Navigating this site

Main navigation

The left-hand side menu provides access to each area of this resource.
Clicking on an option will reveal any suboptions that are available. The following image shows the What is SciTech? section within the Staff room, Science education selected.

In some sections another set of options are available within the main screen.
The image below shows the subsections available within one of the stages.

The Supporting SciTech home page can be accessed at any time from the side menu, by clicking on "Home" (see image below). The home page provides information on the Supporting SciTech resource including site navigation, publication details and acknowledgements. It also provides direct access to the Staff room and Early Stage 1 through to Stage 3 sections of the project.

Several icons have been used to indicate the different options for support that are available as you progress through the activities.

		This icon will appear in the materials where there is a video of teachers discussing ideas addressed in the activity. This feature is available on the Quality Science web site Please Note: Be aware that video clips may take several minutes to load onto your compter.
		This icon, ideas of teachers, indicates responses to questions posed in the material. These responses may be model answers, teaching sequences or assessment tasks developed by writers or provided by teachers who participated in the trial or pilot phases of the project
		This icon will appear when you are asked to provide a response to a task. If you place the mouse over the icon a window will appear containing some prompt ideas to assist with the task.
		This icon indicates that a task is designed to be completed by an individual.
		This icon indicates that a task can be completed by a SciTech team.
		This icon indicates a task is geared towards sharing ideas.
		This icon indicates a task is designed to be completed by a specific Stage group.

Viewing media elements

To view media elements within this resource, QuickTime™ and Adobe Acrobat™ need to be installed on your computer. The installers can be found on the CD-ROM or if you are connected to the Internet, by clicking on the logos below.

PDF documents

The following information assumes that you have Adobe Acrobat™ Reader installed on your computer.

Any file which is downloadable in pdf format is denoted by brackets containing the word PDF and the file size, after the document link.

For example:

When you click on the following link - Principles of Science and Technology (PDF 46 KB),
you will download the file in pdf format and view the file. Depending on your browser configuration one of two things may happen.

1. The pdf document will download to your computer and automatically open with Adobe Acrobat™. In this case, to save the file, go to File>Save in the Acrobat menu and choose a folder in which to save the file on your computer. Close the Acrobat window to return to the web page you were
   on.
   
2. Your browser window will open the pdf document within your current window. Options to Save the file or Print the file will be available at the top of the window.

Tip: To download the pdf document without opening it, right-click (windows) or control-click (macintosh) on the link. From the drop menu select Download Link To Disk. (Note: This terminology will vary slightly between browsers and computer types eg.Save Link As and Save Target As will produce the same results.)

Your notes

After you have entered responses into the text boxes on screen, you may want to Save and or Print your notes. You can do this by clicking on the link at the bottom of the screen called Printer friendly version. From here a new pop-up window will open which should contain your notes (including notes that may have scrolled out of view as you entered them) from the section you were working on.

Printing your notes

To print your notes simply go to the File menu (on the browser window) and choose Print.

Saving your notes

To save your notes go to the File menu (on the browser window) and choose Save as, and the destination folder. It is important to save your notes in text format otherwise text that you have entered will not be visible. The text files that you save can be opened within other word processing applications.

CD-ROM and the Internet

This website contains links to Internet sites located elsewhere on the World Wide Web. Any links to external sites are denoted by the color green. To access these sites you will need to have an active Internet connection. If you are not connected to the Internet and you use one of these links, a message will tell you that a connection to the linked site was unable to be established.

Using the programming tool

This tool will provide assistance whilst designing and documenting units of work.
The programming tool guides the development of learning experiences based on the processes of investigating (scientifically) and, designing and making.

It enables the selection of syllabus outcomes and related big ideas to be addressed within the work unit. Scaffolding is provided to help plan learning experiences based on the processes of designing and making, and investigating. From planned learning experiences, assessment items can be selected and indicators written. Spaces are provided for notes on various aspects of your program, e.g. unit purpose and focus, links to other learning areas, sequence, resources, teacher reflections and unit evaluation. Options are provided to 'Save' work that you may wish to reload and work on again, as well as to 'Export' work ready to import into other applications.Help support is available whilst using the tool.The programming tool enables you to enter information required by most schools and school systems for their documentation.

The programming tool can be accessed within each of the stages from the Designing my units section, where it can be downloaded.

Digibook

A digibook was provided with this CD ROM, if you do not have a copy download one from here (PDF 132 KB).