Yesterday, the Technical Troopers organised a Digital Dress Down Day to raise funds to further support digital learning in Mid Calder Primary School. Our pupils were challenged to dress up as a character from an online or digital game, an emoji or a piece of technology.
Thank you to everyone who took part and donated. We raised a fantastic £175.05 and we can’t wait to share what we spend it on with everyone.
To celebrate Education Scotland’s National Digital Learning Week, our Technical Troopers have been working extremely hard to make a #digitaldifference in Mid Calder Primary School. They have delivered lessons across all stages of our school, teaching our pupils how to use a range of digital tools to enhance their learning. P3 received a lesson on how to use the Glow tool Forms, while P4 learned how to the Glow tool, Sway. The Technical Troopers helped our Nursery children to develop their positional language by using the Bee-Bots, as well as supporting P1 with creating an animation using Puppet Pals 2. Primary 6 and 7/6 were given a range of coding sites on their Yammer page to explore, while P2 developed their programming skills using Scratch Jr. Primary 5 were shown how to use the different features of iMovie.
The Technical Troopers received lots of positive feedback from both the teachers and the pupils, and they did a fantastic job at sharing their own digital skills confidently to make a #digitaldifference. Check out the video that they scripted and edited to showcase what they got up to:
This week we have been continuing to explore and develop our digital learning. Some children were using the iPads to scan QR codes to unveil which well being indicator character was hidden. Displaying confidence and leading their own learning, they were able to demonstrate to their peers how to do this. We have enjoyed learning how to turn our Adventure Ted adventures in to a comic using comic life, displaying these in our foyer for everyone to read. Using our iPod we chose which song we would like to dance to, also enjoying a game of musical statues. We recorded our indoor and outdoor play with our GoPro then enjoyed a visit from The Technical Troopers who helped develop our directional language when teaching us how to program the Bee-Bots.
To celebrate National Digital Learning Week, Primary 3 have used a range of digital technologies to enhance their learning across the curriculum.
In maths, we have been taking part in the UK National Sumdog Contest to develop our mental maths skills, as well as using Purple Mash and Table Mountain to help us to learn our times tables. In literacy, we have been looking at the genre of Science Fiction, and we used Puppet Pals 2 to bring some our stories to life. We also completed a ‘Space Race’ quiz using QR codes. We had to follow clues to locate QR codes hidden around the school, then use our skimming and scanning skills to to answer space questions using the links.
As part of our IDL context, NASA Juniors: Mission X, Primary 7 led a Virtual Reality session using their own devices. They rocketed us up into space, allowing us to explore the International Space Station, take a closer look behind the scenes of the Moon Landing, and explore a space museum. One of the Primary 7 Technical Troopers then helped us to use the Glow tool, Forms, to create our own space themed quiz. We posted these onto our Yammer page and completed each other’s quizzes.
We love using digital tools to enhance our learning in lots of different ways and Primary 3 feel like they have become ‘Digital Divas’ this year 🙂
Evie: “When I was young, I never used to use technology but then I discovered how good it was when I got my own iPad. Now I like using Yammer on the iPad and computer because I like commenting about what the teachers and people have posted.”
Rose: “I like using digital technologies because it is fun and it helps your learning.”
Sam: “I like playing games on the iPads and using paint on the netbooks. It makes learning fun.”
As part of National Digital Learning Week P1P have been using digital technologies to enhance their learning accross the curriculum.
We started the week with a fantastic session from P7. We were introduced and shown how to use VR Headsets! We were able to explore emersive virtual tours of castles which linked brilliantly with our Castle IDL context. P1P loved how the VR Headsets made them feel like they were really in different locations. We also used Purple Mash to digitally paint castle related images using different textures.
We have continued to share our learning on our class Sways that you can find on the blog and our twitter. In class, we independently scanned QR codes linked to our Sways to recap and discuss our previous learning experiences. We love looking at pictures from our previous lessons.
The Technical Troopers also visited our class to introduce us to a new app ‘Puppet Pals’. We loved animating the different characters and adding our own pictures and voices to our stories. Some of us were able to record our digital puppets and show it the rest of the class through mirroring on our Promethean Board.
This week we have also continued to develop our reading skills on Teach Your Monster to Read, practise our numeracy and maths on Sumdog and explore coding on Scratch JR.
On Thursday this week, some of Primary 5A and Primary 5C were lucky enough to receive a lesson in how to use the iMovie app as part of Digital Learning Week. Jamie, Dylan, James and Euan came to our class to show us how to record and edit movies. We then all had a chance to go off and make our own short films, which was a lot of fun; these were then shared with the rest of the class. The p5s who were lucky enough to take part in this lesson will now have a chance to teach the rest of their class -they say the best way to learn is to teach someone else, so watch this space! Thanks to Miss Sherlow and the fab Technical Troopers for their input, we thoroughly enjoyed it.
This week we have enjoyed participating in a lesson run by our fantastic technical troopers! They came into our class and demonstrated how to use Puppet Pals 2 on the Ipads. We then developed our tinkering and experimentation skills by trying out all the different features of the application. We really enjoyed taking pictures of our friends and making them into different characters. We even managed to create some fantastic videos, using our voices to make stories and sound effects!
In class we have also been continuing to enjoy using digital technology to enhance our learning. We have been using teach your monster to read in language. You can access this at home using your password at the front of your homework jotter using our special class link:
https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/u/8145
We have even been using Purple Mash, as part of our learning for our IDL castles context, to create patterned and symmetrical flags, decorate a castle with different types of materials and lots of other games. You can access all our castles learning tasks by visiting the purple mash link below and entering your login details at the front of your homework jotter. Then visit the red to do section at the top of the page.
https://www.purplemash.com/sch/midcalder-EH53
On National Numeracy Day, Primary 4 enjoyed using digital learning to support their work in Maths. As part of our Nasa Missions, the boys and girls had to collect data from children across the school about day and night time. Using digital technology each Nasa home team used their data to create a pie chart on the netbooks. Have a look at their fantastic pie charts:
During Digital Learning Week, the boys and girls have enjoyed several activities. In particular, they loved creating sun and moon fact files using Microsoft Word. After identifying the features of a fact file and conducting research using netbooks, the children then put their notes together to create their final fact files. They enjoyed setting up tables, adding pictures, changing fonts and laying out their fact file in an attractive way.
The Technical Troopers also came to visit Primary 4 this week. They took a mini lesson where they showed the boys and girls how to create a SWAY document about their chosen theme. The Technical Troopers did a fantastic job and were very helpful and patient. Have a look:
This week in Primary 6, we have been taking part in Digital Learning Week. We have trying out a variety of resources for practising coding, a key part of the Technologies curriculum. Examples of the activities pupils took part in include creating their own games using visual programming language and designing a new Google logo.
A list of resources is given below to allow pupils to carry on their learning at home. This list is also on the P6 Yammer page.
Carry on coding!
https://www.codeforlife.education/rapidrouter/
Code for Life – Rapid Router
www.codeforlife.education
1: Can you help the van get to the house? 2: This time the house is further away. 3: Can you make the van turn right? 4: You are getting good at this!
Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share
scratch.mit.edu
Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.
https://hourofcode.com/uk/learn
Learn – Hour of Code
hourofcode.com
Try a one-hour tutorial designed for all ages in over 45 languages. Join millions of students and teachers in over 180 countries starting with an Hour of Code.
https://studio.code.org/s/express
Code.org
studio.code.org
Express Course Learn the basics of computer science and internet safety. At the end of the course, create your very own game or story you can share.
Tutorials for Scratch:
https://codeclubprojects.org/en-GB/scratch/
Modules – Code Club
codeclubprojects.org
Scratch. Learn how to program your own interactive stories, games and animations.
Second Level have been working on digital photography leading up to and during Digital Learning Week. Primary 5s led the way after their successful photography trip to the National Museums. The latest challenge involved the young photographers looking at the work of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who specialised in street photography in Paris and who was describes as trying to capture ‘the decisive moment’.
They went round the school trying to hunt down interesting subjects and then had the advantage of digitally manipulating their efforts – a luxury in the digital age of i-pads and apps that Cartier-Bresson did not have. They used Art Set, Snap seed and Photoshop express to change a few selected images. The children had to narrow down their winning shots to one and these were then printed off for a school exhibition. They were helped by the Technical troopers from P6 and P7 and Miss Sherlow was on-hand to offer advice on downloading and printing.
A lot of the school-life images focussed on portraits and here is what the pupils said, thought and felt. Some captured the moments of school life in black and white just like the master himself.
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