This page contains all of the upcoming Digital Literacy opportunities for supporting learners, including webinars, courses and do-alongs. Select a post below to read more about it and to sign up to attend.
Category: Learner Digital Literacy
the skills and knowledge taught to learners
Save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus activity
Welcome
We want to alert you to our very important activity this week: we want the learners of Scotland to help us save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus!
This website has lots of great info about the octopus and ways for you to help it:
Once you’ve read a bit more about the octopus – have a think about how you could use your digital literacy skills to find out more about it and use this info to create some posters, slides and websites to raise awareness of the octopus’ plight and help save it!
What next?
Hopefully, you spotted the clues that the tree octopus isn’t real pretty quickly and pointed this out to your teacher!
We think that by learning some of the skills used to make the fake info on this website, you’ll be better prepared to spot other info like this and know how to check it for accuracy.
We want you to create your own fake animal awareness campaign. You’ll need to think of an animal and then imagine it living in a biome, or habitat, that isn’t it’s natural home… like a mountain-dwelling narwhal or Arctic elephant!
Then you’ll need some facts that sound believable, even though they’re not true – so things like what your imaginary animal eats, where it sleeps and how big it is.
Finally, you’ll create some online content, maybe using slides, websites, blogs or even a video.
You can share these with us on twitter: @DigiLearnScot
Activity 1 – fact finding and note making
- Use your web browser to find out three (or more) facts about an animal
- Then pick a biome it wouldn’t normally live in and find out three facts about that place and how animals normally survive there
- Make notes of this info as you go – it’ll come in handy later
teachers might want to use some of these ideas to expand upon the features of fake news and unreliable sources:
Digital Media Literacy: The Blur Between Facts and Opinions in the Media (gcfglobal.org)
Activity 2 – photo manipulation
The photos on the octopus site were faked and so are many other photos online and in newspapers and magazines too.
Read this page to find out more about manipulated photos
You don’t need fancy software to edit photos, here are some tips:
PowerPoint – remove background
Keynote – instant alpha
- Start with a background photo of the place your imaginary animal is going to live – add it to your app
- Then add the photo of your animal
- Now, use either the remove background in PowerPoint or instant alpha in Keynote, for example, to cut out any background on your animal picture
- It should now look like your animal lives in the place you have as the background
Here’s my mountain-dwelling narwhal from earlier:
Activity 3 – making fake news
You now have an imaginary animal, some facts about it and a photo proving its existence – now all you need to do is put it together and share it with the world to convince them of it’s existence!
You could have a look at these:
https://www.beano.com/games/random-animal-mash-up
https://switchzoo.com/newzoo/zoo.htm
There are lots of great tools for creating and sharing content online, here are just some of them:
Sway
We can’t wait to see your fake news imaginary animals on twitter!
ALL CREDIT FOR THE OCTOPUS CONTENT TO THE SITE’S OWNER: Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus (zapatopi.net)
Microsoft Accessibility Tools Quick Guide Posters for Learners by Viewforth High School
At Viewforth High School, we are on a digital journey to ensure all learners and educators are able to benefit from digital technology to raise attainment and improve outcomes for all.
Most of our students are familiar with Microsoft Teams accessing via Glow and staff have been using it to set work and assignments during previous lockdowns and continue to do so now we are back in school.
However, some pupils are faced with challenges when trying to access digital learning both in school and at home and to support our pupils in accessing their learning we identified areas where both the skills of staff and pupils needed to be developed. One of these key areas was the accessibility features (and knowledge of these) of digital tools for pupils and ensuring staff know how to use these tools with pupils.
In response to this, I have created several Quick Guides to support both staff and pupils in accessing and using the features of Microsoft Tools.
I created guides for each of the following tools:
- Immersive Reader
- Live Captions
- Speech to Text
- Translate
- Office Lens
These guides have been shared amongst staff and with colleagues in other schools across the country to support them to support their pupils.
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 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.
Christmas Activity Booklets for Early, First and Second Level – North Lanarkshire Digital Pathfinders
Microsoft Immersive Reader
Microsoft Immersive Reader is a free tool, built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Office Lens, Microsoft Teams, Forms and the Edge browser, that implement techniques to improve reading and writing skills.
Immersive Reader can:
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Customise text size, spacing and background colour
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Isolate content to improve readability
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Display pictures for common words
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Highlight nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
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Real text aloud
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Translate content in real time
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Split words into syllables
Upcoming O365 webinars
Digital Literacy Skills – preparing to make digital content on a mobile device
Having access to a mobile device that can capture and create media is amazing but there can be a tendency to pick it up and start creating before planning what you will create. Think about a really good piece of writing – did it start with a pencil or talk and planning? This page has links to ideas that could be used to help plan for film, and other media, creation in your lessons.
Digital Literacy Skills – creating drawings on a mobile device
Our digital devices provide us with the opportunity to draw the world around us. Being able to express their ideas with drawings can make learning more accessible, engaging and meaningful for learners. These are links to sites and resources to support you and your learners with creating digital drawings.
Digital Literacy Skills – creating music and audio on a mobile device
Our digital devices provide us with the opportunity to capture sounds from the world around us. Being able to express their ideas with audio can make learning more accessible, engaging and meaningful for learners. These are links to sites and resources to support you and your learners with creating audio content.
Digital Literacy Skills – creating videos on a mobile device
Our digital devices provide us with the opportunity to capture video from the world around us. Being able to express their ideas with film can make learning more accessible, engaging and meaningful for learners. These are links to sites and resources to support you and your learners with creating video content.
The BBC L.A.B. Scotland
How to Film and Record a Great Interview on Your Smartphone
Tips on confidence in front of camera
Apple
Everyone Can Create Video on Apple Books
Why use camera in the classroom? on Apple Books
Why use Clips in the Classroom? on Apple Books
Why use film in the classroom? on Apple Books
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