This session, facilitated by Rebecca from Code Club is aimed at learners have had some experience with Scratch.
Join Rebecca from Code Club and create a wintery wonderland animation in Scratch. You will learn to use loops, create clones of sprites, use sensing, and operator blocks! This codealong is suitable for learners who have some prior experience with Scratch.
This blog post is a summary of key points in Audit Scotland’s report that might be useful for educational settings, such as schools, nurseries and local authorities to consider.
Read the full report with this link Tackling digital exclusion (audit.scot).
“Digital exclusion is strongly associated with poverty and people with certain protected characteristics.”
Anyone working with groups that may be at-risk of digital exclusion should consider the potential barriers in place to them accessing and using such technology. If there are analogue alternatives, these should be as effective and readily available, along with support, training and access provision for people to engage with them.
Where this is not the case, the Royal Society (2022) talk about the double loop of poverty where analogue factors are entrenched by digital ones to doubly affect those at risk of exclusion.
Some of the impacts of digital exclusion that are more likely to surface in education are:
Some of these, more than others, relate directly to rights of individuals, including:
Many schools and local authorities already have digital leaders or champions, and I imagine that ensuring these families are not digitally excluded is high on the list of school improvement actions anywhere digital is included.
The report also calls for a Scottish minimum digital living standard (MDLS) which “includes, but is more than, having accessible internet, adequate equipment, and the skills, knowledge and support people need. It is about being able to communicate, connect and engage with opportunities safely and with confidence.”
This is an aspect we have tried to factor in our recent guidance on digital skills for learners and teachers. Ideally, this guidance will support local authorities and educational settings to develop such a set of skills and knowledge in learners with the aim of reducing digital exclusion from not having them.
The last point that really resonated for education was ‘how poorly designed digital services without useable alternatives can lead to barriers to accessing services and have a negative impact on vulnerable people.’
Where apps are used to communicate learning to families on a regular basis – how effective are the non-app alternatives? How does a paper copy compare to video or verbal media shared on apps? Does the school or nursery make this feedback more equitable for families that need it? Perhaps in-person sharing on a regular basis?
If they don’t factor and mitigate this effectively, we risk having a ‘part of the population … unseen or unheard [as] the pace of technological change continues’.
Below is a playlist of the sessions that were delivered by practitioners during TechTok24. Each video is linked below. Thanks to Russell White from Moray House for organising and hosting this successful virtual conference.
This module has primarily been developed to further enhance the skills of the learners to take part in, for example, cyber competitions and challenges including the Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge.
Participants will explore the challenges a country may have when dealing with a national cyber security incident from a non-technical, political, economic social and legal perspective.
Participants will also develop their public speaking and presentation skills to discuss cyber security issues at the highest decision-making levels.
The module is intended for school pupils, university and college students and can be adapted to suit the level of learners.
Below is a playlist that shows the Curriculum Live Lessons, Professional Learning, and sharing practice sessions that were delivered as part of Scottish Digital Literacy week 2024.
Continue to share the amazing work that is taking place in your settings and be sure to mention us @digilearnscot using #SDLW24
Accessibility tools help people to access information. Accessibility includes technical requirements that ensure websites work well with assistive technologies such as read aloud, text to speech, and screen magnifiers. Read more here.
Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is a term that’s used to describe various methods of communication that can help people who are unable to use verbal speech to communicate. Read more here.
Consume, create and communicate content is a term to describe what we do when we are online.
Computational thinking is all about solving problems effectively – with or without a computer. It is the building blocks of our digital world, with the concepts forming the basis of much computer science. Computer scientists are interested in finding the most-efficient ways to solve problems, maximising accuracy and minimising resources (e.g. time / space). Read more here.
Cyber Resilience Internet Safety (CRIS)
Digital Documentation can include a variety of different online document and media formats that can be clicked on and/or downloaded, on a computer, mobile device or smartphone. They can be live documents that display changes in real time such as Microsoft Sway, PowerPoint and Google Slides. Media formats can include photographs, video, audio recording and screen recording. This can include photographs of floor books, wall displays, pieces of children’s work.
Digital Literacy is the knowledge of when and how digital technologies are required and having the ability to critically evaluate what digital technologies are most appropriate for the chosen task. Digital literacy enables people to find, sort, evaluate, manage and create information in digital forms (consume, create, communicate). Read more here.
Digital Skills is knowing how to use digital technologies. Read more here.
Digital Technology encompasses a far stretching range of ever advancing electronic systems and resources that we play, learn and communicate with in our everyday lives. From calculators to smartphones, digital thermometers to drones, smart speakers to virtual reality headsets, the list is never ending. Read more here.
Digital Wellbeing is the impact of using digital technology on our social and emotional wellbeing. Digital wellbeing can be promoted through strong Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety (CRIS) practices within our schools and their communities. Read more here.
GDPR
Tinkering is when we try out something new to discover what it does and how it works. Tinkering is when we have the freedom, space and time to play, explore, investigate and learn through cause and effect. Read more here.
Unplugged computing science can be described as exploring computational thinking without a device or screen. Instead, we could be working with paper and pens or physical objects to explore and create sequences of events and instructions or directions. Read more here.
Discuss the importance of each skill or knowledge and order them with the most important at the top. There is not room for all cards.
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
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.
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:
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