Tag Archives: Falkirk

Digital Leaders in Falkirk⤴

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Small - Falkirk Digital LeadersJoin us live in Glow TV for 2 exciting sessions about Digital Leaders in Falkirk!

Digital Leaders in Falkirk – A Pupil’s Perspective – Monday 1st February at 2pm
Do you enjoy working with digital technologies? Ever wondered what it would be like if pupils could take leadership in developing technologies in your school? If so why not tune into this live event to listen to ways in which pupils at St Bernadette’s and Victoria Primary School in Falkirk have developed ICT across the school. Listen to how they had to apply for their posts, be interviewed and take on the role as the Digital Leaders within the school.

You will hear about all the fun and exciting activities our Digital Leaders do such as being responsible for tablets and laptops, helping teachers with day to day ICT problems, working with other pupils online to share ideas, teaching classes and training TEACHERS!

Learn how you can join the growing number of Scottish Digital Leaders and join our national Glow page where we can all work online and help develop ICT in Scottish schools.

Sign up and join us live – Digital Leaders in Falkirk – A Pupil’s Perspective

Digital Leaders in Falkirk – A Teacher’s Perspective – Wednesday 3rd February at 3.35pm

We all have pupils in our school whose ICT skills and abilities using digital technologies are way more advanced than ours. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to provide these pupils with more ownership and leadership opportunities in this area? If so then join this event to hear about how St Bernadette’s Primary School and Victoria Primary School in Falkirk have developed ‘Digital Leaders’ who are now the driving the development of technologies throughout their schools.

The Digital Leaders themselves will be talking through the reasons why we needed to have more pupil involvement, the interview process, the types of jobs that they do around the school and their main achievements to date (including gaining funding to buy iPads!). We will also be sharing how we have networked with other local and national schools on our Scottish Digital Leaders Glow page.

Sign up and join us live – Digital Leaders in Falkirk – A Teacher’s Perspective

If you unable to join us for the live event you can always catch up with the recording at another time – Glow TV’s Watch Again.

HMD 2016 Scotland – National Events – Don’t Stand By⤴

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Small- HMD 2016Join Glow TV live at 10am from Falkirk Town Hall as Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday 27th January is marked by the young people of Falkirk in words, music and more. With special guests Mukesh Kapila, Head of the UN in Darfur who alerted the world to the genocide there, and Inge Auerbacher, survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp. Suitable for P7 and upwards.

Sign up and join us live – HMD 2016 Young People’s National Event – Don’t Stand By

Then at 6.30pm join Glow TV for this special evening event live from Falkirk Town Hall. Cabinet Secretary Alex Neil leads Scotland in remembering the Holocaust and subsequent genocides on this Holocaust Memorial Day. With international speakers Mukesh Kapila, former Head of the UN in Darfur ,who alerted the world to the genocide there, and Inge Auerbacher, survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp. Young people from throughout Falkirk will also take part including Falkirk United Schools Choir.

Sign up and join us live – HMD 2016 Scotland – National Event – Don’t Stand By

You may also be interested in our Holocaust Memorial Day site in Glow – https://glowscotland.sharepoint.com/sites/emergingtech/SitePages/HMD.aspx

If you unable to join us for the live events you can always catch up with the recording at another time – Glow TV’s Watch Again.

Digital Leaders and Glow tools at St Bernadette’s RC Primary⤴

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John Cloherty, P6/7 teacher and ICT Coordinator at St Bernadette’s RC Primary, Falkirk and the P7 Digital Leaders Niamh Wallace and Molly Rodden explain how they have been using the Glow tools in their school.

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St Bernadette’s Primary has 8 classes and a Digital Leader was assigned to each class. They are responsible for trouble-shooting and teaching classes through a skills based approach. There is a poster with a hotline number in each class! Staff and pupils then provide feedback about this approach.

During Digital Learning Week, the Digital Leaders were responsible for organising the week, including writing lesson plans for teaching each class. These had to include success criteria and learning intentions.

Initial training was recieved from Malcolm Wilson at Falkirk Council

Impact

The Digital Leaders are responsible for the school blog for their assigned class. Staff use their Glow email to send them pictures and information for inclusion in the blog. This has encouraged other classes to make better use of the tools and to actively seek new ways to use technology with learners. It has also encourage staff to listen to learners and to use their expertise.

The opportunities for collaborative work has been increased. Learners have been able to work together on PowerPoint, each taking responsibility for a different slide.stbs3

During Digital Learning Week, they took part in the collaborative story telling which allowed them to write part of a National story.

The learning has been more pupil led and has allowed personalisation and choice, linked to pupil interests. This ensures learners have ownership of the learning and more confidence, especially when teaching staff. The learners would recommend this approach as it helps to make learning fun. It has also helped consolidate their learning as they can’t forget how to do things when they are sharing with others. They have also learned it is important to be patient and enthusiasm is essential!

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Future Use

The Digital Leaders programme will continue into next session and they are busy training the new leaders. It is hoped the Digital Leaders will continue training staff during collegiate times, pupils during class time and introduce some Parent sessions. They also have plans to use Glow Meet for a school TV channel.

To carryout similar work you can find help and support at

https://glowhelp.wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/

https://glowscotland.sharepoint.com/sites/GlowHelp/SitePages/Home.aspx

http://www.digitalleadernetwork.co.uk/

Using OneNote Class Creator at St Mungo’s High School, Falkirk⤴

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Jacqueline Campbell, Computing Science and Lynsey McNamee, Design and Technology have been working with interested staff across the school  using OneNote Class Notebook Creator and Office 365 sites with One Note class notebooks. The full version of OneNote is installed on all machines throughout the school including mobile trolleys with netbooks in every faculty.

How it has been used

In Higher Computing Science, learners have access to all resources through the OneNote Class Notebook, including videos, presentations, web links, etc. Learners can also access this on their own devices through the school’s BYOD policy. In recent weeks other departments have set up their new classes including D&T, Physics and Music.

They have had some support from Malcolm Wilson, Falkirk Council and Ian Stuart, Education Scotland, as well as some online support. Jacqueline is looking to build up a network of support as they move forward exploring new features and to move to the next level of use with OneNote.

This is part of a 3 year School Improvement focussed on ICT to enhance learning. Initially, a group of staff with interest came on board and in the new session, it will be rolled out to other departments.

Impact

The approach taken has been to use it as a tool, in particular as a resource that allows collaboration. When teaching, it opens up opportunities for collaboration – learner to learner, learner to staff, staff to staff. Also, it allows continued use at home and also further interaction via discussion and collaborative tasks. Feedback is becoming more meaningful and targeted. In addition, the ability to include all resources in the one place has been invaluable. This has allowed flipped learning opportunities to take place.

Learners themselves identified this approach as a useful study tool as it allowed them anytime access to the resources. They felt it was extremely beneficial in the lead up to exams as it allowed them to have the resources on phones, tablets and PCs. The uptake in different departments was seen as very positive by learners and they are enjoying the increased use of these tools because of the flexibility it gives them. They can now work together more easily, sharing resources and support. Some learners need to go over new work several times – using OneNote lends itself to this, allowing them to get it when they are ready.

This approach is very much part of raising the digital technologies agenda and enabling the use of digital tools to support learning. As it is embedded in the School Improvement plan, this ensures it will remain a high priority.

Using OneNote with National 5 and Higher Classes⤴

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I set up a notebook for my National 5 classes and my Higher classes. I particularly used the Higher notebook in the six weeks leading up to the exam. In addition to the sections for each of the two Higher units I also created an additional section for Exam Preparation. In this section I pinpointed topics I thought would be most likely to come up. I created a page (within the section) for each topic and included on the page the following items;

  • Screen clipping of course content from course support notes
  • Screen clipping of a question related to the topic from specimen/exemplar
  • My notes relating to the topic
  • Any relevant hyperlinks
  • Videos (I had created before using screen cast software)

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I also used the collaborative space to build revision resources that could be used by everyone. The screen print below shows the area of contemporary developments in Higher Computing Science.

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I intend to add to this Class Notebook over the next couple of weeks (for next year’s class) by recording short audio files (from this year’s pupils) explaining specific topics and answers to questions.

In addition to adding my own pupils to this notebook I also added 5 Higher pupils from another school and their teacher. When I looked at the statistics of the number of views on this notebook after the final exam on 6th May there had been 849 views. I consider this to have been a worthwhile resource to have set up as there were only approximately 30 people accessing it.