Scottish Government is working with partners to develop a cyber resilience strategy and has launched a consultation to gather views from the public that will inform the strategy’s development. Ideas and comment from educators, young people and parents on how education and skills can play a crucial role in ensuring Scotland’s people and businesses operate and prosper safely online are especially welcome. You can find the consultation online at http://tinyurl.com/CyberConsultation
There are already many excellent examples of how education can lead the way in cyber resilience like Kyle Academy in South Ayrshire which has worked with Police Scotland’s Head of Cyber Security to develop a 12-week Cyber Security Badge programme. As part of the programme, pupils in S1 learn about everything from the importance of secure passwords to the dangers of cyber bullying and online grooming. The students then have to work with their parents and grandparents to “audit” the security of electronic devices in their homes. The programme has been a great success and is now embedded in Kyle Academy’s curriculum.
Launching the consultation, the Deputy First Minister, Mr John Swinney, said:
“The internet is part of all of our lives. We use it to stay connected with friends and family, for information, enjoyment and play. It offers incredible opportunities for Scottish businesses. But no one is immune to cyber risks. Being digitally connected brings increased opportunities for those who seek to exploit the very same technology for criminal purposes such as threats of fraud and abuse. In using the internet in our everyday lives we must accept this is now the norm and we all must become more resilient to such attacks and build our capacity to manage this as we do other more visible risks.
This consultation seeks to gather your views on how we can become more resilient online; how we can be more alert to online risk and know how we can quickly recover from any cyber-attack.”
Yesterday pupils and teachers from six Scottish schools met the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning Angela Constance and Minister for Schools, Science and Scotland’s Languages, Alasdair Allan to talk about how they use Glow, Scotland’s national online environment for learning, and digital technology generally in their schools. Glow is unique, allowing pupils to use the Internet to learn in a secure environment accessible from anywhere and at any time from any device. It includes social features such as blogs and discussion areas and it supports Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland’s holistic, flexible and pupil-centered way of learning for 3 to 18 year olds.
There was a real buzz in the room as pupils talked about digital technology and showed off the ways they are using Glow in their schools. Some of the reasons they said they like using Glow were:
Teachers can add comments to homework
Being able to talk to each other about what they are doing in class and easily share ideas
The pupils are too young to join Facebook or Twitter and Glow gives them an alternative to be able to talk to their friends
Glow is a safe environment
They like Glow’s personalised launchpad as it gives easy access to their favourite apps
The advice on Glow about not giving away personal details is helpful (Community Rules)
Teachers can upload revision videos which gives pupils a different way to revise.
The pupils were also honest about the drawbacks of using Glow, listing internet connectivity problems and the lack of devices in the classroom sometimes being an issue.
Gemma Sanderson, a teacher from Kirkton of Largo Primary School said: “Glow is so much better, I’m on it every day. The main thing for our school is that everything is in Glow – all in one place. Children like how everything is linked.”
Glow is available to every pupil and teacher in Scotland. To find out more about what is happening with Glow in your local area, to submit a query about how to get started and how to use Glow, please get in touch with your local authority key contact.
What if, rather than paper certificates, you could earn virtual badges as you gain new skills or knowledge?
The way our skills and knowledge are recognised is changing. You’ll soon live in a world where you can get recognition for learning that happens anywhere and you’ll be able to share this recognition in places that matter.
This is the potential that Open Badges have to offer us. The concept was adopted by Mozilla, a global community of technologists, and they have turned it into a workable standard that IT and internet professionals can build into the websites we all use.
Nobody describes Open Badges better than Mozilla themselves:
“A digital badge is an online representation of a skill you’ve earned. Open Badges take that concept one step further, and allows you to verify your skills, interests and achievements through credible organisations. And because the system is based on an open standard, you can combine multiple badges from different issuers to tell the complete story of your achievements — both online and off. Display your badges wherever you want them on the web, and share them for employment, education or lifelong learning.” Source: Mozilla Open Badges website.
All of us have something to gain from the growth of Open Badges. But first let’s look at how they work.
The anatomy of an Open Badge
An Open Badge is more than just a static image or button you can show-off on your blog or Facebook profile. Computer readable data stored within the badge, known as metadata, provides valuable information about:
what the badge is for
what you had to do to earn the badge
who awarded you the badge
links to evidence of the work you did to get the badge
the date you were awarded the badge and whether or not it will expire.
Third-party organisations can even endorse badges that have been awarded to people, adding additional assurance of quality for employers. The information behind a badge will vary depending on what someone had to do to earn it and who issued it. But generally speaking, clicking on a badge is all you need to do to access all of this information and confirm its authenticity.
When it comes to informal, unaccredited or extra-curricular learning then showing evidence of continuous professional development can sometimes be a struggle. Open Badges make this easier because they can capture virtually anything. They are indicators of accomplishment, skills, qualities and interests connected across informal and formal learning contexts.
How Open Badges benefit individuals
Anybody can earn, manage and display Open Badges across the internet. All you need to receive a badge is an email address. Badges will give you a comprehensive way of keeping track of your skills, knowledge and achievements and displaying these when you need to.
Your badges can be managed within something called a “backpack”. Think of this as a bit like a virtual portfolio. From here, you can decide whether to accept badges you have been awarded and whether or not they should be publicly visible.
When you decide to make a badge public, you can share it on your own social networking profiles, job websites, blogs or website. You can group your badges into categories making it easier to share the right badges with the right people.
How Open Badges benefit employers
Aside from the cost benefits of moving away from paper certificates, Open Badges create a completely new incentive for learning.
Open Badges provide you with a platform to give your staff recognition for non-certified learning. Borders College witnessed increased loyalty and attendance at sessions when they used Open Badges to accredit their staff continuous professional development (CPD). It didn’t take long for all members of staff to obtain a badge.
In terms of talent development, badges help indicate the progress of an employee towards their career goals. Keeping new employees motivated in the early stages of a career pathway.
By encouraging staff to display their badges on internal profiles you make it easier for other staff to identify areas of expertise across the organisation. Suddenly even new staff can find the right people to go to for the right answers to their questions.
Advocates recognise that unless employers realise the benefits then Open Badges are unlikely to become part of everyday life. Thankfully though, the technology needed to issue Open Badges is simple and already available within the Moodle and Totara learning management systems.
How Open Badges benefit learning providers
Open Badges add an element of gamification to the learning process, motivating learners to keep going during long courses. Smaller badges can unlock larger badges in a similar way to how players ‘level-up’ in a computer game and you have complete control over the badge design process.
You can use Open Badges to provide a means of recognising peer assessment. Good co-worker badges are one example. Peers could nominate fellow students for the award.
By setting them to expire after a certain period of time, Open Badges offer you a good alternative to paper certificates for learning skills and knowledge that need to be regularly updated like those for first aid or food hygiene.
As Open Badges gain in popularity, students and learners will expect courses to provide opportunities to earn them. Because you design the look and feel, badges can carry your branding and link back to your website. Friends and colleagues of people who you award badges to will likely come to your website to find out more about the courses you provide.
Support for Open Badges
NASA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and EDUCAUSE are three examples of a growing list of organisations issuing open badges.
Closer to home, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has announced its intention to explore the new technology. Recognising the value Open Badges have in offering greater flexibility for learning and the recognition of achievement, Joe Wilson, Head of New Ventures, SQA said in October 2013:
“SQA will work with Mozilla to explore how we can adopt Open Badges. We will encourage our partners to investigate how they could benefit from adopting open badges to support learners across Scotland in addition to the recognition we offer teachers and college lecturers through our CDP courses and training we will explore how we can integrate open badges into our certification processes.”
With the SQA looking at the possibilities badges offer in terms of digital certification, can the rest of us afford not to follow suit?
Where to find out more about Open Badges
The Open Badges website is the best place to find out how you can start using Open Badges.
Are you thinking of using Open Badges within your organisation but don’t know where to start? Mozilla’s free online course about Open Badges will get you up-to-speed – http://openbadges.tumblr.com/tagged/openbadgesMOOC
If you’re around on Twitter, you might also want to follow the latest updates from the Open Badge world:
Since this post was originally published, SSSC has started an Open Badges pilot through which it will deliver three badges for those working in the social care sector and build a platform for others to create their own badges. Handy descriptive video below!
It’s fitting, then, that Edinburgh should play host to EduWiki this year, Wikimedia UK’s annual conference to raise awareness of the educational possibilities of Wikipedia and its sister projects. This one-day event, held at Edinburgh’s St Leonard’s Hall on 31 October, seeks to develop Wikimedia UK’s academic and educational engagement as well, bringing together all those in the education sector who have worked with, or are interested in, the wide range of Wiki platforms.
Everyone is surely familiar with Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopaedia that aims to make all knowledge free for everyone; what many people don’t know is that Wikipedia is just one project working towards that aim. Wikimedia Commons is another, a digital content repository that provides every image, PDF file, or film or sound clip on Wikipedia. Not just the English language Wikipedia, either: every different language Wikipedia around the world. All of those millions of files are available under an open access Creative Commons license, making them free to use. Wikisource is yet another project, a site where public domain texts are transcribed and made freely available by volunteer editors. There’s Wikivoyage, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wikiquote, and Wiktionary, too. They’re all hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation that develops and maintains the open content on these sites provided free of charge.
With all of these projects seeking to provide various educational components freely and openly, it’s exciting to see the different ways that educators from all levels have begun to interact with them. EduWiki is a conference designed in part to showcase the newest and most innovative educational collaborations with Wikimedia in the UK. The Edinburgh 2014 conference is the third, following extremely successful events in Leicester in 2012, and Cardiff in 2013. Every year, the conference helps forge new networks between educators and Wikimedia volunteer, and workshops are held to discuss future initiatives and the support available for collaborations.
This year, the event boasts a keynote by Floor Koudijs, Senior Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program, and will showcase Wikimedia UK projects organised by Kate Dorney, TaPRA Research Officer and Senior Curator at the V&A Museum, and Brian Kelly, CETIS Innovation Advocate. Wikimedians in Residence and Wikimedia Ambassadors Marc Haynes and Dr Martin Poulter will discuss the Wikimedian in Residence programme in the education sector, and Dr Greg Singh and Dr Ally Crockford will explore education matters and engaging Wikimedia in Scotland.
Covering topics as diverse as digital literacy, plagiarism, assessment and student contributions, online tools, and using ‘learning analytics’, amongst other things, the conference is not limited strictly to presentations. It will also feature an open discussion and three workshops covering the new Campus Ambassadors programme for HEIs and Wiki*edia Projects in Schools for students under 18, and an EduWiki Hallowe’en TeachMeet will be held that evening from 7pm designed to bring together conference delegates and education professionals from all sectors who couldn’t otherwise attend for informal and lively discussions.
Both the workshop and the TeachMeet are part of a commitment on behalf of the conference organisers and the WMUK team to ensure that as many components of the education sector are included in the discussions wherever and however they take place, and everyone with an interest in education is invited to participate!
Registration costs just £30 full fee; £25 concessions, and closes on 6 October.
Any teachers in Scotland only able to attend in the afternoon are encouraged to contact Ally Crockford at a.crockford@nls.uk, or sign up for the evening TeachMeet.
Today is International Girls in ICT Day, an initiative launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2010 to encourage more girls and young women to consider careers in information and communication technologies.
Founded in Paris in 1865, the ITU is now a specialised agency of the United Nations with a membership of 193 countries and some 700 private-sector entities.
While its first area of expertise was the telegraph, the ITU now covers the whole ICT sector, from digital broadcasting to the Internet, and from mobile technologies to 3D TV, meaning it is very well placed to address issues of inequality within its field.
Girls in ICT Day is an opportunity not just to celebrate the careers of those women who have made an impact in digital technologies, but to consider how best to address the barriers to more taking up a career in the sector.
I have just taken the post of Cabinet Secretary for Training, Youth and Women’s Employment, as part of the Scottish Government’s prioritising of gender equality. We now have a Cabinet that is 40 per cent female and have asked public bodies to adhere to the same standard.
Myself and other ministers also recently took part in activity around International’s Women’s Day and in March we also had Make Young People Your Business Week, a series of events specifically geared towards the ICT and digital technologies sector, which included the announcement of £6.6 million for the sector.
We want everyone in Scotland to be able to take full advantage of the economic, social and cultural opportunities of the digital age. We want to ensure everybody has the opportunity to share in the benefits that new technology can bring. Today’s launch of the Digital Participation Strategy at Pilton Equalities Partnership by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, reinforces our determination to build upon the progress we are making in developing world class digital skills for all of our citizens.
I was very clear throughout the week that there should be a particular emphasis on young women. Research shows that women in the sector had decreased to around 17 per cent in 2011 and I was able to speak at the Scottish Women in Technology conference, attended by around fifty women in the sector, to outline how the Scottish Government wants to address those numbers.
Alongside the First Minister at Scotland’s first Women’s Employment Summit in September 2012, I announced £250,000 for CareerWISE, intended to encourage more girls into the sector do exactly that.
I hope to see this investment, which has funded female champions in STEM subjects to go into our schools and take the time to chat to girls about their work, making a difference in the coming years.
While levels of working women in Scotland are currently very promising, our economic recovery is still continuing, and more needs to be done to level the playing field for women in the workplace.
Girls in ICT Day is an excellent opportunity to highlight both the opportunities for young women in digital technologies but to ensure employers are aware of what they can bring to their business.
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