Author: George Milliken

What Digital learning might look like

Digital Literacy projects and resources

This section contains some recommended project-based learning resources and activities that teachers might use with learners who are secure in their digital competencies from the previous page.

Digital literacy moves beyond the technical competencies in the Learner Digital Skills Toolkit and develops into critical and social skills that are relevant and representative of the realities that people live (Marín & Castañeda). In short, digital literacy should enable people to fulfil the four capacities and participate fully in society.

These resources are designed to cover a combination of the three digital literacy Experiences and Outcomes. 

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4 capacities

Resources

Learning with Data – Data Education in Schools

Lessons | Project Real

Living In A Digital World – Daydream Believers

Assemblies & Lessons – TechSheCan

Make It Happen

Primary Computing Resources | Barefoot Computing

Digital Ethics | iDEA

Learning Center – Apple Education Community

cyber resilience

Cyber resilience – learner digital skills toolkit

Learners should understand the risks of being online and the cyber security steps they should take to reduce these risks. They should know how to set up accounts and devices securely and how to report and recover from any risks they encounter.

This learning covers Experience and Outcome x-03a. 

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safe and secure mindmap

Where to start

BBC Bitesize has useful information on how computers and the internet work.

Go to BBC Bitesize

 

Visit the Barclays Digital Wings site to view tutorials and learning resources for fundamental digital skills. This requires a login with email, name and password – teachers should check their data protection policy before registering learners.

Go to Barclays Digital Wings

Get started online

Cyber secure

learn my way

Learn My Way is a website of free online learning for beginners, helping you develop digital skills to make the most of the online world. Some aspects of this page may require a login – teachers should check their data protection policy before registering learners.

go to Learn My Way site

CyberFirst is the national cyber security education programme from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Their CyberSprinters game and teaching resources is an easy place to get started with cyber.
Go to CyberSprinters

cyber toolkit

Our Cyber Toolkit provides more practical advice on teaching learners about staying safe and secure when online.

Go to Cyber Toolkit

Every secondary school has copies of Your Money Matters textbooks and resources:
Go to Your Money Matters Scotland

Learner Digital Skills Toolkit: where to start when planning digital literacy in Curriculum for Excellence

The support document aims to make clear the digital knowledge and skills that learners require to be digitally competent. Being digitally competent means being able to use the most common devices and apps. It is an essential step to becoming digitally literate.

Being digitally literate means being able to independently use and critically engage with digital technology and society, such as data literacy and information literacy. We are developing guidance to support educators deliver this.

Ideas and resources for teaching digital literacy can also be found here: Digital Literacy for Learners.

This document is part of a series, view the other documents here: Digital Literacy Series

Please use this form to provide feedback on the document with this link:

Learner Digital Skills Toolkit feedback form (MS Forms)

 

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YouTube player

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cyber week 26th february, ai week 25th march, digital literacy week 13th may

Digital Weeks 2023/24

We’ve got some exciting dates for your calendar this school session. 

Join us for:

Each week will have teacher training and professional learning opportunities and live lessons for teachers and learners to join in with.

Keep an eye on this page and our comms for more info and updates closer to the dates.

CyberFirst S2 Girls Competition

CyberFirst S2 Girls Competition 2023 Results

The CyberFirst Girls Competition aims to inspire girls interested in technology to pursue a career in cyber security.

The competition is a team event. Each team, of four girls in S2, tackles challenges from cryptography and logic to artificial intelligence and networking for the chance to be crowned cyber security champions.

Well done to everyone who took part but a special congratulations to the top 10 scoring Scottish schools and St Kentigern’s Academy from West Lothian who were this year’s top Scottish school!

Top 10 schools in Scotland for S2 Girls CyberFirst Competition 2023

  1. St Kentigern’s Academy  
  2. Girvan Academy  
  3. Hyndland Secondary School  
  4. Glasgow Gaelic School  
  5. Marr College  
  6. James Gillespie’s High School  
  7. Perth High School  
  8. Pitlochry High School  
  9. Stirling High School  
  10. Carluke High School  

Education Scotland is the proud regional partner with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) CyberFirst programme.

Find out more about our work and how your school can register to be a recognised CyberFIrst school here: about CyberFirst partnership.

Streaming and Video

  go to cyber resilience toolkit home

Gaming, streaming and videos covers a wide range of apps and services. This section provides information on the most common ones and covers:

  • main features of the services
  • potential risks
  • how to setup an account
  • using platform settings to manage risk
  • how to report harmful conduct

Main features

Games are traditionally played on consoles and PCs but increasingly on mobile devices, such as tablets and phones. View our Games Hub for advice on Playstation, Xbox and Apple Arcade.

Video and streaming platforms, such as TikTok, Twitch and YouTube are used to view other people’s content or create and share your own.

All of these platforms are primarily used to consume content but also offer the chance to follow and friend other users and interact with them through direct messages and live chats.

Increasingly these are for brands or individual ‘influencers’. They usually post short videos (sometimes live), photos and short pieces of text.

Main features

Games are traditionally played on consoles and PCs but increasingly on mobile devices, such as tablets and phones. View our Games Hub for advice on Playstation, Xbox and Apple Arcade.

Video and streaming platforms, such as TikTok, Twitch and YouTube are used to view other people’s content or create and share your own.

All of these platforms are primarily used to consume content but also offer the chance to follow and friend other users and interact with them through direct messages and live chats.

Increasingly these are for brands or individual ‘influencers’. They usually post short videos (sometimes live), photos and short pieces of text.

How to set up an account

Almost any app will require the same details to create an account and access its content:

  • username (usually an email or the phone’s linked Google or Apple account)
  • password

There may be requests for additional information, such as name, address or phone number – these are not always required.

These links explain how to register for and set up an account on the most popular platforms:

  • our Games Hub
  • Twitch
  • TikTok
  • YouTube

  • Using platform settings to manage risk

    Each platform will have a setting for security and privacy – this can be used to control a number of aspects, including:

    • who can see posts or media
    • who can contact or follow you

    These links explain how to use settings to reduce the potential risks of unwanted contact, being tagged in abusive or bullying content, or seeing inappropriate or unwanted content on the most popular platforms:

  •  

    • How to report harmful conduct

      If a user thinks they have been potentially harmed on the platform they should be aware of how to report this to the platform and potentially the police and trusted adults.

      These links explain how to report users and content on the most popular platforms:

  •  

streaming and videos

Cyber Resilience Toolkit: Streaming and Videos

  go to cyber resilience toolkit home

The main risk of streaming and video platforms is consuming and the potential harms are inappropriate content or misinformation and disinformation (fake news).

Twitch, TikTok and YouTube are the most popular apps for viewing streams and videos.

 

Main features

Platforms like Twitch, TikTok and YouTube offer a way to connect with, and view content, from people across the world. Increasingly these are for brands or individual ‘influencers’. 

These platforms also offer direct messaging and the ability to ‘tag’ other people in the posts or comments – usually with @username.

It might be useful to think of these services in the context of their main media:

  • Twitch – live videos, often play-alongs on games or watch-alongs of other videos
  • YouTube – longer user-created videos
  • TikTok – shorter user-created videos

Risk and potential harms

Ofcom data suggests that the most common potential harms on these types of platforms are:

The presence of brands and ‘influencers’ adds the potential harms of scams and influenced or pressurised spending.

Because they offer direct messaging and the ability to ‘tag’ other people in the posts or content there is also a potential harm of abusive or bullying messages.

How to set up an account

Almost any app will require the same details to create an account and access its content:

  • username (usually an email or the phone’s linked Google or Apple account)
  • password

There may be requests for additional information, such as name, address or phone number – these are not always required.

These links explain how to register for and set up an account on the most popular platforms:

Using platform settings to manage risk

Each platform will have a setting for security and privacy – this can be used to control a number of aspects, including:

  • who can see your posts or media
  • the media and posts shown in your feed
  • who can contact or follow you

These links explain how to use settings to reduce the potential risks of unwanted contact, being tagged in abusive or bullying content, or seeing inappropriate or unwanted content on the most popular platforms:

How to report harmful conduct

If a user thinks they have been potentially harmed on the platform they should be aware of how to report this to the platform and potentially the police and trusted adults.

 

ABUSIVE OR THREATENING MESSAGES SHOULD BE REPORTED TO POLICE SCOTLAND

Online Reporting Form | Police Scotland

 

These links explain how to report users and content on the most popular platforms:

Resources and activities

Although not specifically teaching resources, these guides from Shore (The Lucy Faithfull Foundation) can support discussions and are useful to point learners to for information on harmful sexual behaviour, such as unwanted contact or unwanted sexual messages:
What to do if… 

Topic Library

Thinkuknow by CEOP is the national website for learning about child exploitation and online protection (CEOP). Their learning resources site offers information and resources for learners, families and educators. 
These are a selection of the resources for different ages:

Jessie & Friends (4-7s)

Play Like Share (8-10)

Send me a pic? (11-14)

Exploited (14+)