All posts by mhowie

Art & Design, Glow, Literacy

Glovember – Glow Book Month

Schools are invited to take part in Glow Book Month.  This consists of:

  • Competition (Literacy) – enter & win prizes for your stories & poems
  • Competition (Art) – design a book cover
  • Glow TV – take part in National Glow Meets and meet and collaborate with authors
  • Published – have your story/poem published in an ebook

 The authors taking part in the event will also be the judges of the competition entries.  These will be judged in three age categories: Early Primary (P1 – P4), Late Primary (P5 – P7), Secondary (S1 – S6).

 At the moment, the following authors are confirmed – Caroline Clough, Lari Don, Janis Mackay & Alette J Willis.

Find more information in the national Glow Group Glovember – Glow Book Month.

You will need a Glow password to access this.

 

News, websites

Education Scotland

Education Scotland, the new national body responsible for supporting quality and improvement in learning and teaching from early years to adult and community learning, has recently published the first issue of its newsletter.  The link to the newsletter and to other areas, for example support and resources for teaching and learning, can be found on the front page of the Education Scotland web site www.educationscotland.gov.uk

Early years, Literacy

The Scottish Children’s Book Awards

The Scottish Children’s Book Awards (formerly Royal Mail Awards) shortlist was announced recently.  Now schools, classes, book groups and individuals can register to take part and vote for their favourite book.

CALL Scotland, based at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, can provide accessible digital and audio versions of the Scottish Children’s Book Awards shortlist.  The short list for each category is as follows:  

 Early Years (0 – 7 years)

  • Dear Vampa by Ross Collins
  • The Loon on the Moon by Emily Golden
  • Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray

Younger Readers (8 – 11 years)

  • Zac and the Dream Pirates by Ross MacKenzie
  • There’s a Hamster in my Pocket by Franzeska G Ewart
  • The Case of the London Dragonfish by Joan Lennon

Older Readers (11 – 16 years)

  • Wasted by Nicola Morgan
  • The Blackhope Enigma by Teresa Flavin
  • The Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin 

CALL Scotland can provide the following formats:

  • Accessible digital versions of all shortlisted titles
  • Accessible audio versions (read by a computer voice) of the Older  and Younger  Readers shortlists 
  • Accessible audio versions (Power point with recorded voice) of the Early Years children’s shortlist (Loon on the Moon, Dear Vampa, ApplePie ABC)  

The older and younger reader shortlisted books are available in Adobe PDF and/or Microsoft Reader format. The three early years books are in Adobe PDF and Power point.

If you have pupils with additional support needs, please contact CALL  (http://www.books4all.org.uk/Book-Awards/Request-Digital-Book-Copy/)  to receive the books in accessible formats.

Please note that you must still register to take part in the awards, enter the review competition, or in order for your pupils to vote for their favourite book!

For more information, help and books go to CALL’s web site at http://www.books4all.org.uk/Book-Awards/ , contact Paul Nisbet paul.nisbet@ed.ac.uk , or phone 0131 651 6236.

For more information about CALL, please visit www.callscotland.org.uk.

 

Active Learning, Glow, History, ICT, library, Literacy, Scottish Heritage, Scottish History, Social Studies

Whose Town?

Whose Town? is an innovative resource for teaching social studies. A fun and interactive digital resource which brings Edinburgh’s history to life, it has been made available to all Glow users.  It can be found in the Whose Town? Glow Group and accessed from the Glow National Site notice board. The resource is built on the City of Edinburgh’s heritage collections and is linked to the Curriculum for Excellence second, third and fourth levels.

Whose Town? looks at Edinburgh’s and Scotland’s past from 1850s to the 1950s through the eyes of people who lived there. There are 14 real lives to discover – people who lived in Victorian times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and in the Fifties. Archival material is collected in a digital box and hidden in an attic for pupils to uncover and examine. Each life is captured at a particular point in history, creating a snapshot of their life: a Life in a Box.

Whose Town? features two lives with direct connections to East Lothian. Florence grew up in an affluent Victorian household and enjoyed holidays at the West Pans seaside with her family. Luca Scappaticcio arrived in Scotland from Italy at the turn of the twentieth century and settled in Musselburgh where he established what is now S. Luca’s of Musselburgh.

There are over 450 unique and original documents in digital format for topic and skills based work. Maps, newspaper articles, photographs, objects, documents, video and audio clips and even the bits and bobs that everyone collects are all used to bring the histories of the fourteen real lives to life. Whose Town? also contains a wealth of support materials for teachers from lesson plans to ideas on how to use archival materials in the classroom.   

For more information or to request a free Whose Town? CD contact the Digital Information Team at Central Library in Edinburgh on 0131 242 8047. You’ll also find a wide range of supporting mat

library

Reading – the top cultural pastime in Scotland

SLAINTE (Information & Libraries Scotland)

http://www.slainte.org.uk/news/newsindex.htm

SLAINTE reports that the Scottish Government Household Annual Survey for 2009/10 has confirmed that reading for pleasure was by far the most common cultural activity in 2009/2010 with 62% of adults saying that they had read for pleasure during that time. This is in line with previous years. The next most popular activity was dancing (18%), followed by crafts and playing and writing music (both 11%).