Category: waiting

April 12, 2024

Digital Literacy and Computing Science Glossary

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.

When consuming content, we might be viewing images or videos, tv programmes and films or listening to music. We consume content for enjoyment and to search for new information.
As our confidence develops, we might begin to experiment with creating content of our own; capturing images, audio, video, annotating over images, using generative AI services to create images, adding voice overs to videos and investigating ways to bring audio and visual content together.
As our confidence in Literacy and English (reading and writing) develops, we might start to think about sharing our content by communicating this online with others through; email, messaging and call services, uploading to blogs and websites, social media platforms and video uploading, sharing and streaming platforms. Read more here.

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)

Cyber Resilience is being able to prepare for, withstand, rapidly recover and learn from deliberate attacks or accidental events in the online world. It is about learning how to recognise, react and recover appropriately to incidents involving devices, data, wellbeing and identity in relation to yourself and others. Cyber Security is a key element of being resilient, building understanding of cyber risks and threats, enables people to take appropriate measures to stay safe and get the most from being online. Read more here.
Internet Safety encompasses the skills, knowledge and understanding that people require to stay safe online. This includes safe and responsible use and behaviour. Read more here.

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.

February 29, 2024

Digital Literacy Knowledge and Skills: diamond nine activity

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.

February 9, 2024

App Superpowers – Keynote

Level up your Keynote Superpowers

App Superpowers is a series that will develop skills in the most commonly used apps on iPad. You may know the app, but you may not know the features. In this issue, we will look at Keynote and the ways in which we can go from a simple animation to a more complex story. Using iMovie and the Export as video option; it will be possible to add additional detail, voice over, sound effects, and titles that add depth and personalisation to pupil projects.

Keynote icon This tutorial will take you through the steps. Each chapter can be used as a separate lesson allowing pupils to develop their skills, master the approaches, and develop their App Superpowers.

Simple Magic Move

In Chapter 1 we explore Magic Move. This is an effective yet simple tool that essentially takes an object from a position 1 on the slide to position 2. It is a great way to showcase simple concepts. Working with younger learners, you can create a simple animation of a car driving, a plane taking off or character moving on the slide. Start with magic move to add flair and personalisation to animations.

In this simple example, we have used the installed shapes to create a simple animation of two cars travelling on a motorway, passing each other. The lesson here was carried out with a P2 class during part of a transport topic. Using their digital skills, they were already familiar with adding shapes to a slide, and knew how to use their voice to enter text. This ensured that pupils were able to add shapes and customise their scene to suit their individual styles.

If you want to try this activity for yourself follow the steps in the video below:

Animate a GiF

In this section, we look at creating a simple Animated GIF by using each slide as the frame of the animation. For the following animation, we created a slide deck and used shapes to set the scene. Gradient fills can really make a scene come to life. Whether in a shape or in a person. Adding a GIF to a scene adds depth, and can make a static image come to life. There are no limit to the ways in which multiple GIFs can be used.

The person jumping animation, was created in a separate slide deck, exported as a GIf, copied to the clipboard, and pasted onto the slide. This is an example of a way in which we can put multi-faceted examples together to share with pupils or have pupils use to create a different way to share their understanding of a concept.

In the main example, we add to this by combining the draw feature with the individual slides. Each of these digital skills can be developed and then applied in digital literacy examples. We have condensed the animated GIF example in the tutorial below.

Try it yourself and share your story with us.

December 15, 2023

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

St Kentigern’s Academy
Girvan Academy
Hyndland Secondary School
Glasgow Gaelic School
Marr College
James Gillespie’s High School
Perth High School
Pitlochry High School
Stirling High School
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.

December 14, 2023

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:
- Instagram
- TikTok
- Twitter

- 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:
  - Instagram
  - TikTok
  - Twitter

December 14, 2023

Setting up an online account

December 13, 2023

Activity 9 – Escape Rooms

Welcome to the Reindeer Games!

Can you solve all the challenges in our Christmas Computational Thinking Quiz?

Lets find out!

ENTER THE REINDEER GAMES (GOOGLE FORM)

ENTER THE REINDEER GAMES (MICROSOFT FORM)

*Duplicate form links are available below as well as slideshow versions of the quiz

EXTRA CHALLENGE!

Try to create your own festive quiz using Microsoft Forms or Google Forms and share it with us!
Or, why not use presentation software to make a quiz? Perhaps modify the advent calendar to reveal questions?

Remember to share with us @digilearnscot #12daysofcreativity

Alternative Resource – Quiz as slideshow

You might want to run this activity in class by presenting the questions as slides. You can download a powerpoint, google slides or keynote version of the questions here

Reindeer Games KEYNOTE slides

Reindeer Games POWERPOINT slides

Reindeer Games GOOGLE slides

Slides with answers at the end

Reindeer Games slides with answers at end KEYNOTE
Reindeer Games slides with answers at end POWERPOINT

Reindeer Games PDF answers

Duplicate Form Links

Microsoft: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ShareFormPage.aspx?id=oyzTzM4Wj0KVQTctawUZKQh_O0u0ejZClLLJJs2fKcZUOUdWRE9FQzc2NFM1RDROR05MQlFLSUVWOC4u&sharetoken=wLTO7LSS9X1O6pGZEYmN

Google: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dWGcGCnzdGKbEW8bYwoVXlh5z5VlnOY_?usp=sharing

December 11, 2023

Activity 7 – Website Building

Ho Ho Ho! It’s the time of year where everyone has a joke to tell!

Today, we are challenging you to modify our Random Christmas Joke Generator!

When you visit the site, simply click on the cracker to display a random joke.

It’s Your Turn!

Short Video Walkthrough

Instructions

Can you modify the page to make it your own? Click on the View Source Code button at the top of the page of the joke generator – it should look like this

FIRST – Lets change the jokes and / or add more

Double click on the JS section (this is the javascript code that generates the jokes)

You can make the coding window bigger by pulling the divider to the right.

Can you see where the jokes are?
Can you add another couple of jokes or replace the ones that are there?

SECOND – double click on the HTML section

Can you edit the text that appears so that your name appears on the site?

THIRD – double click on the CSS section

Can you see where the colours are listed in the code? Try and change the different colours of the different sections – try this one at a time
Can you see where the font-family is used? Try to change the name of one of the fonts to one you know – what happens? This is a list of fonts you might want to try

Helpful hints with colours…
You can use the names of the colours eg black, blue, pink etc, however to get more specific colours you can use the HEX code of the colour. To find the hex code ot a colour, visit the site HTML Color Codes 🎨 (html-color.codes). From there you can pick any colour and it will give you the hex code. Eg this shade of pink has the hex code of #f462f4.

Simply use this hex code in the CSS rules to use the colour eg

background:#f462f4;

December 5, 2023

Activity 3 – Build an interactive calendar

Play the video to find out what’s behind door number 3!

It’s Your Turn!

You can learn how to do this and add some customisation by watching the tutorials on this page!

There are few options for you and your learners which can all be found in the different sections below. A brief overview of what’s available…

1. QUICK VERSION (Good for beginners)
Download a copy of the advent calendar template and ask your learners to work together, or individually, to complete it (Powerpoint, Google Slides and Keynote template included).

2. BUILD IT YOURSELF… (Good for those who have used presentation software before)
Learners can create their own advent calendar using Google Slides, Powerpoint (desktop version) or Keynote

3. POWERPOINT ONLY – EXTRA FEATURE!… (Good for users who have used powerpoint desktop version – this one is a bit different! – Worth watching anyway :))

If you are using PowerPoint desktop version then you may want to have look at the extended version that makes use of the Section and Zoom features available in the software

We’d love to hear and see how you get on – please tweet/X us @digilearnscot #12daysofcreativity

QUICK VERSION – Good for beginners (or short on time!)

Editing our template (powerpoint example)

Here are copies of the template you can use with learners

Simple PowerPoint Advent Calendar Template

Simple Google Slides Advent Calendar Template

Simple Keynote Advent Calendar Template

BUILD IT YOURSELF – Good for those who have used presentation software before

Build With Powerpoint

You can also check out the advent calendar build using the zoom and section features! Check out the video at the bottom of the page!

Useful information if you are using PowerPoint desktop….

If you click on PowerPoint slides and not the home button, you will notice that the slide moves on to the net day! In order to fix this, you can set your presentation to Kiosk mode. To do this, go to: Slide Show > Set Up Slide Show > select Browsed at kiosk (full screen)

Build With Google Slides

Useful information if you are using Google Slides….

Google Slides does not have a kiosk mode function like Powerpoint. In order to stop the presentation moving forward to the next day when you click on the slide, you need to add a large transparent rectangle over each slide and link it back to itself. This video demonstrates the technique

Build with Keynote

Useful information if you are using Keynote

If you click on Keynote slides and not the home button, you will notice that the slide moves on to the next day! In order to fix this, you can set your presentation to links only mode. To do this, go to the three dot menu > Settings > Presentation Type > Links Only

POWERPOINT ONLY – An alternative build using Sections and Zoom (It’s pretty cool!)

PowerPoint Zoom and Sections

If you are using PowerPoint on a laptop or desktop computer and feel comfortable with using it, this might be worth exploring! In this version we look as the Section and Zoom features in PowerPoint to create a slightly different advent calendar!