Author: George Milliken

Screening Shorts

Screening Shorts: reading film and images

This live lesson will give your learners an opportunity to explore film and screen images as texts. They will explore strategies to make predictions about a film, then use still images from the film to learn about sequencing a screen narrative, leading to the first steps to creating their own short film.

The text we’ll be exploring is ‘Mobile’ on Screening Shorts (GLOW LOGIN REQUIRED). 

In this adorable animation, a lone cow hangs by herself on one side of a child’s mobile. Although her weight balances that of the others on the opposite side, she feels lonely. When kindly Mouse invites Cow over, and she tries to find ways to join the animals on the other side, chaos ensues. Can they find a balance?

Resources required:
Sharing thinking: anything you’d normally use, such as post-its, or go digital with our O365 Whiteboard | Google Jamboard

Sequencing images: you could do this with pen and paper, print these slides, or go digital and share these slides with learners

Annotating images: you could draw the images and add speech bubbles or indirect speech on paper, or you can use the slides and draw speech bubbles with text or record and add audio to them

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Use this link to view all resources

How to make a copy of the O365 Whiteboard | Google Jamboard

How to download or print the slides PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

How to make a copy of the slides and share with your learners PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

How to add speech bubbles PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

How to record and add audio PowerPoint | Slides | Keynote

Digital Critical Friends – ScotlandIS and DYW Glasgow

What is this project?

In response to the Logan Review, ScotlandIS has worked with DYW Glasgow to develop an innovative and responsive project to provide every secondary school  in Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, and South Lanarkshire with a senior tech expert at their disposal – these are Digital Critical Friends.    

ScotlandIS aim to raise awareness of the skills and knowledge required for working in the tech sector amongst educators, learners and their families. The programme will help teachers shape a curriculum that matches the needs of industry and ensure learners are aware of the opportunities for work, training, and further study.

There were 35 schools in Glasgow involved in the pilot programme and they have also matched schools and partners in: North Lanarkshire, East Dunbartonshire, Scottish Borders and developing partnerships in: South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire. 

 

Why is this programme needed?

There is currently a shortage of learners qualifying in, studying, or having the opportunity to study Computing Science in some schools – especially girls and young women.

Only 27% of young women say they would consider a career in technology, and only 3% would say it is their first choice of career. (PwC UK, Women in Tech Report) 

 

The tech industry in Scotland promises creative, flexible, and highly rewarding career pathways, and it is estimated that around 80% of future jobs will require STEM skills, including Computing Science. 

13,000 digital tech job opportunities are created every year in Scotland, filling all of them would add £1bn to Scotland’s economy. (ScotlandIS)  

 

How does this work?

ScotlandIS will work with individual DYW regional teams over the next 12 months to provide a Digital Critical Friend in every secondary school in that region. 

Digital Critical Friends will inform teachers and pupils of what is happening in the sector: where the new technologies are, share emerging career opportunities and how to access them. They can also support teachers and management tap into increased funding for their department to encourage more young people to study the subject.    

Digital Critical Friends can connect flexibly, by video call, email or over coffee. They will act as a sounding board, a friend, a guide to the teachers. They’ll be willing to take part in catch-ups and could present to students about subjects that interest them, demonstrating how exciting the tech sector is. Teachers and Digital Critical Friends may also arrange a visit to each other’s workplace in order to understand the opportunities and challenges that they work with.  

This programme also complements others that are available, including Tech She Can and Scottish Digital Literacy Week (03/10/22).

 

Who is involved and supporting?

There are already a number of well-known organisations supporting the programme, including but not limited to:

  • Strathclyde University
  • RIIOT Digital
  • Leidos
  • BJSS
  • Morgan Stanley
  • Capgemini
  • Capito

YouTube player

If you are interested in becoming a Digital Critical Friend or would just like more information on the programme, please feel free to contact Nicola Taylor, Head of Operations and Skills at ScotlandIS: nicola.taylor@scotlandis.com 

Parents' Cyber First Aid Box

Parents’ Cyber First Aid Box

The Cyber First Aid Box is designed to support families recover from online harms.

Designed in partnership with Decode Cyber Solutions and Education Scotland’s Digital Skills team – it is a free resource available to everyone. 

Clicking on the image or link will open a new browser tab to the Cyber First Aid Box website. The site will ask a series of questions to help families determine the best response to a harmful online incident, including how to approach the subject with children & young people, possible solutions, and the first steps to recovering from it.

 

   go to cyber home

DigiLearnScot home

click this image to go to the cyber first aid box

Open the Cyber First Aid box

TLP digital enquiries 21 22

Teacher Leadership Programme 21/22 – Digital Enquiries

The Education Scotland Teacher Leadership Programme is designed to help participants to understand what teacher leadership means and looks like in practice. As a part of this process participants take an enquiring approach to developing an aspect of learning and teaching of their choosing as appropriate for the learners in their context. 

This page showcases the learning of teachers who enquired about the impact of developing digital in their school.

Use this link to signup for the 22/23 programme

 

 

In what way does First Lego League develop pupil’s skills that are less easily measured in benchmarks on the curriculum, but are essentially the most important for the future workplace?

How does the use of Seesaw activities support differentiated learning?

How does the use of Seesaw activities support differentiated learning?

How does the use of Seesaw activities support differentiated learning?

in what way do digital tools make the development of writing more accessible to pupils?

How does the use of Seesaw activities support differentiated learning?

How does the use of Seesaw activities support differentiated learning?

How does the use of Seesaw activities support differentiated learning?

North Lanarkshire Code-Alongs

Following on from the Education Scotland live code-alongs and reflecting on the participation and engagement of young people, we wanted to build on this momentum and give learners in North Lanarkshire an opportunity to code along with their peers and dive further in to Computing Science. Knowing this needed to be fun and memorable to engage young people and staff, we planned for a space theme.

Pedagogy is at the heart of North Lanarkshire’s Digital School, and therefore the Code-Alongs, also needed to be planned in line with Curriculum for Excellence, providing learners, and teachers, with a taster session of what computing science could look like in the classroom. We know that Computing Science can be perceived as a challenging area to teach, with staff unsure where to start in planning and skills development. We issued a Microsoft Forms survey to staff in North Lanarkshire, to evaluate how confident they were teaching Computing Science. 15% of teachers in North Lanarkshire who responded indicated that they were confident teaching Computing Science and over 90% of teachers were interested in taking part in a North Lanarkshire code-along.

We planned live sessions for First and Second level, with a further session for those who are confident at Second level to ensure all learners from P4 to P7 had the chance to join. A key consideration was making sure that everyone who wanted to take part, could take part. We chose to use Scratch during the code-alongs as it is easily accessible, and learners are not required to have a login to code. To support continued access and any technical issues all Code- Along sessions were recorded. A Teacher Support Pack was created to prepare staff to support learners with step-by-step instructions and images to ensure everyone was able to complete their project. The Support Pack also contained suggested next steps to inspire teachers to continue their Computing Science journey.

There was tremendous enthusiasm and feedback to the code-alongs. We asked teachers to complete a post code-along survey and found that 40% of teachers were now confident to teach Computing Science.

Moving Forward

The code-alongs were a great success, with over 4000 learners joining over ten sessions and engaging with Computing Science. In our own reflection the following points were a success or would have been helpful for us to include:

1. Create a Teacher Support Pack with step-by-step instructions. This helps teachers prepare in advance, improve their own understanding of block coding and support their learners through the code-alongs.

2. Team up! Make sure you have one or two people involved in the planning and delivery of the code-alongs. A team of 3 is ideal! This means one person can deliver the code-along, another can provide any technical support whilst a third person can engage with classes through the chat bar.

3. Record the code-alongs in advance. This lets teachers join in at a time that suits them and re-visit the code if any technical issues occur.

4. Keep the benchmarks in mind when you are planning your sessions to ensure they are at the right level for the learners taking part.

5. Looking back, one thing that would have been really useful is a learner help sheet. This would have helped learners be more independent in debugging their code and rely less on their teacher’s support.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped us plan, promote and deliver the code-alongs and of course, the learners and teachers who took part. We thoroughly enjoyed coding along with learners across North Lanarkshire and look forward to seeing how North Lanarkshire schools continue on their coding journey.

Links

CPD award in computing studies

The CPD Award in Computing Studies for Teachers

The CPD award in Computing Studies for teachers was created for primary teachers and secondary teachers for 1st and 2nd year pupils to give the confidence and skills to teach computing to pupils. More than 50% of our current cohort are primary school teachers. The course is open to any teacher with the relevant entry qualifications (degree and existing teaching qualification) who have an interest in computing.

 

There is normally a weekly lecture and support session that lasts for approx. an hour, or more if required, with further e mail support available. The sessions are certainly beneficial as they allow you to ask questions there and then. However, the course is designed to be taught when is convenient for all the students and all lectures and tutorial session are recorded for viewing at your leisure.

 

There is only one module delivered each semester with no time off required during the school day. The lectures are recorded for students unable to attend in person. All activity is carried out online the majority of which happens asynchronously. The modules have a notional 200 hours per module over the semester. It would depend on your previous experience on whether you needed all that time. If you were able to set aside a day at the weekend or a couple of evenings for study, you would not be far off what is required for achieving the award.

 

The Coding and Web technologies module will be delivered over 14 weeks and the semester will start Week beginning 29th August 2022 with an online induction with the course commencing week beginning 5th September 2022.

You can apply to join the course HERE or searching for the Computing  Studies for Teachers CPD award at https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/ under courses.

 

The price is £215 per module, and this can be paid on a module-by-module basis. As the modules are 20 credits each if you were to do two in an academic year you may be eligible for SAAS funding. It is suggested contacting SAAS directly if you are planning to start next semester and confirm whether you would be eligible for funding.

 

The course does not carry any GTCS accreditation.

 

Please get in touch if you have any further questions

Gordon.macpherson.ic@uhi.ac.uk

Additional Teaching Qualification in Computing Studies CPD Award

Additional Teaching Qualification in Computing Studies CPD Award

The course is designed to allow you to teach computing within secondary schools as it has the required numbers of credits stated by the GTCS. The programme is designed to be a roll on roll off programme as each of the units are separate although designed to encompass what is involved in the computing curriculum by the end of the course.

The module, Computer Systems will be delivered over 14 weeks and the semester will start Week beginning 29th August 2022 with an online induction, with the course commencing week beginning 5th September 2022.

The courses are open to any teachers with the relevant entry qualifications (degree and existing teaching qualification) who have an interest in computing or cyber security.

There is normally a weekly lecture and support session that lasts for approx. an hour, or more if required, with further e mail support available. The sessions are certainly beneficial as they allow you to ask questions there and then. However, the course is designed to be taught when is convenient for all the students and all lectures and tutorial session are recorded for viewing at your leisure.

 

There is only one module delivered each semester with no time off required during the school day. The lectures are recorded for students unable to attend in person. All activity is carried out online the majority of which happens asynchronously. The modules have a notional 200 hours per module over the semester. It would depend on your previous experience on whether you needed all that time. If you were able to set aside a day at the weekend or a couple of evenings for study, you would not be far off what is required for achieving the award.

 

To gain accreditation with the GTCS you need to teach a certain number of hours in computing, and you would need to discuss that with your local head teacher, as we only provide the academic requirement. This equates to 0.42 teaching or 100 teaching days.

 

The price is £215 per module, and this can be paid on a module-by-module basis. As the modules are 20 credits each if you were to do two in an academic year you may be eligible for SAAS funding. It is suggested contacting SAAS directly if you are planning to start next semester and confirm whether you would be eligible for funding.

 

You can apply through the university web site located HERE or searching for the Additional Teaching Qualification in Computing Studies CPD award at https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/ under courses.

 

Please get in touch if you have any further questions

 

Gordon.macpherson.ic@uhi.ac.uk

Introduction to Cyber Security for Teachers

Introduction to Cyber Security for Teachers – Funded places available!

The CPD award Introduction to Cyber Security, jointly funded by Education Scotland, was created for ALL primary and secondary teachers and designed to give background knowledge and understanding related to teaching basic cybersecurity and configuring an environment suitable for cybersecurity education.

The module allows you to get a basic practical understanding of cybersecurity and cyber resilience and the relationship between these two areas of security. This will enable you to have the awareness and confidence to support pupils and create practical activities and content. The module content is levelled at SCQF 7 however is appropriate for teachers delivering to BOTH primary and secondary pupils.

The module will be delivered over 14 weeks and the semester will start Week beginning 29th August 2022 with an online induction with the course commencing week beginning 5th September 2022.

With the support of Education Scotland, we have funding for teachers to enrol on the module. The usual cost of the module would be £215. It is recommended you apply as soon as possible as the funding will be allocated on date of application.

The courses are open to any teacher with the relevant entry qualifications (degree and existing teaching qualification) who have an interest in computing or cyber security.

 

There is normally a weekly lecture and support session that lasts for approx. an hour, or more if required, with further e mail support available. The sessions are certainly beneficial as they allow you to ask questions there and then. However, the course is designed to be taught when is convenient for all the students and all lectures and tutorial session are recorded for viewing at your leisure.

No time off will be required during the school day. The lectures are recorded for students unable to attend in person. All activity is carried out online the majority of which happens asynchronously. The modules have a notional 200 hours per module over the semester. It would depend on your previous experience on whether you needed all that time. If you were able to set aside a day at the weekend or a couple of evenings for study, you would not be far off what is required for achieving the award.

 

You can apply for the course with this link:
https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/courses/cpd-award-introduction-to-cyber-security/

Please get in touch if you have any further questions:

Gordon.macpherson.ic@uhi.ac.uk