SDS’s new digital offer for young learners
Skills Development Scotland’s (SDS) work on a suite of dig
ital resources to support career learning in P5-P7 classrooms is moving at pace. SDS Digital Services Programme Manager Derek Hawthorne says all schools will have access to the resources by August 2016:
“We’ve been in classrooms across Scotland carrying out testing throughout the development of our new digital resources.
Aimed at primary 5 to 7 pupils, teachers will be able to access a range of support materials to aid delivery in the classroom as well as digital tools for pupils to use.
The resources are part of our wider work in support of the Career Education Standard and the expansion of our careers advice services in secondary schools, supporting the outcomes of Developing the Young Workforce and aligned to Curriculum for Excellence.
The tools and resources are part of My World of Work, our award winning careers information and advice web service.
My World of Work is packed with advice, tools, resources and information and is already widely used in secondary schools, colleges and beyond. It also supports the work of SDS Careers Advisers across Scotland.
My World of Work has a specific partner area which includes resources developed with teachers for education professionals to use with their pupils to develop their career management skills (CMS).
Getting started
Teacher registration is through My World of Work as normal.
Ticking the box as a primary school teacher at the point of registration and adding your school takes you to your own account page.
Here you’ll be able to access the full suite of resources and register your pupils as well as track progress and access reports.
Registering pupils is then an easy process, just add names and Scottish candidate numbers.
One teacher can register multiple classes, and ownership can be transferred so when a class moves up a year their new teacher has access to their accounts. It works too if a pupil moves school.
Once pupils are added, they then log on with their name and a quick four digit code.
The next step is straight on to using the tools to build up their personal profile and develop their career management skills.
The tools
There will be three fun, interactive and easy-to-use tools for pupils.
My interests:
- a tool that looks at what a pupil likes to do, their interests in and outside of school.
- a series of simple statements like ‘I like to spend time reading books’ or ‘making cakes’ or ‘playing video games’ which pupils click on
- results match up with different job types, with the opportunity for pupils to click through and find out more.
Animal me is:
- a personality quiz where pupils can find out what animal matches their personality, results include koala bear, eagle, clownfish or tawny owl.
- A memorable way for pupils to find out information about their character traits and the kinds of jobs that could suit their personality type.
- based around the Myers-Briggs personality principles and can also indicate how a young person learns or handles stress.
The third tool, Skills builder, is the most in-depth, it:
- links directly to the I Can statements in the Career Education Standard, and will provide a way to evidence and report on skills development, attainment and profiling.
- allows teachers to set pupils, groups or classes an I Can statement to work to.
- is designed to be used on a day-to-day basis pupils can enter activities they’ve undertaken inside and outside of school, measuring themselves on a star rating against the top skills they think they’ve used for that activity.
- has progress bars appear on pupil account page
- grows with the pupil, building a personalised skills profile
Moving on up
We hope these tools will mean a far richer and more personalised career management skills experience for pupils, as well as a thoroughly useful resource for teachers.
As the resources are part of My World of Work, there is huge opportunity for pupils as they move on from primary school and begin to work with SDS careers advisers at the primary 7/S1 transition phase. The tools also line up with existing versions on My World of Work which they’ll be using through secondary school and beyond.Teachers and pupils have been involved in design and testing every step of the way, and will continue to help us out right up to August and beyond. This month we’re hoping to open up an early version of the resources so we can get as much feedback as possible on its development ahead of the new school year.
Keep up to date on that and all the latest developments by following us on Twitter @skillsdevscot and @mywowscotland and Facebook at facebook.com/myworldofwork and of course here on Education Scotland’s website.
