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decorative header image of front cover of story book featuring a cartoon bear standing in a primary school classroom

Cy Bear at School – Keeping Safe and Secure Online

Introducing a brand new first concept storybook raising cyber security awareness for younger children aged 4-7 years. 

In today’s digital world, learning how to stay secure online is just as important as staying safe in the real world. 

Just as children learn to lock their doors at home, they can also learn how to “lock” their digital spaces. “Cy Bear at School – Keeping Safe and Secure Online” is packed with clear explanations, colourful storytelling and engaging hands-on invitations to explore play and learn together. 

“Passwords have been the cornerstone of online security for decades, helping to protect our digital identities and sensitive information from unauthorised access.” – National Cyber Security Centre.

This bright, friendly storybook introduces children to the importance of securing devices by highlighting where teachers use passcodes and passwords in a primary school setting.  

Through simple language and fun illustrations, Cy Bear helps children understand the importance of strong passwords and good digital habits – turning every child into a Cyber Security Hero!   

Join Cy Bear and his best friend, Cy Bee, on a buzzing adventure through school as they teach the basics of cyber security.   A fun, friendly story that turns every child (and bee!) into a real Cyber Security Hero! 

As a gift from the Scottish Government, each Primary One child in Scotland received their very own copy of “Cy Bear at School – Keeping Safe and Secure Online” in August 2026 and P1 teachers and practitioners  have the opportunity to join in live read alongs, (delivered by Education Scotland) with their class throughout 2026/27. 

Browse the webinar calendar to find a suitable read along date/time and join with your class. There are AM and PM options, ASN and GME too Upcoming Webinars – DigiLearn. 

Everyone can access an online copy “Cy Bear at School – Keeping Safe and Secure Online” on Parent Club Scotland, download a copy of the book as a PDF in English or Gaelic  and access the interactive ‘flip-book’ versions too: Tips for creating strong passwords to stay secure online | Parent Club.

Educator information webinar recording.

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If you are unable to join a read along you are welcome to download and edit a copy of the slides (with presenter notes) to host your own children’s read along – Cy Bear Children’s Read Along.pptx

Top Tip – You can listen to the story on ‘Read Aloud’ when opened as a PDF file – How to have your PDF files read aloud to you | Adobe Acrobat

You can download the PDF files from Parent Cub or directly below:

To support shared reading in school and at home, please see  Cy Bear at School – downloadable symbolised resources by CALL Scotland.

 

Headteacher info graphic.

BAFTA Young games designer competition

Making Games: BAFTA Young Games Designer competition 2026

Education Scotland is keen to support as many children and young people participate in playing and making games as possible.

We are excited to work with Into Film and West College Scotland to deliver ideas, resources and live lessons to help children and young people participate in the BAFTA Young Games Designer (YGD) competition. 

YGD is “a chance for 10–18-year-olds to design, develop and present new game ideas”. 

The competition is now open and the closing date for entries is 12th March 2026. 

 

We have partnered again with Into Film to support educators with YGD participation. 

Sign up for the webinar on Tuesday 27th January at 330pm using this link: Into Film and YGD webinar link

This will be followed up with 2 LIVE lessons to guide classes through the Into Film Games Lite resource:

About BAFTA Young Games Designer competition

Into Film support for YGD including webinars and LIVE lesson recordings

Examples of prior games learning from Scottish schools

scottish esports schools and colleges survey

Scottish Schools and Colleges Esports Competitions – Expression of Interest

Scottish Esports are the national body for gaming and esports in Scotland and are conducting a survey to assess the viability of a national esports competitions for Scotland’s schools and colleges.

This initiative aims to provide a structured competitive framework that supports Curriculum for Excellence, develops learners’ meta-skills, enhances digital skills, and aligns with national qualifications including the NPA Esports and HNC Esports.

Provide your feedback using this link: Scottish Esports Schools and Colleges Competition survey

For more information or queries, contact: info@scotesports.org

CILIP the library and information association

SuperSearchers – information literacy with CILIPS and Google

Information literacy is a key skill for people who are trying to navigate an increasingly complex information landscape. To help empower people to understand the tools and tactics that they can use to make sense of information online, Google is partnering with CILIP to launch the Super Searcher training programme in the UK. Google have successfully rolled out this initiative in America with the American Library Association and in Europe with Public Libraries 2030.

Under this partnership, librarians and other library staff across the UK will be trained on best practices from information literacy experts to help evaluate information online. In turn, trained library staff will be able to educate, support and empower library service users to strengthen their information and media literacy skills and their ability to critically evaluate online news and media at a time when finding quality information online is more complex than ever.

Pilot Programme Details

The pilot for the training programme will focusing on public and school library workers across all four nations in the UK and will run from June to December 2025.

Get Involved

For more information on how you can get involved, please email:

Matthew Dwyer – matthew.dwyer@cilip.org.uk

The results are in! Teachers in Scotland are digitally skilled

Our Teacher Digital Skills Toolkit has been available for over a year now. It contains guidance on what skills and knowledge teachers in Scotland should have to meet the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) standard for registration, which requires teachers to be ‘digitally literate’. There is also short videos to support some of these skills and knowledge, as well as links to the Barclays Digital Wings free learning pathway, which covers all of these.

Beside the guidance, there is a Form for teachers to evaluate their essential skills, knowledge and confidence. We’ve now had almost 200 responses from 25 local authorities and the results are positive:

  • 96% Use a device’s main features, such as keyboard, mouse, touchscreen or camera
  • 96% Access and log in to platforms, such as Glow
  • 93% Connect, or reconnect, a device to a Wi-Fi network
  • 99% Search the web for information and evaluate the search results
  • 77% Access and use common accessibility features, such as text size, text-to-speech, or speech-input
  • 82% Consider copyright of any content or media included in created content
  • 98% Access email and send a message
  • 96% Access and join a Class, Team or group
  • 84% Access cloud storage, create a file there and share it
  • 78% Create a class and show learners how to join
  • 81% Create files or share files from drive storage to the class
  • 88% somewhat confident (44%) and extremely confident (44%)

 

Have you evaluated your digital skills recently? Take the survey and let us know how you get on!
essential skills checklist evaluation 

Live lesson catchup: Close reading not required - how search engines work

Live lesson catchup: Close reading not required – how search engines work

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Ted Palenski from the University of Glasgow delivered this live lesson aimed at children and young people of all ages.

Artificial intelligence has long been a component of search engines: how results are surfaced, ranked, and presented. This session breaks down how search engines work, and how they increasingly leverage generative AI, possibly to the detriment of close reading.

The aim of the session is to foster critical information literacy, offering several examples of how search engines might not give you the most relevant information, with some suggested strategies for navigating digital spaces overloaded with information.

Teaching for Digital Citizenship

Teaching for Digital Citizenship

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David Lundie from the University of Glasgow delivered this webinar during Scottish Digital Literacy Week 2025.

 

The Teaching for Digital Citizenship project has been working with teachers, young people, ethicists and the EdTech sector across the 4 nations of the UK, to understand the aims, practices and challenges in recovering a space for moral agency in a post-digital world.

 

Citizenship, ethics and justice will be central to our new digital literacy curriculum updates.

 

The aim of this session is to set out a data justice approach, in which all young people have a right to information integrity – to understand that our current information ecosystem is not inevitable, it is a product of technical and social conditions which can be acted upon and changed.

 

We are looking to engage teachers in processes of reflection on their own practice, drawing on examples of leading practice across the curriculum from our project so far, and introducing a self-evaluation tool which has been co-designed with teachers in our community of practice.

Find out more about the project with this link: Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Digital ethics in the classroom and beyond

How Carnwath Primary became Scotland's digital trailblazer

Digital Schools Award Scotland: How Carnwath Primary Became Scotland’s Digital Learning Trailblazer

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This video was recorded during Scottish Digital Literacy Week 2025. It features Sharon Alexander, who is Principal Teacher at Carnwath Primary School – that was the first school in Scotland to achieve all four digital awards:

  • Digital Schools Award Primary
  • Digital Schools Award Europe
  • Digital Wellbeing
  • Equitable Creative Coding Award

 

Discover the innovative strategies and practical approaches that have made Carnwath Primary a leader in digital learning and teaching. Sharon will share real insights, challenges, and success stories to help you elevate digital education in your own school.

Find out more about Digital Schools Award Scotland with this link: Digital Schools Awards

 

Scottish Digital Literacy Week 2025

Scottish Digital Literacy Week is back for 2025!

Click the link below to find details of upcoming events and sign-up details

Click here for our events page!

Catch up with recaps of the events hosted throughout the week below:

Any time Four Capacities challenge

The four capacities are central to our curriculum, and therefore learning, in Scotland.

We want to know what the four capacities look like in your setting – what does it look, sound or feel like to be:

  • a successful learner
  • a confident individual
  • a responsible citizen
  • an effective contributor

Use your digital skills to create an image, photos, video or audio recording that tells us how you learn about these things. Educators can share their learners’ content with us by posting a comment on this blog post. 

Here are some examples of Scottish learners sharing their learning with the BBC LAB:
The L.A.B Scotland projects

The BBC LAB also has these short tutorials on how to create your own media:
The L.A.B Scotland How Tos

If you’re using iPads to create your content, try these guides to inspire you:
Apple Everyone Can Create: Projects

AI in Schools Week 2025 – Catch Up Resources – CLPL and Live Lessons

Welcome to out Catch Up Gallery of recordings from AI in Schools Week 2025.  You  will find recordings of CLPL sessions and live lessons on this page.

Full resources to support the delivery of the live lessons in class can be found at

Playlist