Author: George Milliken

stop it now technology assisted harmful sexual behaviour professional learning

Technology Assisted Harmful Sexual Behaviour with Stop It Now

Technology Assisted Harmful Sexual Behaviour (TAHSB) is unfortunately an issue that educators deal with on a daily basis. It impacts on friendships and relationships of everyone involved. However, it is important that educators understand what it is, how to identify it, and how to support the learners involved. 

Stop It Now! Scotland is part of a child protection charity that believes that the key to preventing sexual abuse is awareness among parents and community members. They work to build public confidence in recognising and responding to concerns about the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

With their experience of delivering the Rosa project in Glasgow, they were are an obvious choice to support us to develop our TAHSB professional learning course. This course is designed to support educators to:

  • develop their knowledge and awareness of TAHSB
  • increase their confidence in identifying and categorising the TAHSB they are dealing with in school
  • take action to help the learners they are supporting with TAHSB

Enquire about TAHSB training

School guidance document for responding to TA-HSB

Education Scotland Tackling TA HSB Digital Resource

Everyone Can Code

When you teach code, you’re also teaching logic, creativity, and problem solving—skills all students need for the future. The Everyone Can Code curriculum from Apple introduces students to the world of coding through interactive puzzles, playful characters, and activities for both in and out of the classroom. And from the start, they’ll learn to code in Swift, the same programming language used by professionals to build powerful apps.

Everyone Can Code is a set of free resources built around the Swift Playgrounds app that inspires students to code and solve real-world challenges. It includes teacher and student guides that offer flexible, engaging lessons designed to work for an hour or an academic year.  There are complementary Swift Coding Club materials for after school clubs.  App showcases give aspiring coders a chance to celebrate their ingenuity with the community, whether they’re learning in or out of the classroom.

 

Learn more about Swift Playgrounds

View the Everyone Can Code curriculum

Visit Everyone Can Code

Online platforms and programmable devices on iPad

scratch coding
sphero robot

UPCOMING APPLE WEBINARS

micro:bit

micro:bit

Every primary and secondary school in Scotland will receive 20 V2 micro:bits.  The roll out of these devices started in April 2022.  Read more about the roll out here. 

The micro:bit Educational Foundation (@microbit_edu) is a UK-based not for profit organisation with a mission to ‘inspire every child to create their best digital future’.  The foundation helps children participate in the digital world, with particular focus on girls and those from disadvantaged groups. We work in collaboration with educators to create and curate exceptional curriculum materials, training programmes, classroom tools and free resources.

The micro:bit is a very small but functional computer. It has a range of inputs, outputs and sensors built-in. It can be programmed using blocks of code or JavaScript text-based code (you can even write your code in one format and convert it to the other!) on the Microsoft MakeCode site.

Programmable devices can be an excellent way to engage learners with a hands-on experience of coding, which is an abstract concept.

Here is an example of a micro:bit in action:

This is the front view of the original micro:bit (v1)t

This is the back view of the original micro:bit (v1)

This is the front view of the new micro:bit (v2)

This is the back view of the new micro:bit (v2)

micro:bit across the curriculum

other micro:bit posts

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation are looking for primary school (second level) teachers from Scotland to take part in a piece of research about their experiences… Read more

PASSWORD GENERATOR MICROBIT LESSON

micro:bit have created this series of three lessons (designed for learners aged 11-14 years) to introduce cyber security. Learners explore the need to create strong… Read more

Microsoft MakeCode for micro:bit This site from Microsoft offers projects to get you started with your micro:bit computer – it also has an online micro:bit… Read more

Tech We Can: Tech for the Planet lesson resource

Tech She Can is delighted to share the brand new Tech We Can lesson, ‘Tech for the Planet’ which is out now!

“Since the COP26 climate summit earlier this month, topics such as sustainable living and protecting the future of our planet have dominated the news agenda, as well as entering our everyday conversations, including those taking place in schools and among young people.

Our latest free on-demand Tech We Can lesson, ‘Tech for the Planet’ aims to show some of the innovative ways in which technologists around the world are using technology to protect our air, reduce waste, help clean the oceans and preserve our wildlife. It also highlights role models working in these areas – Lucinda Jones from Unilever and Mikya Rozner from Tesco – which we hope will inspire young viewers to consider a future career in technology.

You can watch the lesson, aimed at 8 – 14 year olds, and taught by Becky Patel and Katie King here.

If you’d like to explore other Tech We Can educational resources, for use at school or at home, please head over to techwecan.org and complete a short registration form to gain access to a wide range of on-demand lessons and lesson packs. Each explores the use of technology in a different area – from sport, to food and outer space – and highlights the types of careers that students could go into in the future.

Go to Tech We Can resources

Barclays Code Playground – resources for Scratch

Barclays Code Playground aims to make learning to code easier for everyone and has resources and support to help teachers get to grips with Scratch for teaching computing science.

They provide interactive live classes, free online resources, access to detailed lesson plans and you can also book a school visit with one of their Barclays Digital Eagles.

Visit the site

More Scratch

Callysto Data Science

Callysto is a free, online learning tool that helps Grades 5-12 students and teachers in Canada learn and apply in-demand data science skills including data analysis, visualization, coding, and computational thinking. Why not try out these Weekly Data Visualizations?

 

What do you and your students need to use Callysto?

  • A computer
  • A secure internet connection
  • An internet browser (Google Chrome or FireFox are ideal)

 

Go to Callysto

primary computing science professional learning

26 Jan 1600 – 1700, This is Primary Computing Science – 3 part course

Education Scotland have partnered with BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT to deliver this 3 part certified course to develop your knowledge of teaching computing science across the primary curriculum using Barefoot resources. This course is suitable for those already teaching or planning to teach computing science and will help fill potential gaps in knowledge. This is a repeat of the course in term 1 and 2 which was sold out.

Book your place here!

16/01/22 4pm Computational Thinking – Critical thinking and problem solving across the curriculum

Computational Thinking, critical thinking and problem-solving top the World Economic list of skills that employers believe will grow in prominence in the next five years. This first session will explore why it’s important for your students to learn computing science and you’ll learn about key computational thinking skills as you give some of Barefoot’s “unplugged” activities a try – proving you don’t need expensive kit to teach computing. You’ll take away a range of lesson ideas you can try immediately with your learners.

16/02/22 4pm Code along with Scratch

Take your computing science knowledge to the next level with this interactive code along session. Get to grips with Scratch programming and the concepts of sequence, repetition and selection through a series of Scratch programming challenges. This workshop will build on the previous session as we explore how computational thinking skills are applied when programming.

23/03/22 4pm Pedagogy and Computing Science

Learn more about key pedagogical approaches to programming, including PRIMM (Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify and Make), Use-Modify-Create, Semantic Waves and Parson’s Problems. We’ll explore each approach through hands-on activities and examples, illustrating how these research-backed teaching and learning methods can be applied in your curriculum.

14 December 1100-1200, Code Along for Christmas – Jazzy Jumper Game (CONFIDENT CODERS)

Join Education Scotland, DigiLearnScot and Code Club Scotland for this Scotland wide festive code along to make a jazzy jumper memory game!

This live Code Along is for confident coders P4 upwards and is based on a similar Code Club project.  When you sign up you will be given a link to join the Code Along Team channel where the live session will take place and support will also be provided within this Team.

During the code along your class will be guided through each of the steps to create a jazzy jumper memory game. It is recommended that learners are familiar with Scratch before this live code along.

To join, learners will need a laptop/tablet or computer with access to Scratch online or installed on the computer.

Please sign up here

08 December 1100-1200, Code Along for Christmas – Catch a Reindeer

Join Education Scotland, DigiLearnScot and Code Club Scotland for this Scotland wide festive code along to make a game to catch a reindeer!

This live Code Along is for beginners P4 upwards and is based on a similar Code Club project. When you sign up you will be given a link to join the Team where the live session will take place and support will also be provided within this Team.

During the live lesson your class will be guided through each of the steps required to code a game to catch a reindeer. It is recommended that learners are familiar with Scratch before the live code along.

To join, learners will need a laptop/tablet or computer with access to Scratch online or installed on the computer.

Sign up here

COP26 Sphero Lesson Activities

by Laura Di Pasquale, Wellshot Primary School, (@LauraKeeney01)

Due to the upcoming COP26 taking place in Glasgow, the Apple Regional Training Centre Glasgow is driving forward training for computing science amongst its colleagues as part of the Digital Literacy and Computing Science framework. There are and have been several sessions available which introduce colleagues to resources and technology in order to develop computing science skills with a COP26 focus.

These sessions have included an introduction to the resources available at Barefoot Computing and Code.org, how to use Spheros to develop a range of skills and using Scratch to enhance block coding skills within the theme of climate change.

As a result of Sphero training, I created a resource pack to coincide with Sphero Edu’s lesson titled “Around the World in 60 Minutes”. This resource pack contains several activities ranging from early level to more advanced coding for the upper school. It helps pupils to develop a better map of the world, learning the names of continents and countries and researching issues related to climate change. It is designed to be fun and interactive whilst developing skills in programming.

 

Get Laura’s lessons here