Global Citizenship

The veterans charity Erskine has published findings from its recent pupil survey timed to coincide with Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day (11th November) and the commemoration of British war dead. It is concerned about problems with misconceptions and lack of knowledge about the events of World War Two, with significant proportions of students having a sketchy appreciation of key individuals and aspects of the history of that period.

The Daily Mail also expressed alarm in its article “Hitler, the German football coach, and other historical ‘facts’ according to our schoolchildren”.

Curriculum for Excellence represents an opportunity to cover such underpinning knowledge to support effective learning in areas such as Social Studies, Citizenship and Holocaust Education.

A Scottish teacher has taken the second place Award in the Community category at the worldwide ‘Innovative Education Forum’ in Brazil. He was recognised for his work on Computer Games in the classroom and promoting the benefits through learning communities.  (editorial interest: Ollie Bray is currently on secondment to Learning and Teaching Scotland)

Microsoft runs this international education gathering as part of its ‘Partners in Learning’ programme, which includes the Innovative Teachers network that connects teachers with an enthusiasm and talent for ICT through online communities in each country. The November edition of ‘Teaching Scotland’, the magazine of the General Teaching Council Scotland, includes an article about the programme and how Scottish teachers can get involved.

On the 1st December there is an opportunity for Scottish teachers to share experience,views and ideas with colleagues in the rest of the UK at the UK Innovative Teachers Froum in Birmingham. The Partners in Learning website has full details.

Two primary schools in the Highlands have featured on the BBC website for environmental aspects which aim to make the schools more sustainable by design.

Acharacle school is being built with many environmentally-friendly features including a wind turbine for power and rain water to assist toilet flushing.

And Glenelg school has fitted solar panels to the roof of its pupil bike shed to harness renewable energy, as part of Highland Council’s commitment to energy management.

A story in ‘the Scotsman’ described work by a West Lothian teacher on the theme of Child Soldiers, human rights and international humanitarian law. This topic was the basis for a very successful seminar for teachers at the recent Scottish Learning Festival 2009 in Glasgow.

British Red Cross is one of the non-governmental organisations which is involved actively in work with Scottish schools on issues around human rights and conflict, and their Education website offers very useful resources. Their staff can also work directly with schools to run presentations and interactive sessions for pupils on humanitarian issues.

Homecoming Scotland 2009, the celebration of Scotland’s culture and heritage, is coming to an end, and there will be events around Scotland to round off the year’s activities in a grand finale. The Scottish Government has announced plans for the biggest ever celebrations of St Andrew’s Day.

The success of the Educational dimension to Homecoming will be recognised and celebrated at a showcase event in Edinburgh on 23rd November. For details of that event for schools and teachers, contact the team here at LTS by phone 0141-282-5193

Show Racism the Red Card, a charity which supports anti-racist education, is running a creative competition for schools and colleges. Individuals and classes can both submit entries across, participants need to register their interest by 27th November, and the closing date for actual entries is 29th January 2010.

The SRTRC competition task is to produce a piece of creative work which communicates the message that Racism is not welcome in Scotland. The work can be in one of a range of formats, which include art, music, multimedia, t-shirt design and creative writing.

Another approach to anti-racist education is using Film and storytelling to get young people engaged with the topic. The movie “Skin” was in cinemas earlier this year, and is now available on DVD at low cost. The charity Film Education has produced an online educational resource to accompany the movie, which helps teachers to address issues of racism through work on citizenship, English, history and modern studies.

The ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ Scottish pupil group visits organised by the Holocaust Education Trust in September and October continue to attract positive media coverage. An example is the article in the Edinburgh Evening News entitled ‘Teenagers face the horror of Holocaust’, which describes the experiences of school pupils in the East of Scotland groups.

In early October around 60 Scottish teachers took part in a Holocaust Education workshop day organised by Learning and Teaching Scotland, which focused on the variety of learning and teaching approaches that teachers might adopt to teach about issues such as the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights. Delegates benefitted from the participation of Education staff from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Anne Frank Scotland charity. The products of the day are being shared in a national group on Glow, the Scottish schools broadband intranet service. LTS will continue to support these active Holocaust educators, in areas such as collaborative production of learning resources.

Stirling Council recently held a Global Citizenship conference for pupils, which included coverage of many projects running in schools within the region. The work on show included activities in Africa and India, themes such as Fair Trade, and Sustainable Development. A Stirling Council webpage provides more detail of the schools and actions involved.

Scottish secondary school pupils involved in the Eco Schools Scotland programme ran a conference at the Scottish Parliament this week, at which Schools Minister Keith Brown was the invited guest speaker. Events such as these provide a means of showcasing the interest and action of young people concerned about environmental issues such as Climate Change.

A BBC web article “Malawi windmill boy with big fans” provides an update on the Malawian teenager who built electric windmills from junk to provide an electricity supply for his village. A book telling his story, entitled “The Boy who harnessed the Wind“, is available and may inspire others to innovate.

Win a Flip Camera for your school

Learning and Teaching Scotland is currently developing a new Primary Climate Change website. It will bring together a series of web-based activities which will allow pupils at First and Second Stages to explore and learn about climate change, how it will affect them and what they can do about it.

We are looking to have some demonstration clips built into the site. These will include recording weather, the water cycle, movement of warm and cold air, and adaptations to change. We are challenging Secondary school pupils to come up with innovative and creative approaches to this.

The shorts can be up to a maximum of 1 min and can be shot on anything from a camera phone to home video or professional equipment, or can be done in animation.

Contributions must be emailed in or uploaded to the GLOW SDE group by 04 December 2009. All will be exhibited on the GLOW SDE group and the most suitable, from an educational point of view, will be incorporated into the Primary Climate Change website.

Flip cameras will be awarded to those schools whose clips are used on the Climate Change website.

For more information on the experiments and activities please contact Helen Winton, H.Winton@LTScotland.org.uk