Find topical teaching resources for May in our calendar of events including World Fair Trade Day 10 May, Walk to School Week 19-23 May and Africa Day 25 May.
Category Archives: resources
Commonwealth Games inspire Woodland Workout
Forestry Commission Scotland is encouraging young people to feel the benefit of the Commonwealth Games with a new Woodland Workout pack.
Targeted at 3-14 year olds the pack promotes opportunities for quality, fun and safe physical activity in the outdoors and includes ideas for games, physical activities and staging ‘adapted’ Commonwealth sports in the woodlands.
The pack, complete with teachers’ guide, encourages young people to have fun but to also be responsible for their well-being and consider risk. As well as considering potential hazards in their activity space and taking risks with solving problems, it also allows children the chance to learn how to manage ‘failure’ through reflecting on performance to set new challenges.
The Woodland Workout, with Commonwealth Games supplement has been issued to schools across Scotland and is available to download.
Resource Calendar – April 2014
The events in this calendar are celebrations, awareness days and action weeks all covering topical issues relevant to schools. Each of the events includes details of websites and support materials to help plan activities for learners. April events include:
· International Children’s Book Day – 2 April
· World Autism Awareness Day – 2 April
· Edinburgh International Science Festival – 5-20 April
· World Health Day – 7 April.
Make Things Do Stuff
Make Things Do Stuff is a campaign to inspire young people aged between 13 and 18 to make things in the digital world. It aims to help them to look beyond being a consumer and instead to create things, understand why things happen and to take ownership of it for themselves.
The campaign offers support, advice, resources and tools that are ideal for use in schools and at home, whether it’s a lesson, after-school club or competition. There’s something for everyone, whatever level they (or you) are at – and it’s all designed to nurture understanding and enjoyment through practical experience.
Adapted from a special digital making event for Teachers in Scotland, these videos show a range of different step-by-step digital activities for computing/other secondary school teachers.
MAKLab
MAKLab is Scotland’s first open access digital fabrication studio. The video covers how to create a 3D model of an object of your choice in 3D software and shows how the physical object can be then printed on a 3D printer. The process of creating a 3D object is a memorable and meaningful learning experience.
Suitable for: Secondary teachers of all subjects at all levels, particularly CDT, Art and Computing.
Processing Tutorial with Chris Martin
Processing is an open source programing language, community and development environment. In this session you will learn how to rapidly demonstrate computational principles with striking interactive visual output. This will be hands on, fun and you will make something interesting.
Suitable for: Teachers of National 4 / National 5 Computing
LiveCode Tutorial with Elanor Buchanan and Neil Roger
Livecode is an easy to learn, open source, high level language for creating programs and mobile apps for a variety of platforms including Windows, iOS and Android. The LiveCode introductory session will take you through creating a short interactive side scrolling hot air balloon game. Working with text, simple animation and using sound to create moving background images to give the illusion of movement, controlling an on-screen element, and detecting collisions to collect bonus points or end the game when you collide with negative elements.
Suitable for: Teachers of National 4 / National 5 / Higher Computing
App Inventor with Jeremy Scott
We have to provide students with an experience of Computing Science that’s not only accessible and exciting, but real world. What better way to do this than tapping into the mobile revolution? This workshop will provide an overview of the RSE/BCS Computing Science exemplification project and focus on how teachers might use “I Love My Smartphone” to introduce mobile app development in the classroom.
Suitable for: Teachers of National 4 Computing
Colin Maxwell Animation Tutorial
Vectorian Giotto is a powerful and free animation tool for creating 2D animations and interactive presentations. In this session you will explore the features of the tool whilst making short animations for science, literacy and foreign language, and discuss how the software can be applied to different curriculum areas. Animation is not just for art or computing classrooms, it can be an engaging medium across the curriculum.
Suitable for: Secondary teachers of all subjects at all levels.
Webmaker and Video Editing tools with Doug Belshaw from Mozilla
The Web is the world’s largest free public resource. Do you feel confident in teaching your students about how to read, write and participate on the Web? In this session, Doug Belshaw from the Mozilla Foundation (the people behind the Firefox web browser) will introduce some free Webmaker tools that you can use in your teaching. You will also learn how to use Popcorn, a free and open video editing tool. You can make videos to educate your pupils or get your pupils creating campaign videos or short films to revise a topic.
Suitable for: Secondary teachers of all subjects at all levels.
Scotdec – new resource
Our Forest Our Future a new educational resource produced in association with the Forestry Commission Scotland and with support from Oxfam Scotland will be launched at Royal Botanic Garden, 20A Inverleith Row, Fletcher Building, Edinburgh EH3 5LR at 10.15am on Friday 21st March 2014 to coincide with the first International Day of the Forest and the Tree.
Our Forest Our Future is an online resource which takes teachers and pupils on a learning journey to discover the vital role forests play in sustaining our environment and encourages them to take positive action for maintaining sustainable forests for the future.
More information from isabel@scotdec.org.uk or www.scotdec.org.uk
New help for entrepreneurs
The Skills Development Scotland careers web service, My World of Work, has a range of new resources designed to help people interested in entrepreneurship.
The new area is full of tips and advice aimed at anyone from budding entrepreneurs with an idea they have been longing to turn into a business to job seekers simply wanting to develop their enterprise skills. It shows that traditional jobs are not the only career options available to people and encourages them to think about the opportunities in enterprise.
Highlights include:
- A series of videos featuring a panel of entrepreneurs who share their experience and give their top tips for taking a business idea off the ground
- Advice articles on topics such as financing a business idea through crowdfunding and coping when things go wrong
- A calendar of key dates for opportunities, funding deadlines and competitions
- Links to resources which will provide entrepreneurs with further advice and financial help to turn their ideas into reality.
Find out more at www.myworldofwork.co.uk/enterprise.
STEM e-bulletin March 2014
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Sciences Technologies Numeracy and mathematics Did you know? Video Inspiration We’ve got loads more news to share! See our STEM blog for the latest updates. |
Resource Calendar – March 2014
Find topical teaching resources for March in our calendar of events including World Book Day (6 March), International School Meals Day (6 March), Sport Relief (21-23 March) and the National Science and Engineering Week (14-23 March).
Poetry by Heart
To learn or not to learn?
Memorising poetry has been getting a lot of attention in the press and recital competitions are increasingly popular. If you’re considering this topic with your class or group, our ‘Remember, remember‘ resource sheet can help you get started. It has links to articles discussing why and how we should memorise poems. Plus there are recommendations of where to find suitable poems.
Poem Posters
“remember…”
To complement the question of learning by heart – and all sorts of other trains of thought around ‘remembering’ – we’ve got a set of 4 new poem posters with quotations from poems by Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead, John Burnside and Elizabeth Burns.
Are there other quotations you’d like to see as posters? Do, ah, remember to email and let us know.
Innovative new Environmental Education Centre opens
Tullis Russel’s TREE Centre is a ground breaking educational resource that uses imaginative displays and interactives to teach visitors about climate change, the environment and sustainability. The Ecology Centre will be providing educators to lead visitors through the displays, providing engaging games to educate and inspire. Sessions cost £160 plus VAT for a whole day. Please see http://www.thetreecentre.org/ for more info or contact admin@theecologycentre.org to book a visit.
