better financial understanding.

SWOT Analysis: Conduct SWOT analyses to assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in business scenarios.

Getting started:

1. Sign up: Create a free account at MindMeister.

2. Explore templates: Browse through various templates tailored for business studies.

3. Create a map: Start a new mind map and add topics and subtopics relevant to your business study area.

4. Collaborate: Invite classmates to collaborate on the mind map for group projects.

Tips for effective Mind Mapping:

Use colours: Differentiate sections with colours to enhance clarity.

Add icons: Incorporate icons to represent ideas visually.

Link resources: Attach relevant links, documents or videos for comprehensive learning.

Regular updates: Keep your mind maps updated as you learn new concepts.

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MindMeister: Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming

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Create, share and collaboratively work on mind maps with MindMeister, the leading online mind mapping software. Includes apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

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Understanding Bank Statements: A key to financial literacy (ATO)

What is it?
This interactive activity from Tax, Super + You helps students decode bank statements to understand their role in personal and business financial management. It covers the basics of credits and debits, and how to track income and expenses effectively.

Why use it?

Real-world application: Students learn to interpret real bank statements, a vital skill for managing personal finances.

Curriculum-aligned: Supports outcomes in consumer and financial literacy and business record-keeping.

Interactive learning: Engages students with practical scenarios to apply their knowledge.

How to use it in class:

Warm-up discussion: Ask students if they have a bank account and whether they review their bank statements.

Interactive analysis: Use the provided visualiser to explore a sample bank statement, discussing key components like opening balance, credits, debits and closing balance.

Scenario exploration: Present a scenario based on the bank statement and have students analyze the individual's financial habits and suggest improvements.

Worksheet completion: Students complete the worksheet to reinforce their understanding.

Class reflection: Discuss the importance of using bank statements as a money management tool.

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Interpreting bank statements | Tax, Super + You

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In this activity students learn that bank statements are a rich source of information and can be used as a money management tool. It teaches them the difference between credit and debit and that managing money involves keeping track of their income and spending.

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Enhancing Learning with SAMR and Bloom’s Taxonomy

What is it?
This article explores how teachers can integrate technology into the classroom using two frameworks: the SAMR model and Bloom’s Taxonomy. The SAMR model categorises technology use into four levels: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. Bloom’s Taxonomy outlines six levels of cognitive learning: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate and Create. By aligning these models, teachers can design lessons that not only incorporate technology but also promote higher-order thinking skills.

Why use it?

Structured learning: Provides a clear framework for integrating technology into lessons.

Promotes critical thinking: Encourages students to engage in deeper levels of cognitive processing.

Enhances engagement: Utilises technology to make learning more interactive and relevant.

How to use it in class:

Lesson planning: Use the SAMR and Bloom’s Taxonomy models to structure lessons that incorporate technology at various levels.

Activity design: Develop activities that encourage students to move beyond basic recall to higher-order thinking.

Assessment: Evaluate student work using criteria that reflect both technological integration and cognitive complexity.

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For teachers just starting out with educational technology, the task at hand can sometimes seem daunting. Even though tools such as the SAMR model can help, the plethora of choices available can prove paralyzing, frequently resulting in ongoing substitutive uses of the technology that block, rather than enable, more ambitious transformative goals.

The approach below is designed to help overcome this barrier, and is inspired in its form by Alexander's notion of Design Patterns -- a clearly structured solution to a recurring design problem -- which has been applied to education scenarios by Bergin et al. While it is not laid out exactly as a design pattern would be, it nonetheless provides a framework that a teacher could use in similar fashion.

The goal for the teacher is to construct a simple SAMR ladder that is coupled to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy -- i.e., as the task moves from lower to upper levels of the taxonomy, it also moves from lower to upper levels of SAMR. The two Enhancement levels of SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation) are associated with the three lower levels of Bloom (Remember, Understand, Apply), while the two Transformation levels of SAMR (Modification, Redefinition) are associated with the upper levels of Bloom (Analyze, Evaluate, Create). In turn, within each grouping a similar ordering occurs -- e.g., Remember-type tasks are primarily associated with S-level uses of the technology, Understand-type tasks are associated with either S- or A-level uses of the technology, and so on. The following diagram illustrates this association.

This coupling of the SAMR model and Bloom's Taxonomy has several desirable outcomes:

The already-familiar drive to reach the upper levels of Bloom's Taxonomy now also acts as a drive to reach the upper levels of SAMR;

The approach outlines a clear set of steps that help guide the introduction of technology in the classroom;

Finally, the approach helps avoid pitfalls of self deception -- i.e., assuming that a particular task is at a higher level in either the Bloom or SAMR sense than it actually is.

Avoid epic fails and get the most out of technology.

It is important to realize that this association between SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy is not a necessary -- or even habitual -- coupling. Thus, it is possible to use extremely powerful redefinition-level approaches to make certain types of memorization tasks possible; conversely, it is also possible to undertake novel create-type tasks that only make basic substitution/augmentation use of the technology. Additionally, far more complex couplings between SAMR and Bloom are possible, involving convergent/divergent branchings, oscillations between levels, skipping of some SAMR levels, etc. Nonetheless, the simple structure described above is well suited to beginning practitioners' needs, and even retains usefulness for more experienced faculty.

In addition to the integration of SAMR and Bloom described above, two more ingredients are necessary for the best results:

a clear motivation for the change -- the best results are obtained when a teacher has a strong reason for changing existing practice that is independent of the introduction of technology.

a clean app flow, designed to move through the tasks, that is as simple as possible, avoiding needless complexity -- e.g., in transferring work products from one app to the next.

Finally, let's look at an example of this approach in practice. In this example, we will set up a general pattern for math activities, where the motivating factor is to take math instruction from a mode where -- to use Richard Skemp's words -- instrumental understanding dominates (how) to a mode where relational understanding is primary (how and why). This shift in math instruction can be seen in changes in curricula worldwide, and is crucial to students' capacity to use -- and enjoy -- the math they have learned in the world outside the classroom. In the interest of making the example more tangible, the context will be a course in introductory statistics, although the general pattern is readily applicable to other math courses.

1. Substitution/Remember: Students use ebooks and other Open Education Resources to acquire basic knowledge about statistical tools and procedures.

2. Substitution/Understand: At the same time, they begin a process of gathering information online describing applications of these statistical tools to an area of interest to them, using simple bookmark aggregation services (e.g., Diigo, Delicious) to collect and tag these resources, relating them to the knowledge gained in 1.

3. Augmentation/Apply: Using a simple yet powerful tool for visualization like GeoGebra, students explore the concepts covered in the resources described in 1., and solve related standard problems. The scope and number of the problems is not governed by what is available in the "back of the book," but rather driven by the evolution of student understanding, as measured by suitable formative assessment processes.

4. Modification/Analyze: The students also apply similar problem-solving approaches to questions raised in the materials they found in 2. In doing so, they will reconstruct the reasoning of the original authors, and verify -- or disprove -- their conclusions.

5. Modification/Evaluate: Students now select a subset of the materials studied in 4. for further critique and/or development, using GeoGebra as their primary analysis tool. Via a blog, they explain this work to fellow students, and invite their feedback to refine both the clarity of their explanations and the focus of their work.

6. Redefinition/Create: Students refine their blog post into a short digital video project, with the goal that it will be used as part of instructional materials in subsequent years.

Photo " sky puzzle" by Jared Tarbell. Used under a CC BY 2.0 license.

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SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy: Assembling the Puzzle | Common Sense Education

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Find out how you can use technology to engage students in rich learning experiences.

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General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0

What are General Capabilities?
General Capabilities are a set of seven interrelated skills and dispositions that are integral to the Australian Curriculum. They equip students with the necessary tools to navigate and succeed in the complexities of the 21st century. In Business Studies, these capabilities enhance students' ability to think critically, make ethical decisions and engage effectively in a global economy.

The 7 General Capabilities:

1. Critical and creative thinking
Enables students to think logically, reason effectively and generate innovative solutions to business problems.

2. Digital literacy
Develops students' ability to use digital technologies responsibly and effectively in business contexts.

3. Ethical understanding
Encourages students to recognise ethical issues in business and make decisions that align with ethical principles.

4. Intercultural understanding
Fosters appreciation and respect for cultural diversity, essential for operating in a global business environment.

5. Literacy
Enhances students' ability to read, write and communicate effectively, which is crucial for business documentation and correspondence.

6. Numeracy
Strengthens students' mathematical skills, enabling them to analyse financial data, budgets and statistical information in business.

7. Personal and social capability
Develops self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and social management skills, which are vital for teamwork and leadership in business settings.

Integrating General Capabilities into Business Studies:

Real-world applications: Students apply these capabilities through case studies, simulations and project-based learning, reflecting real business scenarios.

Collaborative learning: Group projects and discussions promote the development of personal and social capabilities, as students work together to solve business challenges.

Ethical decision-making: Debates and role-playing activities encourage students to consider ethical implications in business decisions.

Digital tools: Utilising digital platforms and tools enhances digital literacy and prepares students for the technological demands of the business world.

Resources for Further Exploration:

QCAA General Capabilities Overview

Embedding General Capabilities in Teaching

Mapping General Capabilities to Learning Areas

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Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority

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Acknowledgment of Country

The QCAA Acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands in which we operate. We pay our respects to their Elders and their descendants who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country. We thank them for sharing their cultures and spiritualities and recognise the important contribution of this knowledge to our understanding of this place we call home.

Artwork by Chern'ee Sutton

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The QCAA Acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands in which we operate. We pay our respects to their Elders and their descendants who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country. We thank them for sharing their cultures and spiritualities and recognise the important contribution of this knowledge to our understanding of this place we call home.

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Collaborative learning with Padlet

What is Padlet?
Padlet is an interactive digital platform that functions as a virtual bulletin board, allowing users to post and share content such as text, images, links, videos and documents. It supports real-time collaboration, making it an ideal tool for both in-class and remote learning environments.

Why use Padlet in Business Studies?

Enhanced collaboration: Students can work together on projects, share resources and provide feedback in a shared space.

Organised content sharing: Easily compile and organise business-related materials like case studies, financial reports and marketing strategies.

Interactive learning: Facilitates interactive activities such as brainstorming sessions, SWOT analyses and peer reviews.

Accessible anywhere: Accessible on various devices, ensuring continuous learning both inside and outside the classroom.

How to get started:

1. Create an account: Visit Padlet.com and sign up for a free account.

2. Choose a template: Select from various templates like Wall, Shelf, Grid or Map to suit your project needs.

3. Customise your Padlet: Add a title, description and customise the layout and design to fit your project.

4. Share and collaborate: Invite classmates to join by sharing the link or QR code and start adding content.

Example activities in Business Studies:

Market research: Create a Padlet to collect and analyse data on consumer preferences.

Business Plan Development: Collaboratively develop and refine a business plan by posting ideas and feedback.

Financial analysis: Share and discuss financial statements and ratios to assess business performance.

Entrepreneurship projects: Use Padlet to document and present entrepreneurial ideas and prototypes.

Tips for effective use:

Set clear guidelines: Establish rules for posting and commenting to maintain a respectful and productive environment.

Encourage regular updates: Prompt students to regularly contribute to keep the content current and relevant.

Utilise multimedia: Incorporate images, videos and links to enrich the learning experience.

Monitor Contributions: Regularly review posts to ensure quality and provide timely feedback.

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Speechify is a powerful AI-driven text-to-speech tool that converts digital and printed text into natural-sounding audio. Whether you're reading web articles, PDFs, eBooks or scanned documents, Speechify provides a seamless experience across multiple devices, making it one of the most sophisticated TTS solutions available today.

Key Features:

Over 1,000 lifelike AI voices across 60+ languages.

Adjustable playback speeds to suit your listening preference.

Cross-device synchronization for seamless listening on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and Chrome.

Supports various file formats, including web articles, PDFs and eBooks.

Advanced features like AI voice cloning and summarization tools.

Ideal for students, professionals, and individuals with reading difficulties, Speechify enhances productivity and accessibility by allowing users to listen to content hands-free