Hi all, after a lot of very hard work, our office is very proud to announce the availability of our ‘To Know, Worship & Love’ (KWL) Digital for Primary Schools. The Digital content is based on the existing books, but has also enjoyed a mini-transformation in terms of its presentation.

Most of the artwork has been updated and the text used has been closely scrutinised with an EAL (English as an Additional Language) lense, in consideration for those students with ethnic and diverse backgrounds.

The following is a list of additional features you will note upon use…

  • Audio Narrations
    All Prep to Year 2 content has the option of playing an audio narration along-side reading the stories. These narrations are recordings of Primary school students reading the text, from various schools in the Melbourne Archdiocese. For their very generous contribution to this project, our sincere thanks goes to…

    • Good Shepherd – Wheelers Hill
    • Marymede Catholic College – South Morang
    • Our Lady of Good Council – Deepdene
    • St Dominic’s Primary School – Broadmeadows
    • St Dominic’s Primary School – East Camberwell
    • St James Primary School – Vermont
    • St Peter Chanel – Deer Park
  • Animations
    A lot of the Prep to Year 2 content has been animated. We will continue to animate more of this in 2019. The artwork has been made in a way that enables us to revisit the stories and modify the content with animations using the same artwork. This will be our focus for 2019; to publish modifications to the visual and mechanical components of the content, increasing the frequency of rich content. As we publish the modified content, it will ‘automagically’ appear on devices.
  • Interactivity
    Grades 3 & 4 have a different template – separating the text from the visual content. Occasionally, there are interactive buttons that reveals themselves with subtly flashing beacons to hint to the user to click, revealing further detail.
  • Variety
    Grades 5 & 6 content have a mixture of different templates again – all stepping through visually rich content.
  • Search
    Quickly find content containing key words and filter out year levels to focus your search.
  • Annotations
    With individual user logins, you can highlight text and annotate it with further reflections or reminders.
  • Favourites
    Mark your chapters on high rotation for quick and convenient recall.
  • Sync Content to your laptop
    Offline syncing of content with Chrome or Firefox browsers (iPad app is ‘shipped’ with all content) Even when there is no internet connection, the website will continue to work with full functionality if you elect to sync your content when you first log in.
  • Share Links to content
    Select the arrow on the sidebar when viewing content that you want to share and it will create a link and open a new email in your email account, ready to send and share with colleagues.

In 2019, our office will continue to update and further enrich the content with more animations and interactivity, responding to the feedback we have received when asking teachers what they’d like to see in the resource.

I sincerely hope that this resource will further aid the teachers at your school in the RE classes, by deepening the level of engagement with the stories and provocations and prompting a deeper student curiosity that will enrich class discussion and reflection on the person of Jesus, the action of the Holy Spirit and the love of God the Father in our lives.

 

Pat Sully
Executive Officer
RE Texts Agency (James Goold House Publications)
Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne