Category Archives: Scottish Heritage

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

National Records of Scotland Schools Programme 2011 – 2012

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) has launched its 2011-2012 programme of free workshops and Glow Meet sessions for primary and secondary schools.

New topics include ‘Tartan: a Chequered Tale’, ‘Witches on Trial’ and ‘Scottish Census Records’.  Senior secondary students may be interested in ‘Study Skills – using primary sources’, and new sessions that support Higher History topics: The Wars of Independence, 1286-1328, The Age of Reformation, 1542-1603, and Migration and Empire, 1830-1939.

Full details of the Schools Programme and the booking form are available on the NRS education website: http://www.scottisharchivesforschools.org/workshops.asp

SWAP competition and Glow Group

Scots Words and Place-names (SWAP) is running a competition for all school pupils in Scotland during June. The competition is open to all ages and aims to get people talking about the Scots language in their classrooms, as well as using it outside of them. Everyone on Glow will get a chance to read the best pieces of writing and vote on which one they think deserves to win.

All pupils need to do is to write a story, poem or piece of discursive writing relating to Scots and upload it to the SWAP Glow group.

This could be about their favourite (or least favourite!) Scots words, about what a Scots place-name means to them, or could even be a whole story written in the Scots language. The possibilities are endless – the only requirement is that the piece of writing should clearly relate to Scots words and/or place-names. The competition is split into four age groups, P1-3, P4-7, S1-S3 and S4-S6.

Further information can be found at https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/SWAP/default.aspx

Developing Global Citizens

Developing global citizens through sciences, social studies and technologies

Learning and Teaching Scotland is organising a series of three stimulating regional events in November which will explore how climate change can be used a context for interdisciplinary learning to embed global citizenship and sustainability within the curriculum areas of sciences, social studies and technologies.

The details about these events are attached below and a PDF flyer can also be downloaded from LTS online.