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National Digital Learning Week is back! This year the event will take place Monday 13 until Friday 17 May.
For this year’s even all Early Learning and Childcare Centres and Schools across Scotland are invited to take part in 5 Curriculum focused challenges in: STEM, Social Studies, Expressive Arts, Numeracy and Literacy.
Here’ a 2 minute video that tells you everything you need to know about the event.
Visit the Glow Blog today and get started. https://bit.ly/2PfR0Go
from Malcolm Wilson @ ICT for Learning & Teaching in Falkirk Schools
You’re getting old! This a an online tool where you enter a date, such as a birthdate, and the site presents a whole range of calculations related to that day by comparison to the current date and time.
The calculations presented include (if it’s for a birthdate) exactly how old at that moment in time that person would be in years, months and days, then presents that as a total number of days, as well as the total number since birth for that date of candles on a birthday cake, the approximate number of times that person’s heart would have beaten, total number of breaths, number of times the moon has orbited the earth in that time, and the number of people who were alive on earth on that birthdate compared to the number today.
As a bit of fun it has some entertainment value, but for a classroom it can also help introduce the concept of comparisons of time in history, or other curricular areas related to specific pieces of information (such as science when looking at heartbeats, breaths or moon orbits).
Another calculation included is in making a comparison to the length of time elapsed from the birthdate until today compared to something in history from that same birthdate but going backwards in time by nearly as far back. Thus as an example for a child in a class whose birthdate might have been 29 January 2010, thus comparison calculation on that date in 2019 would be “When you were born was nearer to the 9/11 terror attacks than today.” This can highlight something that to people who have that earlier event in their own lifetime perhaps reflecting the passage of time between people of different ages and their perceptions of how long ago something happened.
There are links to social subjects when it comes to comparing, for the length of time which has elapsed since the birthdate selected, how far a single location on the planet has travelled as it rotates, the distance travelled as the Earth revolves around the Sun, and more.
Then the site picks out selected historical events from the birth year, from early childhood, later years as appropriate. And it notes the dates on which that child will reach certain milestones – in a classroom context when numbers start to get large when you can no longer actually picture them in your mind, this site can be used to get children to try to guess the number of days until certain landmark dates before revealing the site’s calculations.
For birthdates of adults (you can use those of celebrities known to pupils) there are additional comparison calculations (they won’t appear for children’s ages since it relies on information comparing the ages of two other well-known people) – such as taking an adult’s age and showing it as the sum of two younger people (so that could be an older named actor being the same age as two other named child-actors.
One last comparison displayed is a pie chart showing the number of people born on the same birthdate as that selected and highlighting the number who are still living. This, like many of the other calculations, can provide the starting point for discussions for social studies subjects.
Give it a go http://you.regettingold.com and please do share in the comments below how you’ve used this tool in the classroom,
Do your plans for the curriculum include developing children and young people’s knowledge, skills and understanding of the First World War? Do you intend to do some intergenerational work to promote children and young people’s Gaelic language skills? Has your tracking of children and young people’s skills in technology shown a gap for which an opportunity to create a film would be useful?
A grant of £250 is available as part of the Scottish Government’s five-year World War 1 Commemorative Programme to mark the centenary of the First World War. It aims to help children and young people develop their understanding of the causes of the First World War and impact on people’s lives.
More information is available at:
https://www.historicenvironment.scot/learn/schools/wwi-project-grants?dm_t=0,0,0,0,0
Social Bite has launched the Wee Sleep Out; a national awareness raising and fundraising campaign to get the young people of Scotland involved in the charity’s mission to end homelessness.
Wee Sleep Out is calling on all teachers, youth leaders, parents and guardians to challenge young people between 8 and 16 years old to get out of their beds, and their comfort zones by organising their very own Wee Sleep Outs on 9 November, as part of Scotland’s Year of Young People 2018.
From back gardens to school grounds, living room floors to community halls, each Wee Sleep Out is putting young people in the driving seat and giving them the opportunity to showcase their skills and talents by leading on the development and delivery of their own sleep outs and being enterprising in their apporaches to gathering support and raising funds.
There will be no sign-up fee, and no minimum fundraising target to make this initiative accessible to all – Social Bite would of course be delighted if young people fundraise as much as they can to contribute to their nationwide movement to end homelessness.
Money raised from the Wee Sleep Out events will go towards Social Bite’s wider Sleep in the Park total, which includes supporting Social Bite’s major Housing First initiative, which is expected to take 800 rough sleepers off the streets by 2020.
A number of young people who organise their own Wee Sleep Outs will also have the opportunity to play a starring role across Sleep in the Park events on 8 December, sharing their personal experiences of delivering their own Wee Sleep Out to participants.
Alice Thomson, co-founder of Social Bite and organiser of the Wee Sleep Out, said: “The success of Sleep in the Park last year was overwhelming. To bring 8,000 people together and raise £4 million in the process was incredible, and this year we want the young people of Scotland to join us.
“There’s been a real appetite from the young people of Scotland looking to get involved, and a number of them got in touch after Sleep in the Park, offering their support. We even had Cody McManus, aged 9, brave the Beast from the East and sleep out in an Igloo in his back garden – raising £1,000 for the cause.
“We’re proud to launch the Wee Sleep Out during Scotland’s Year of Young People and give the young people of Scotland a voice. We want people of all ages to get involved with Social Bite’s mission to eradicate homelessness, and we’re inviting young people across the country to get creative and take the lead by organising their own Wee Sleep Out this year.”
Olivia Ferguson, a 16-year-old student at Kelso High School, took part in Sleep in the Park last year and contacted Alice after the event, keen to do something involving other young people. She said: “This a great opportunity for young people to come together to help end homelessness.
“Last year my family and I took part in the Sleep in the Park, which was a very humbling experience. I didn’t want my support to end there, so I got in touch with Alice and suggested an event in the Borders, and I can wait to organise a Wee Sleep Out.”
Paul Bush OBE, VisitScotland’s Director of Events, said:
“The Year of Young People 2018 provides us with a wonderful opportunity to celebrate, showcase and most importantly empower young people to make a difference.”
“We are delighted to be supporting Social Bite’s Wee Sleep Out as part of Scotland’s current themed year. It provides a fantastic opportunity for young people across Scotland to lead the way in the delivery and development of events in their communities and at home to raise awareness of an important issue. 2018 is the time to give young people the power to create change and celebrate their spirit of creativity and innovation – we can’t wait to hear all the ways in which they plan to take part in the Wee Sleep Out.”
The Wee Sleep Out is now open for registration at www.weesleepout.co.uk
Join the conversation #WeeSleepOut #YOYP2018
This year Social Bite are bringing together 9,000 people in Princes Street Gardens, on the 9th of December, for the world’s largest ever Sleep-Out to try and end homelessness in Scotland for good. Participants will be joined by some of the world’s biggest artists to sleep in the cold for one night.
We have invited some amazing musicians to “busk” stripped back acoustics sets including Liam Gallagher, Deacon Blue, Amy Macdonald and Frightened Rabbit. We also have Rob Brydon hosting the event, Sir Bob Geldof sleeping out and John Cleese has agreed to come and read a bedtime story!
The website is: https://www.sleepinthepark.co.uk/
You can see a little video about the event here:
Sleep In The Park Launch Video.mp4
Please note: This allocation is for young people 16 and over and they must be accompanied by an adult.
Opportunity for Your School
Ordinarily, in order to participate in the event people have to pay an initial donation of £50 and commit to raise at least £50 more. However, we have had a wealthy individual donate £50,000 to fund the participation of 1,000 School kids (aged 16 and over).
Therefore I am writing to see if you would like to take an allocation of free tickets for children over 16 at your school. The group would need to commit to raising a minimum of £50 or more per person in order to take part, but would not have to pay any initial £50 registration fee as this has been entirely funded. They would also have to be accompanied to the event by a teacher(s).
We are giving the school ticket allocations out on a first come first served basis and we expect the demand to be high and the 1,000 available to be taken quickly. Therefore could you let me know if you would like an allocation of tickets? If so please let me know the number of tickets you would like for your school?
Josh Littlejohn MBE
Social Bite
Co-Founder
t: 0131 220 8206
Glow TV is delighted to support inspirational explorers Luke and Hazel Robertson in their adventure to Alaska. In this session we look forward to following their progress as they trek across Alaska.
Join us live on Monday 19th June at 2pm from Fairbanks where they are preparing for the next leg of their journey.
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.
Date: Friday 10th March 2017
Time: 09.20 (for a 9.45 start) – 15.00
Venue: Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, Exhibition Ave, Bridge of Don, Aberdeen AB23 8BL
This one day event, organised by Aberdeenshire council with support from Education Scotland, Moray and Aberdeen councils aims to explore opportunities for schools and resilience professionals to work together to help build more resilient communities.
Using recent experiences with flooding as a context for developing resilience, this event will provide support for health and wellbeing outcomes in the curriculum as well as those in social subjects and science.
Primary and secondary schools from the three local authorities will outline their experiences with developing resilience through the curriculum and there will be opportunities for discussion and reflection during the day. A number of external agencies will be present at the event to take part in discussion and to offer their support with resources to help teachers in schools.
This event is open to teachers and resilience professionals across Scotland and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. If you are interested in signing up for this event please contact Gavin.Penman@aberdeenshire.gov.uk
Click here to view the draft-programme of the day
from Malcolm Wilson @ ICT for Teaching & Learning in Falkirk Primary Schools
There are so many choices for sources of news for learners to find out about what’s going on the world today, whether printed media, online news sites or social media. But how can learners be helped to be able to work out if what they are reading has any substance in fact, how accurate the information is, or what the biases are likely to be?
How to Spot Fake News – the IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions), with thanks to www.factcheck.org, created an infographic detailing steps we can all take when trying to work out if what we are reading, hearing or watching is verifiable. This helps teach the skills of critical thinking and media literacy. This describes with visual representation 8 steps to take to help determine the likely authenticity of shared information: to consider the source, to read beyond the headline, the check credibility of the author, to look at linking sources, to check the date to see if current, to research to see if it’s satire, to consider your own biases and the likely ones of the source sharing the information, and to consult fact-checking sites. The infographic is available to download as either an image or in pdf format for printing.
Digital Literacy and “Fake News” – Resources to Help you help your students – many links collated by librarian-turned-technology-specialist Nancy Watson @nancywtech which help teachers guide their learners through ways to spot fake news and techniques to work out the authenticity of the shared information. The links include sites aimed at different age groups, teachers, younger learners, as well as for general public use. They include fact-checking sites as well as tips and advice to determining reliability of what is shared.
Digital Literacy and the “Fake News” Epidemic – Nancy Watson has produced a superb resource for educators sharing a host of advice, tips and resources to support teachers support their learners to better be able to be discerning about the information shared online or in the print media. This includes examples of fake news and outlines the steps anyone can take to determine it to be factually inaccurate.
Fake or real? How to self-check the news and get the facts – a post by digital news intern Wynne Davis describing the issue of fake news and giving practical advice for all ages about how to help determine whether what you are reading is true or fiction. Tips include checking the domain name (especially similar-sounding names), looking at quotations in the story (and checking up on who they are and anything known about them online), searching the quote itself to see if it properly attributed or taken out of context, check the comments to get a flavour of whether others call out the facts as being untrue and cite sources to back up their claims, reverse image search (right click on an image online and choose to search Google for it to see where else it is used and the context in which it is used).
Wouldn’t it be great if, when someone says content has changed on a website, or disappeared completely, that there was a way to look back at what was there beforehand? Well, The Internet Archive saves a huge amount of online content from many sources around the web (several hundred billion webpages!). This relies on the Wayback Machine (which is part of the Internet Archive) trawling on a regular basis for changed content. So if you search for a website and it is no longer available you can pop the weblink into the Wayback Machine (which is part of The Internet Archive) and look back at previous versions just by choosing a specific date. It will only be available for dates on which a trawl was made so is not available for every date but it’s still very impressive to be able to look at a website change over time and to be able to compare and contrast with versions over time.
Can you save a web page on Wayback machine so it’s always there for future reference? Yes you can! You can simply capture a web page as it appears now for future use as a trusted citation in the future, or just to ensure it does not disappear when the original website changes or disappears. All you do is paste the weblink when you first find it on the “Save Page Now” part of the Internet Archive site.
There are a number of sites which can be used to verify whether stories (particularly those which appear on social media and spread like wildfire) have any basis in fact or whether they are urban myths, or out and out lies or propaganda. These include Politifact, Snopes, and Factcheck.org
Biases which affect us all – an infographic created by Business Insider which lists and describes 20 biases which we can all have when we read, hear or share information. Whether it’s a tendency to have a reliance on the first piece of information we hear, whether we are influenced by hearing the same information shared by a group, whether the information confirms what we already believed, stereotyping, or information which implies cause and effect, or many more – this infographic provides a useful starting point for discussing with learners the range of influences on us all when we all read or hear information.
from Malcolm Wilson @ ICT for Teaching & Learning in Falkirk Primary Schools
Virtual Reality, or VR, provides a means to have an experience of a location or object (whether real or imaginary) through a mobile device, often viewed through a headset, in such a way that when the viewer moves around they see the virtual view moving with them. So the images are usually 360 degree images and can be in 3D so that when viewed on a mobile device within a headset with twin lenses it appears to the viewer as being as close to being there as possible. When you move forward, tilt your head, look up – it’s as if you are doing the same in the virtual reality experience.
The least expensive option for using Virtual Reality in a classroom would be Google Expeditions using Google Cardboard viewers (while they can be viewed without a twin-lens 3D viewer the viewer will lose the feeling of 3D) which are held by the hand up to the eyes. More expensive options are available with a variety of VR viewer headsets (such as Microsoft HoloLens, Gear VR or Oculus Rift headsets) and accompanying sensors (often handheld) so that the experience can involve touching or interacting with objects within a VR experience – as you approach or touch something in virtual reality it will react in a way as it in real life.
Google Expeditions are virtual reality experiences designed with a classroom guided exploration in mind. The teacher downloads the choice of virtual reality location using the Google Expeditions app and starts the expedition. Then when the pupil on the same wi-fi connection starts the app on their device they will see the teacher-directed expedition awaiting them.
In Google Expeditions the teacher application provides suggestions for questions or directions to guide learners as they explore the virtual environment. The teacher can see on their mobile device app where the learners are exploring on their screens, and can make suggestions as the learners explore.
The video below is a promotional video for Google Expeditions in the classroom giving a brief overview of what it looks like in a classroom setting where a teacher with a tablet device guides pupils each holding a Google Cardboard headset viewer.
The video below is a guided tutorial to using Google Expeditions
The video below shows how Google Expeditions can be viewed on iPads rather than smartphones. Many school may already have iPads or Android tablets, and the Google Expeditions apps will work on these too. However the Google Cardboard viewer is designed with the size of a smartphone in mind. If you wish to use the app on an iPad or Android tablet then when running the setup at the point where you see the two images side by side there is a small icon at the top right which lets you change the twin view to single view. Having done that the view will no longer be 3D and will no longer be held up to the eyes of the viewer but simply handheld.
How to use Google Expeditions on iPads or tablet devices in the classroom
Google Expeditions provides a superb source of Virtual Reality experiences ready to be downloaded for use on devices in the classroom.
Discovery VR provides a wide range of downloadable virtual reality experiences in an educational context. Each is available for specific devices and come with notes for use by the educator with their class to guide their learners in the exploration of the experience.
10 Simple Ways to Use Google Cardboard in the Classroom – a post by Neil Jarrett on the EdTech4 Beginners blog describing different ways in which the virtual reality app Google Cardboard can be used in the classroom.
Ideas for using Google Cardboard Virtual Reality in the classroom – a blogpost on the Whiteboard Blog by Danny Nicholson
Please share how you have used virtual reality experiences with your class by adding a comment below
What Keeps You Sharp? survey launched
People often think of changes in their thinking skills with age in terms of decline. While some people do experience these changes, others do not.
What Keeps You Sharp? is a nationwide survey being led by researchers at Heriot-Watt University about your beliefs and attitudes to how thinking skills might change with age. They also want to know if you think there are things we can do to maintain or improve thinking skills as we grow older.
If you’re aged 40 or over and living in the UK you can complete the survey online: http://tinyurl.com/keepingsharp.
Help spread the word
They want to reach as broad an audience as possible, so share within your own networks – email lists, Facebook and other social media.
Anyone on social media can share the links from @TheAgeingLab and the hashtag #WhatKeepsYouSharp?
Please share the survey among your friends and family and any groups you might be associated with.