Global Citizenship

A group of Education professionals from Tianjin in China is visiting Scotland this week, furthering the partnerships between Tianjin schools and Scottish secondary schools developed through the Confucius Classrooms programme managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland. 

Yesterday a LTS national China showcase event attracted around 200 staff and students to Stirling to enjoy performances and demonstrations of Scottish classroom activity related to Chinese culture and language. Each of the Confucius Classroom regional hubs in Scotland also displayed material and shared their experience of curricular work. 

An article in The Herald ‘Let young Scots learn Mandarin, Confucius says’ reports on the visit and the importance of international partnership working in Education.

A LTS press release gives background details.

The ‘Scottish Learning Festival 2010′ is now open for registrations, prior to the real event taking place in Glasgow on the 22nd and 23rd September 2010. The line-up at this year’s free show includes keynote presentations by Michael Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning; Eric Booth, author, entrepreneur and arts education specialist; Richard Gerver, author of ‘Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today’; and Professor Sugata Mitra, professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University. The entire programme is online, to help reduce the carbon footprint of SLF, and also available for download.

SLF conference seminars are always popular with teachers, and there are a good number of seminars this year which focus on one or other aspect of Global Citizenship in the context of a Curriculum for Excellence. These include Holocaust Education (both a seminar and discussion sessions), Climate Change, a European Union Comenius Regio project for language learning, the London Olympics 2012, Global Footprinting, and Citizenship and young people.

The exhibition side of the show continues to attract organisations and companies with a lot to offer for Scottish education, and again there’s a good mix of exhibitors which relate directly to Global Citizenship activity in schools. British Council, the European Parliament office in Scotland, the British Red Cross, Holocaust Education Trust, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Get Set for London 2012, and Amnesty International.

LTS welcomes many international delegates to the show each year, and we make special efforts to provide opportunities for overseas education professionals to share experience with their Scottish counterparts. So sign up online and come along to enjoy the SLF professional development experience.

The latest news, events and developments from Citizenship, which now covers Confucius Classrooms, International Education and Sustainable Development Education.

Our annual educational conference and exhibition, ‘Scottish Learning Festival 2009‘, is open for registrations through the event website. As usual, its in Glasgow at the SECC, and offers a great variety of international presenters, expert workshops, and an exhibition of educational services, products and experiences. This year’s dates are Wednesday 23rd September and Thursday 24th September.

Last year LTS welcomed over 7000 visitors to the show, mixing teachers, managers, trainee teachers, consultants, education companies and foreign educators.

Within the keynote and seminar programme, there are many opportunities to find out more about International Education, Education for Citizenship and Sustainable Development, all key contributors to the successful implementation of ‘Curriculum for Excellence’. Aspects of education in Brazil, China, Colombia, France and the USA are just some of the seminar themes.

Sign up online for this free Continuing Professional Development opportunity, and make your bookings for the best of the seminars.

Schools Minister Keith Brown MSP has opened a new Confucius Classroom hub for the North East of Scotland. Covering Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus and Moray, this is Scotland’s eighth such local hub, fulfilling an agreement that Learning and Teaching Scotland signed with the Chinese authorities in April 2008 to open a network of Confucius Classroom hubs around Scotland.

The latest hub is based at Hazlehead Academy in Aberdeen, and will offer support to primary and secondary schools across the North East for Chinese culture and language. A Scottish Government news story provides more detail.

The school-based hubs are complemented by an online hub, utilising the LTS Online Services and Glow, the broadband intranet for Scottish schools. This online provision is a key means to extend access across the whole country, sharing resources and enabling inter-school communication.

A group of Scottish school and local authority staff drawn from all the Confucius Classrooms will visit Beijing at the end of March.

The start of the lunar ‘Year of the Ox’ was welcomed last weekend at street parties and displays all over the world. A BBC story describes the Glasgow celebrations and links to resources such as photos from activities at Kelvingrove Museum.

LTS has updated its ‘Confucius Classroom’ website, which forms the public-facing side of our online hub to support the teaching of Chinese language and culture. Teachers who want to share resources and ideas can do so through the Confucius Classrooms group on the national schools intranet Glow.

Read how Rashielea Primary School in Renfrewshire overcame obstacles to create strong cultural links with Tianjin Experimental Primary School in China, from the Confucius classrooms website.

 A national conference on the ‘Teaching of China’ in Scotland’s Schools is to be held at Strathclyde University on Thursday 27th November 2008. The programme offers a broad range of presentations and workshops, covering primary and secondary interests and activities. The programme and booking details are on the university website.

The Edinburgh ‘hub’ Confucius Classroom was launched at St.George’s School for Girls last week. St George’s will work in partnership with City of Edinburgh Council schools and others to support teaching and learning about China.�

An ‘online hub’ for the Confucius Classrooms programme is now live. It forms a key part of the Confucius Classrooms vision in Scotland, to extend access to teaching and learning about Chinese language and culture and support growth of a learning community.

The hub has a public web side, with information about the programme, resources and examples of current practice in Scottish schools. It also has a dedicated area within Glow, the broadband intranet service for Scottish education professionals and pupils, for collaboration, sharing and interaction in a secure environment.