Category Archives: Sciences

Early Years, Expressive Arts, Health and wellbeing, Responsibility of All, Sciences, Social studies, Young people, children & families

The Creativity Portal Update: “Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.”

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The Creativity Portal is now eleven months old and is playing its part in promoting creativity across learning and teaching. Users are visiting the Creativity Portal for its offer of creative partnerships, resources and inspiration, as well as engaging with the Creativity Portal Glow Group behind the scenes in new and exciting ways. Here are a few of the successes so far.

  • Nearly 12000 unique users have visited the Creativity Portal already, well over a thousand a month.
  • Users have viewed nearly 50,000 pages.
  • 100% of users surveyed say that they will be recommending the Creativity Portal to others.
  • Nearly 500 partnership opportunities and examples of good practice have already been shared through the Creativity Blog – many of which are free for teachers and community groups. Many of these are being re-tweeted and shared with an even wider audience through the @CreativPortal Twitter feed and Facebook page. A direct feed by email is now available (including special feeds relating to individual subject areas including Literacy, Dance and Heritage) and will be rolled out this academic year.
  • New creative partners are joining the Creativity Portal all the time, with Fèisean nan Gàidheal, Eden Court Theatre and Dance House amongst the most recent. By using the search tools users can find extremely local and relevant resources, Glow Groups, Creative Partners and opportunities all in the one place – and stumble across plenty of inspiration they didn’t know they were looking for.
  • 92% of users say that the Creativity Portal will make their search for Creative Partnerships easier, quicker or more successful.
  • Many of these partners are going on to develop their own Glow Groups, offering more for schools and community groups than ever before and embedding the use of Glow into their core activities. There are already 32 creative Glow Groups and communities listed on the Creativity Portal with more developing each week.

Various associated Glow Groups and tools have been developed alongside the public facing Creativity Portal including a Creativity Forum, Creativity Archive of projects and lessons, Creativity Portal online newspaper, listing of Creative Glow Meets and Glow TV’s Creativity Channel.

The Creativity Portal and Creative Learning Networks (CLNs) recently held a week long online discussion around creativity and the Glow Group is still open for business – Is It Creative?. Glow Meets and the Creativity Forum were used to engage CLN and creative organisation staff building a model for future use of Glow Meet technology. For almost all users it was the first time they had used web conferencing technology and the learning curve was impressive. The use of Glow Meet by the creative partners and CLNs will no doubt prove to be a major asset over the next year in their delivery of tailored CPD and creative experiences for young people.

This is an exciting phase for the Creativity Portal and with changes happening all the time your feedback is as powerful as ever. You can access the Creativity Portal Evaluation tool here – http://glo.li/mrNuJE, leave a comment on the Creativity Forum – http://glo.li/ieF6fA, or email me direct on stephen.bullock@educationscotland.gov.uk

If you have any questions or suggestions then please do not hesitate to ask. You can also find resources to help you promote and share the Creativity Portal’s resources with colleagues in the Creativity Portal Glow Group.

Literacy, Mathematics, Sciences, Technologies

STEM Central @ Aberdeen Primary Science Summer School

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Education Scotland colleagues attended the Aberdeen Primary Science Summer School this week to meet primary practitioners eager to enhance their understanding of learning and teaching in sciences. This gave us a chance to link STEM Central contexts, videos and interactives to practical workshops, in partnership with Satrosphere, Dundee Science Centre and the University of Dundee. We also highlighted new Education Scotland resources to engage learners and support practitioners including Glow Sciences video resources and Weather & Climate Change. STEM Central is about enriching learning and teaching through relevant engineering contexts and about strengthening links with industry and employers, and partners in education, so we were delighted to be given the opportunity to participate in this event. The STEM Central presentation is available on slideshare.net via the link below.

STEM Central
Mathematics, Sciences, Technologies

Engineering the Future Resources

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 The materials in this Glow Group cover 15 different units which promote the teaching and learning of engineering in the secondary school curriculum.

Engineering the Future is a 3-year project funded by a major grant from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) which is running from October 2006 to early 2010.  It involves staff from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering in the University of Strathclyde and from the Departments of Electronics and Electrical Engineering and of Educational Studies in the University of Glasgow and science teachers in some 20 secondary schools in 9 education authorities in Scotland and in 2 independent schools.  The financial support afforded to the project by EPSRC is gratefully acknowledged as are the advice and encouragement provided by EPSRC and by the Universities of Strathclyde and of Glasgow.

Click here to visit the Glow Group (you will requite your Glow login).