Introduction

This project is designed to enable you to share with students from around Australia and across the world, your ideas, your opinions and views and your work. While much of this project will be class room based, there are on-line activities that you will be able to participate in. Your work, poster or A4 sheet will be placed on line.

We will have our own web page – at

http://web.warracksc.vic.edu.au/~eng/netdays2003/netdays2003warracknabeal.html.

You will also be able to access the main Netd@ys site at: http://production.edna.edu.au/sibling/netdays/about/index.html

We are going to explore some key questions about our place in the world. We are also going to look at the place of others in our school, town, country and planet. Some of the questions include:

What makes our district, country so great? Who has contributed to our good fortune? How do we connect ourselves to our town and to the world?

Aims

Students are encouraged to:

pay attention to and consider the contributions and viewpoints of others when sharing ideas and opinions;

use constructive strategies to develop ways in which conflicts might be resolved;

develop experience of and understanding of the importance of fulfilling group responsibilities, and actively support other group members; and

use appropriate language that is sensitive to audience and culture.

Activities:

Participate in Netdays activities – on line. I will keep you informed but you can look at the site in your own time.

Writing – Our Warracknabeal…Our Place in the world.

Choose one of the major projects. You may present them in one of four ways – on A4, on poster paper, as a power point or as a web page. Choose the format that will have most success of completion by November 20^th. Remember our limited access to computers. If you are to use the computers always have some task ready for when you don’t have access. Print off work at end of each period.

Newspaper Front Page – explore an aspect of Warracknabeal and the Wimmera and create a newspaper front page which clearly illustrates the theme: Our Warracknabeal our place in the world. It must be informative and contain illustrations. Year 7 and 9 students this year had a number of guest speakers, covering a wide variety of local activities and concerns – sports, transport, employment etc. The reports are on our web site – use them. They are full of interesting facts.

Warracknabeal – Past, Present and Future. A History of the town and its people. Visit the local museum in Scott St or the Agricultural Museum on the Henty Highway. Ask your parents. The school library has records and books.

Warracknabeal – its place in Australia and the World. Choose one of the following and present a report.

Nick Cave

Farming – feeding the world

Service Clubs – Rotary, Lions and Apex etc.

War

Sport

Lauren Hewitt

Skate Park

What do I bring to my town, my country and my future? Consider your involvement in sport, dance and music, arts and crafts etc and report on it.

Australians All – How does modern Australia work? Or Who is the modern Australia?

Webquest are a means of utilising the resources of the web for student resource. The most significant point of web quests is that the appropriate pages have been collected together. There is no need for students to go else where. Read this link before you start.

Within this section you can choose one of two options.

Explore the life and times of Australia’s indigenous people. Access our webquest page on our site. These are the only pages you will refer to.

Tourism is one obvious way that Warracknabeal can be connected to the world. Write a report which highlights the great attractions of our area and suggest ways to attract local, Australian and overseas tourists to our area. Access our webquest page on our site. These are the only pages you will refer to.

Racing – the sport of kings. How is Warracknabeal placed in the ‘world’ of horse racing?

Who are we? Our family history tells us who we are, where we came from and how we are part of a much greater world. Prepare a family history or an annotated family tree.

Reading - Read associated web pages on Aborigines, on Warracknabeal and on the Wimmera Tourism, newspapers, Netd@ys on line site, moderated chat rooms, books etc.

Class Text: The Green Wind by Thurley Fowler. This book sums up this exercise well. It shows the life of children in the 1940s Australia.

Speaking and Listening

Listen carefully to any guest speaker – take brief notes and write up their speech in a brief report.

All students will present to the class, a brief talk on their chosen topic. This will be our second semester talk.

Each student will take notes and prepare a report on the talks – deciding on which were the most interesting.

All students’ work will be placed on line so our friends around Australia and the World can see our efforts.

Resources

Year 7 and 9 talks with local experts

LLEN web site

Koorie Sites

Dates The formal Netd@ys finishes on November 20^th 2003. Our posters etc muct be completed by them so that we can place them on line. Our talks etc can take place after that.