Uncategorized – West Lothian Digital Learning Team

We went on an Elf Hunt… and over 4500 West Lothian students found them all!

We were delighted to continue our annual tradition of a live reading of a Christmas Story by Greg Welsh, Head of Education (Primary, Early Learning and Resources).

Over 200 teachers joined us on Microsoft Teams, from schools all over West Lothian, to hear We’re Going on an Elf Chase by Martha Mumford, followed by a chance to share some Christmas jokes.

Thank you to everybody who voted for the story and who joined us live.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Meet the Masters: Introducing our latest Promethean Certified Trainers

We are thrilled to introduce our latest cohort of Promethean Certified Trainers, who are excited to share their knowledge and new expertise of the Promethean panels and the ActivInspire software with their schools and clusters.

This technology can significantly enhance learner engagement, ensuring that learners benefit from more interactive and dynamic educational experiences.

Key takeaways and most impactful learning experiences identified by the participants included:

Promethean tools available on the panels and online (such as spinner, annotate and timer)
ActivInspire tools, tips and hints (such as the use of templates, interactive manipulatives, reveal sliders and overlays)
Laptop and Online tools to boost engagement and collaboration (such as MS Whiteboard, floating keyboard, split screen functionality and MS Accessibility Tools)
Features to enhance productivity (such as importing and annotating PDF’s, exporting lessons as JPEGs or PDFs to share and ability to use the board separately from the laptop)

Congratulations all, we are excited to see how you take this new knowledge forward in your schools.

Sparking Imagination with Adobe Express

This week, the Digital Learning Team worked with Seafield Primary in creatively enhancing learning and teaching using Adobe Express, following on from our staff input last week.

Some of the highlights from the day include:

Learners actively supporting each other to share tools, tips and ideas, such as removing backgrounds from images, or adding outlines to text to enhance the visibility.
Learners working collaboratively to create projects with real-life purposes. One fab example of this was some P7 pupils recording nursery rhymes, adding animations, sharing the video as a QR code and then creating a bright, attention-grabbing infographic to share the QR code.
Learners able to confidently articulate the purpose of learning and able to discuss the benefits of using Adobe Express.
Learners able to draw upon their previous knowledge and learning, to share detailed information, demonstrating their depth of understanding.

One class explored the video, animation and graphic features to share learning. They identified some key features of a successful and informative poster as needing bright, bold colours, large text, short statements, related images and animations or eye-catching features.

“I like making videos in Adobe Express, because it’s fun and interesting. It’s quicker to use, and more fun than PowerPoint, because there’s more things to learn, it’s newer, you can draw and add animations.”
P7 pupil

“I like when we could add my voice to my character”
P4 Pupil

Adobe Express is accessible through the tile on your school Glow launchpad.

Click here for more information.