Category: Northern Alliance

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Digital Support in Aberdeenshire

Aberdeenshire Council has had a dedicated learning with technology team for many years. The team always provided face to face CLPL activities covering a wide range of topics, for teachers and pupils from Early Years to Senior Phase.

Before we were placed in lockdown the Digital Learning Team put information to every school to advise that young people and staff could take school computers, iPads or Chromebooks home if this was required, and we included information on how to set these devices up for home use.

We are in the process of providing hardware to some of our students to allow internet access to allow remote learning.

We set up a Microsoft Team for staff and in this Team we provide channels for discussion, resources to share and a go to place for daily webinars.

We also created websites for parents and carers to allow them to support their youngsters in learning, and we pointed them to Internet Safety resources, Glow resources, Scholar resources and daily updates on learning activities for every age and stage. We also used Glide app , a free resource to allow parents/carers to see this information in the form of an app on their mobile devices.

Since lockdown we have delivered daily webinars using MS Teams to initially upskill teachers in their knowledge of the digital tools available in Glow, and how to quickly and easily make use of them in preparing and delivering learning activities.

As the weeks progressed, we began to look at more particular examples of using the technology to augment and enhance existing resources, and more of the chat became about learning and less about devices and software

We are continuing with our daily webinars, we now have guest presenters and are looking forward to welcoming some of our own practitioners to deliver webinars on how they are using the digital tools in Glow for learning and teaching.

These are difficult times, never before have all the students been out of school, but every day is a learning day and we are certainly discovering new and better ways to use digital tools more effectively with learners and staff.

We are currently developing plans around remote learning during this crisis and into the future, where learning and teaching will look different.

 

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Digital Creativity in Aberdeen City

Aberdeen City Schools have been busy using digital tools to unleash their creativity.

Airyhall School have been creating their school using Animal Crossing and creating News Reports about the Battle of Culloden

Northfield Academy have been creating stop go animations

Seaton Primary School have creating analogue and digitally labelled pictures about artic animals

Heathryburn School having been collaborating using Jamboard

Have a look at the Twitter posts below,

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Our Digital Journey at Logie Durno Primary School

At Logie Durno Primary we use digital technologies with two main aims in mind.

Firstly we know that children need to be able to reflect on their learning and articulate what their next steps are. Digital technologies, and in particularly using portfolios, has allowed them to do this. All children from P1-7 are able to use an iPad to take a picture or video of their learning, post to their portfolio and use the multimedia tools to explain not just what the task was, but what they have learned and what they need to work on next. This is instantly shared with teachers and families members, who make comments back. This has worked well for us, and we have seen an increase in parental involvement as a result. The crucial steps in this journey were helping the children to understand not just how to post to their portfolios, but what to post and why they are posting it. This engenders responsibility for their own learning, a trait we believe is crucial for further success. In order to achieve this we have had to invest in technology to ensure that all learners have equitable access to the digital tools they need.

Secondly we want our pupils to equipped with the appropriate skills for learning, life and work. We have developed our curriculum to ensure we focus on skills. Called ‘Skills Passport’, we use interdisciplinary learning, organised around a core set of skills, to give pupils experiences that will serve them well as they grow up. Digital technologies form a core part of this work. We have used filmmaking as a context for team work and creativity skills, design and technology to work on problem solving, food technology and thinking skills also formed part of the skills based curriculum.

Using digital technologies as an everyday part of schooling allows us to serve our pupils well by giving them the tools they need to reflect on their learning and the digital skills they need to succeed as they move through life.

Logie Durno YouTube Playlist