Category: Challenge Tasks

Festive Activities II

In December 2024 we launched our newest edition of festive creative activities. These eight fun activities that can be picked up and completed by pupils either in groups or individually and can be used with any age and stage. They are based on Apple’s new Creative Activities for Early Learners/ Students, and aim to to help pupils utilise lots of interesting core apps on their devices in new and creative ways – with a festive twist!

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Spooky Skies

In October 2024, we set Falkirk schools another new challenge task for Halloween. This year was all about looking to the stars as we explored the spooky skies using an adapted version of the Apple Creative Activities ‘Reveal a Constellation’ activity. Find out more about the live lesson and the night frights we created below. 

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Promptathon

In May 2024 Connected Falkirk and DigiLearnFalk launched our first ever Promptathon. The aim of our Promptathon was to give learners hands on experience with text to image AI as well as building their understanding of AI literacy and a chance to develop their prompt crafting / prompt engineering skills.

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Codemas

For December 2023, we Connected Falkirk and DigiLearnFalk are delighted to announce our Codemas challenges. Three coding themed challenges to celebrate the Festive Season. Find out more about the activities here and check back later for the amazing results from our schools below.

The Challenges

Use Scratch to code your own festive game.

This challenge is accompanied by a live lesson on 1st December. For those who can’t make it or need the instructions again there is a full length 23 minute step by step video. We recommend an hour or more to complete this challenge.

Code your micro:bit to make a festive song guessing game.

You don’t actually need a micro:bit for this challenge! You can code a virtual micro:bit using the App or the micro:bit MakeCode website. We recommend setting aside 45 minutes to an hour for this challenge, the videos are short but coding the musical notes may take time.

Help the elves find the presents on Code Lab in Google Santa Tracker.

This is the shortest challenge of the bunch. It would be great as a free time option or as an extension activity in December as each learner can play independently at their own pace. How many levels can your class complete?

Activity Instructions

All the instructions you need are below, you can download these to share with learners using this interactive PDF or share the link to the live online version. You can also use the short link: https://bit.ly/CFcodemas2023 to share this page with learners.

Codemas Challenges by Connected Falkirk and DigiLearnFalk

Tutorial Videos

These tutorial videos are linked in the activity instructions on the live version or can be accessed below. Please note they are of differing lengths and the Challenge Two activity has an extension task for coders who want an extra challenge.

The Result

Halloween Code-Along

In October 2023, we set Falkirk schools a new challenge task for Halloween – to join our live Scratch code-along to create a Halloween game on their Connected Falkirk devices. Find out more about the live lesson and the fangtastic results below. 

The Challenge

Want to catch up? Watch a recorded version of our code-along below

The Result

Celebrating Success – Twitter/X Posts

‘Connections’ Challenges

In March 2023, we set Falkirk schools a a set of challenge tasks for British Science Week 2023. This included a range of activities, puzzles and quizzes they could complete on their Connected Falkirk devices to celebrate this years theme of ‘Connections’. Find out more about the challenges themselves and the fabulous results below.

The Challenges

Live Teams Session

To kick off British Science Week, our Education Support Officer Lauren McKechnie and the Falkirk STEM Officer Victoria Paddon hosted a Live Teams Session open to all schools in Falkirk. The session involved the pupils completing an Only Connect Wall where they had to find the connection between various STEM-related terms/ phrases. Following this, they began to complete the CREST Award ‘Confusing Cans’ experiment using the Measure App on their Connected Falkirk devices to calculate the distance the cans travelled.

 

Other Challenges

Alongside the live session, we also launched 5 other digital science activities for pupils across Primary and Secondary settings to get involved in. Each task was linked to the theme of ‘Connections’ in some way. 

Access the interactive guide on Canva by clicking here. Or you can download a copy below. (To download click on the ‘…’ and click ‘Download PDF File’).

The Activities

 

 

The Results

The Live Lesson

 

The Activities

 

Bring Books To Life

In February 2023, we set Falkirk schools a new challenge task for World Book Day – to use AR Makr (and Keynote) on their Connected Falkirk devices to create an augmented reality environment displaying their favourite books. Find out more about the challenge itself and the fabulous results below.

The Challenge

Setting the Challenge

Video Tutorials

Extension

The Results

Going further…

Some pupils then used their new AR skills to help them with other tasks over the next few weeks:

Haggis Holiday

In January 2023, we set Falkirk schools a new challenge task for Burns night – to use Maps and MarkUp on their Connected Falkirk devices to create design a Haggis Holiday photo. Find out more about the challenge itself and the fabulous results below.

The Challenge

Challenge Cards and Extension Activities

Tutorial Video

The Results

Celebrating Success – Holiday Scrapbook

Twitter