Author: George Milliken

what makes an engaging cris lesson?

3. What Makes an Engaging CRIS Lesson?

“Ensuring the elements of effective teaching are present – for
example clear explanations, scaffolding and feedback – is more
important than how or when they are provided.” Education Endowment Foundation (2020)

 

A good lesson is a good lesson, regardless of curricular area. HGIOS (4th edition) makes clear that high engaging learning, quality teaching and effective assessment, will improve educational outcomes for all learners.

road graphic showing progress from consuming content to creating then communicating it

As with any other area of the curriculum, in CRIS learning the context should be meaningful and relevant to the leaders – for many children and young people the internet and web are routine aspects of their lives already. Therefore, learners should be given the opportunity to share what they already know about the internet and web and the educators can use effective questioning and engaging activities to spark the learners curiosity about CRIS even further.

As educators we may need to develop our own knowledge and understanding of CRIS in order to support and challenge our learners’ thinking, and to make the contexts relevant and meaningful.

Finally, assessing the learners’ progress is vital to identify next steps and improve their educational outcomes. There is certainly scope to use formative assessment as learners learn, summative quizzes to check their knowledge and understanding recall but also to assess their ability to apply their learning in new contexts, such as with new apps, devices or curricular areas.

This lessons explains what the internet and world wide web are, with opportunities for learners to engager with research, share opinions and apply their learning.

cyber in health and wellbeing

Cyber in Health and Wellbeing

This page is designed to help teachers plan learning that covers aspects of cyber resilience and internet safety and health and wellbeing (HWB). 

go to cyber home

Digital Learner diagram (landscape)

Why cyber resilience and internet safety?

The Internet safety for children and young people: national action plan, from the Scottish Government, states the aim of: “[…] children and young people to be protected, safe and supported in the online world and for them to be able to enjoy the internet, show resilience and take advantage of the opportunities it has to offer.”

 

The plan has three broad aims but the first two certainly fall into the remit of educators:

  • Giving everybody the skills, knowledge and understanding to help children and young people stay safe online: we will help parents, carers and people who work with children and families to understand how to help children stay safe online and how to deal with problems if they occur.
  • Inspiring safe and responsible use and behaviour: we will make it clear that individuals, including children and young people themselves, need to take responsibility for their own online behaviour.

Internet safety for children and young people: national action plan

 

Education Scotland’s HWB guidance defines a resilient child as one who can:

“resist adversity, cope with uncertainty and recover more successfully from traumatic events or episodes.”

health and wellbeing experiences and outcomes

Mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing

cyber toolkit

The Cyber Toolkit for Teachers can support teachers to understand how children and young people use the internet and the potential risks of doing so. This focuses on how devices and accounts are used to consume, create and communicate.

Social wellbeing may focus on aspects of citizenship and values: how they participate and interact with others online – are they respectful to others?

Mental and emotional wellbeing may focus on aspects of interactions with others and how the behaviour of others may affect them – how do they manage these interactions and develop resilience to overcome them?

Any learner who potentially experiences harm in these areas should contact Childline.

 

go to Cyber Toolkit

5 rights digital childhood report

There are aspects of the 5 RIghts Digital Childhood report (2017) that may be useful to consider, particularly the age-group developmental milestones. These provide a useful reference to what behaviour and potential risks might be expected at each age and stage.

Read the report

OECD Educating 21st Century Children

‘Screen time’ is often spoken about in terms of children and young people’s health and wellbeing but the OECD (p42, 2019) states that such studies have ‘weak findings, are correlational and an unwarranted moral panic.’ Therefore, teachers may avoid teaching the harms of ‘too much screen time’ and focus on other aspects of cyber resilience.

read the OECD report: Emotional Well-being in the Digital Age

Relationships, sexual health and parenthood

technology assisted harmful sexual behaviour

Children and young people should learn about relationships that are healthy, respectful, and based on trust and respect. However, there may also be a need to support them when this is not the case.

The NSPCC defines Technology-Assisted Harmful Sexual Behaviour (TAHSB) as: “a range of behaviour including the developmentally inappropriate use of pornography, online sexual abuse, grooming, sexting.” 

Education Scotland have collaborated with Stop It Now to create guidance and support for teachers on Technology-Assisted Harmful Sexual Behaviour (TAHSB). The TAHSB programme is free and can be delivered in any local authority. 

hackett continuum
click the image to enlarge it

 The Hackett continuum is used across Scotland, by the NSPCC, Education Scotland and the Scottish Government, to evaluate the sexual behaviours of children and young people.

cyber resilience

What is Cyber Resilience?

cyber resilience. recognise react recover

Share what cyber resilience looks like in your setting Please fill out this form

The Scottish Government (2015) states that: “Cyber resilience is being able to prepare for, withstand, rapidly recover and learn from deliberate attacks or accidental events in the online world. Cyber security is a key element of being resilient, but cyber resilient people and organisations recognise that being safe online goes far beyond just technical measures. By building understanding of cyber risks and threats, they are able to take the appropriate measures to stay safe and get the most from being online.”

Cyber resilience deals with events and issues that are cyber dependent – that means it can only be an issue when an internet-connected device is involved. Cyber dependent issues include hacking, phishing scams and malware, such as ransomware.

In order to deal with cyber threats and to become more cyber resilient it is important we support learners to make their devices and platforms as safe and secure as possible – this includes steps such as setting passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).

Cyber Advice

Passwords and 2FA

Cyber threats

national cyber security centre

Supporting Financial Education

In the UK, we spend more money online per capita than any other nation. So, if our learners are spending money online – how are you supporting them to be as safe and secure as possible? What threats are they likely to face when spending money online?

your money matters textbook

Your Money Matters is a FREE financial education textbook for Scottish schools – chapter 6 looks at cyber resilience in financial education.

cyber resilience in financial education

This page has more cyber resilience in financial education, as well as other numeracy and mathematics contexts.

Barefoot Computing Resources

These lessons plans with activities were created by Barefoot Computing. They are free to access from Barefoot Computing and link to CfE.

You’re the Cyber Security Expert

The Phisherman Game

You’re the Jury

Code Cracking

 

 

Upcoming CRIS Webinars

AI generated image of toddlers surrounded by screens
techfest 24 save the date
#CSW24 featured image
tackling digital exclusion

The Modern Studies, Sociology and Politics Collaborative

Mr McCabe, from Prestwick Academy in South Ayrshire:

“The Modern Studies, Sociology and Politics Collaborative is a community of teaching and non-teaching professionals on Microsoft Teams. With over 1000 members, it has grown quickly in recent years and includes staff from the classroom and the Scottish Parliament. It is both a resource space for the subjects as well as a place for collaboration and support. Here you will find a digital community who are happy to share and make use of each other’s expertise or use the group think to solve problems. The site has become an invaluable “go-to” space during the recent lockdown as we have worked to meet the challenges of the day.”

If you want to hear more, find the team on twitter @ModSocPolCollab
to request to join the team then please follow this link https://bit.ly/ModsSocAndPol 

Digital Fire Drill: preparing for online learning

Are you preparing for online learning in January? We loved this guide from Marr College in South Ayrshire about ‘digital fire drills’. These guides allow for teachers and learners to be prepared for online learning by making clear the processes and expectations.

Take a look at this tweet from Miss Wylie, a teacher and digital leader at Marr:

Using Easi-Speak to develop storytelling and writing by Lynn Eileen Allison, Hoddom Primary in Dumfries and Galloway

We have been using film literacy and voice-recording to develop our learners’ comprehension of a text.

 

We watched this video: Dragon Slayer | A Short Film by Robert Kuczera and then used stills from it after the viewing to ‘read it’. The pupils in the class were given one picture each to make notes about what they
could see in their photo. They were then asked to put the photos in order that they felt the story took
place.

Having put the images in chronological order they were asked to use their notes to narrate the story by using an Easi-Speak microphone, which in a previous lesson they had been taught how to use, to record and download. Listening to what had happened, it was passed onto the next speaker to build upon the story with their own ideas.

The class loved developing the story and sharing their narration with other classes. So, the following week  they were given a storyboard with fewer shots and asked to retell their story by adding a twist to the story line. Once again, the children enjoyed developing their personal story, with the ideas they had previously generated as a class.

 

This is the story board they used:

Bebras Computing Challenge at Portlethen Academy

post by Ian Simpson (@familysimpson), Faculty Head of ICT at Portlethen Academy (@portyacad)

 

What is the Bebras Computing Challenge?

The Bebras Computing Challenge is a long-running international competition which promotes the importance of computational thinking and problem solving skills in a wider world context. It is organised in over 50 countries and designed to get students aged 6 to 18 from all over the world excited about computing.

Students have to employ a variety of problem-solving strategies in order to complete up to 18 challenges in the allotted time. High scoring students may be lucky enough to qualify for a celebration event which, in previous years, has taken place at Hertford College, Oxford.

 

Why we entered the competition

At Portlethen Academy all S1-3 students take part in the competition, with those in senior phase given the chance to participate as part of their Computing Science or Mathematics classes. Every individual who takes part receives a digital certificate from the University of Oxford which can be printed out in school or at home and those who achieve scores in the top 25% of the cohort are invited to take part in the TCSOCC Challenge in February as recognition of their strong computational thinking skills and to increase their exposure to computer programming problems.

Faculty Head of ICT Ian Simpson has coached groups of students to take part in the Bebras Computing Challenge since 2013. “To get the best out of the groups it shouldn’t be an add on or break from ‘normal lessons’, it is in the school’s best interest to embed teaching of computational thinking skills and prepare for the challenge using the practice challenges or the Perfect Day app.”

 

What pupils learnt from it

Seven students from S1 and 2 scored highly enough in the 2019 challenge to receive an invitation to the celebration event at Hertford College in January 2020. Thanks to support from contacts at Total and Aberdeenshire DYW six were able to travel to Oxford to take part in the final round, experience Computing Science sample lectures and find out more about life as a student at the University of Oxford. Ian Simpson added “This was the first time that such a high number of students from a state school in Aberdeenshire had qualified for the final round. It was a surprise in some ways but testament to the hard work the students put in preparing for the challenge.”

As well as giving students the chance to think creatively and apply their knowledge from across a variety of subject areas the Bebras Computing Challenge helps build student resilience. These skills have increasing demand in further and higher education and will serve them well in the workplace of the future. Taking part in the final round also gave the students increased confidence in their own abilities and, on the drive back to Heathrow, many were sharing strategies they had learned from other participants to improve on their scores next year.

 

Sign up for Bebras here.

Race for the Line Event by Liz Dighton at Boroughmuir High School

On a rather cold, but thankfully dry, Wednesday all 220 of our S1 pupils were involved in an inter-disciplinary project which was part of the National BBC micro:bit Model Rocket Car Challenge called Race for the Line.  Over 400 schools from all over the UK are participating in the competition.  The inspiration behind the national project is the Bloodhound car which is attempting to beat the 1000mph world land speed record and also inspire the next generation of engineers to get involved in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.  #STEM 

In Design and Technology classes leading up to the Race Day, pupils worked together in teams of 4 to make a foam rocket car creating a design folio which showed how they had considered aerodynamics, friction etc.  In Computing classes the pupils programmed the Micro:bits which were used to carry out the timing mechanism on the race track and in Science they explored the forces which would be applied to the cars. 

On Race Day we were joined in school by a team from the Royal Navy who are based at Rosyth and are members of the crew of the new aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales.  The Navy team equipped each car with a solid fuel rocket and setup the Race Track in the playground.  Each class took turns to race their cars and the times were recorded for each car.  The Navy had brought along one of their PT instructors so to keep warm pupils carried out a fitness test with a couple of our S1’s managing to reach the fitness standard for the Royal Navy while wearing their school shoes!!!  After racing the cars the pupils then used our new Dual teaching space on the 3rd floor to create some posters to summarise their learning in this project.  Some of these are now on display in the classrooms around the school. 

The top 3 car teams went forward to the Regional Final on the 3rd of May when they competed against all of the teams from other school in East Central Scotland @ the Royal Navy facility at Rosyth and 3 also qualified for the Scottish Final at the Barracks at Redford.   

 

 

 

Ada Lovelace Day – Opening Opportunities with Digital Technology by Emma Hedges

Digital technology skills are one of my favourite things to teach because of the opportunities and experiences they provide pupils with. I have taught children who struggle with putting pen to paper, however when provided with the correct technology they flourish. The technology we use in the classroom has allowed my pupil’s imaginations and creativity to come to life and it has boosted the confidence of shy children, allowing them to become more animated and involved with their learning.

Technology allows learners to engage in their education in ways that haven’t always been possible. I hope that this will allow my pupils, who may previously have disengaged from education, to go on to explore avenues that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

 

Fun fact: Ada Lovelace and I share a birthday, just a few hundred years apart!

@MissHedgesVPS