The 2017 Glow Annual Survey is now live. The survey is open to all teachers, staff and pupils and provides us with valuable information on how you use Glow. More information, including links to the survey, are available through the link. Let us know your views and help shape the future of Glow
We learned today that Microsoft Classroom is to be discontinued and replaced with Microsoft Teams. This will affect all users across the world.
At our twilight events we made mention that the version in Glow was a Beta version and we were looking forward to the new features, we understand that MS Teams will extend the features that existed in MS Classroom to give a more improved product.
Susan and I had planned 3 Twilight sessions in June to prepare schools in setting up Classroom for the new academic year, this was also to be supported by Education Scotland who would have pulled through the classes from SEEMIS into Classroom meaning there were no setup times for schools. The training sessions will go ahead, but instead will focus on how you would use Teams. We will be assisted in this by RM and Education Scotland colleagues.
We look forward to the new Teams application being an improved product , supporting both teachers and students
H2L2 Team
The goal of this course is to help educators learn about computational thinking (CT), how it differs from computer science, and how it can be integrated into a variety of subject areas. As a course participant, you will increase your awareness of CT, explore examples of CT integrated into your subject areas, experiment with examples of CT-integrated activities for your subject areas, and create a plan to integrate CT into your own curricula.
What: A free online course helping educators integrate computational thinking into their curriculum
Who: Humanities, Math, Science, and Computing educators
When: All of the course materials are available as a self-study program.
Click here for access
This looks like a really useful site, With lots of links to investigate the problem faced by poor literacy by some secondary students .
Click here to go to the blog
This site has a great collection of free learning activities that teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around.
The activities introduce students to Computational Thinking through concepts such as binary numbers, algorithms and data compression, separated from the distractions and technical details of having to use computers. Importantly, no programming is required to engage with these ideas!
CS Unplugged is suitable for people of all ages, from primary school to senior phase learners. Unplugged has been used around the world for over twenty years, in classrooms, science centres, homes, and even for holiday events in a park!
The material is available free of charge, and is shared under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence, which makes it easy to copy, adapt and share it.
Remember to join us LIVE and face one of The Doctor’s greatest foes in our latest Live Lesson all about the BBC micro:bit, hosted by presenter and comedian Iain Stirling and Radio 1’s gaming expert Julia Hardy.
Aimed at 11-13 year olds, the lesson is devised around curriculum areas that cover computational thinking skills and features expert guests from Google, games company Ubisoft and the Department of Computer Games at the University of Teesside.
When: Tuesday, 28th March 2017
Time: 11am (approx. 50 mins)
Where: bbc.co.uk/livelessons (visit the website on the day to access the live stream)
The Benchmark documents for all curriculum areas other than literacy and English and numeracy and mathematics will be published on the National Improvement Hub later today.( 23rd March 2017) The refreshed Technologies Es and Os will be also be published on the Education Scotland website.
John Swinney, Deputy First Minister, will highlight the publication of the Benchmarks as part of a speech he is giving today at Queen Margaret University.
Education Scotland will work closely local authorities to support understanding, dissemination and use of the curriculum area Benchmarks.
Promoting gender balance in STEM? Download the new suite of resources and take part in a national competition
Do you want to learn computer programming in a fun and interactive way? If you have an iPad updated to iOS 10 then download the free app Playgrounds from the App Store, and some free books from the bookstore. Great fun and loads of challenging tasks
The fantastic double act of Dash and Dot have now arrived . Those schools that have attended the CS twilights over the last few weeks keep a look out for them arriving in the school mail.
We will continue to issue a Dash and Dot and a Beebot mat to each school that can attend CS twilights now and in term 4
Using School iPads Dash and Dot can be programmed via a number of free apps including Tickle, Wonder Workshop and Tynker. These robots are perfectly at home in Nursery / Early Years but because of the innovative design can be equally at home and challenging for older students to program.
If you haven’t already done so, then please check Aberdeenshire Events and book onto a CS Twilight in your Cluster
