Scotland's History Online

The Scottish Government announced last week the launch of an online portal which aims to "raise [the] profile of Scottish history at home and abroad".

Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop said:

Not only will this site be an outstanding resource for pupils and teachers integrated to the new Curriculum for Excellence, it will also help inform all Scots - both at home and abroad - and everyone who shares an interest in learning about our country.

Developed by LTS and the Heritage Education Forum the online resource is said to explore "more than 5,000 years of Scottish history".

Scotland's History Online covers a range of subjects, from prehistoric through to 21st Century Scotland. With more than 200 topics that include links to over 1,000 other online sources and a wide range of interactive supporting materials.

The resource is structured by time periods:

• Early People (Prehistoric)


• Caledonians, Picts, Britons and Romans (Ancient)


• Wars of Independence (Medieval)


• Medieval life (Medieval)


• Renaissance, Mary Queen of Scots and the Reformation (Early Modern)


• Union of the Crowns to Union of Parliaments (Early Modern)


• Jacobites, the Clearances and Enlightenment (Early Modern)


• Making of Industrial and urban Scotland (Modern)


• Scotland in the 20th and 21st centuries (Modern)

I have had a quick look and it looks like a great resource with some amazing images.

The minister's reply

 Last month, before the Scottish Learning Festival took place (23-24 September), attendees were invited to submit questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education for her to answer.  I submitted the question below but only a few were answered directly by the minister at the conference. The remainder were subsequently dealt with by email.  The minister’s answer is below. Only a relatively short part of it refers directly to information literacy and only to the schools sector. The wider agenda is ignored and there is no answer to the question - what strategic initiatives does she think the Scottish Government can engage in to promote it? I shall be enquiring further and also refer her to the US President’s greater commitment to information literacy. (See URL http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/2009literacy_prc_rel.pdf  

 Question to Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Education in the Scottish Government

 

My question to the minister is:

 The important skills of critical literacy / information literacy has been highlighted within the Curriculum for Excellence: Literacy across learning (finding and using information, understanding, analysing and evaluating) levels Early to Fourth. Does the minister agree that  information literacy  skills are essential in  independent learning at all educational levels, career choice and long term management, employability training, workplace decision making and lifelong learning and what strategic initiatives does she think the Scottish Government can engage in to promote it?

Answer from the minister

Thank you for submitting a question, please see below the response from the Education Secretary,

 The Scottish Government is determined to help our children and young people develop the literacy skills they will need to thrive in the 21st century. Skills in literacy unlock access to the wider curriculum, increase opportunities for the individual in all aspects of life and lay the foundations for lifelong learning and work. Curriculum for Excellence, the Scottish Government's major programme of reform for the education sector, emphasises the importance of literacy skills and makes clear that all teachers have responsibility to promote their development.

The Curriculum for Excellence principles and practice paper for literacy sets out the outcomes we want our young people to achieve as they progress through their education.  Young people will need to know about the fundamentals of reading and writing but also how these skills can be applied critically, across different media, to analyse and evaluate information and to work out what trust they may place in it and identify when and how people are aiming to persuade or influence them.

As our children and young people progress through learning they should develop increasing independence in applying these skills, and the ability to use them across a widening range of contexts in both learning and life. Glow, the world’s first national schools Intranet, provides learners with  a range of tools and rich learning materials which can be accessed at any time and anywhere there is an internet connection, offering a safe, accessible online environment which supports independent learning.

Lead role for Learning and Teaching Scotland confirmed by Scottish Government

Following a review the Scottish Government have confirmed that Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) will continue to play a key role in transforming education in Scotland. Their new core remit

builds on the organisation’s strong track record in delivering significant education reform, including its key role in Curriculum for Excellence and the implementation of Glow in all 32 local authorities.

core remit is:-

• Curriculum – to keep the curriculum 3 – 18 under review and provide advice and support, including quality assured resources, on the curriculum 3 – 18 to Ministers and the education system;


• Assessment – to provide advice and support to Ministers and the education system on assessment to support learning, with support from SQA as appropriate, and to work with SQA to ensure the availability of quality assured resources to support assessment;


• Glow and ICT in schools – to provide advice and support to Ministers and the education system on the use of ICT to support education, to establish and maintain technology standards for education, to ensure practitioners have easy online access to advice and support, including digital resources and to manage the provision of the national ICT infrastructure to support education, currently Glow, the LTS Online Service and the local authority Interconnect.

There are a number of other areas that LTS may work with other partners, perhaps leading on certain elements, to ensure effective provision, including research and intelligence gathering, professional development and the sharing of good practice. 

The project has worked with LTS on a number of information literacy related projects and it is good to see that LTS will continue to work with partners on "research and intelligence gathering, professional development and the sharing of good practice." The current project we are working with them on is very much based in these areas linked to the Curriculum for Excellence - ‘Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level)

Assessment for Curriculum for Excellence

The Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop announced the publication of the strategic vision and key principles for assessment in Curriculum for Excellence  at the Scottish Learning Festival on 23 September 2009.

According to the document:

The main differences from the existing assessment arrangements are that:

• Assessment practices will follow and support the new curriculum.  This will promote higher quality learning and teaching and give more autonomy and professional responsibility to teachers.


• Standards and expectations will be defined in a way that reflects the principles of Curriculum for Excellence.  This will support greater breadth and depth of learning and a greater focus on skills development including higher order skills.


• A national system of quality assurance and moderation for 3 – 18 will be developed to support teachers in achieving greater consistency and confidence in their professional judgements.


• A National Assessment Resource will help teachers to achieve greater consistency and understanding in their professional judgements.  There will also be a major focus on CPD to help teachers develop the skills required.

The document also contains information about the National Literacy qualifications being developed at

SCQF levels 3, 4, or 5. They will be available from S3 onwards and build on development of literacy and numeracy skills from earlier stages. Most young people will be presented for these qualifications before they leave school. The qualifications will be awarded on the basis of a portfolio of a learner's work collected across a number of curriculum areas and  a range of contexts of learning, life and work and will involve external marking by SQA. The qualifications will be flexible to meet the needs of all learners including adult learners in colleges and other settings.

Something to look out for and hopefully influence.

According to the Assessment for Curriculum for Excellence website where there is a link to the Strategic Vision

Later this year, the Scottish Government will publish a Framework for Assessment as part of the Building the Curriculum series which will provide guidance and support to ensure that arrangements for assessment, at all levels of the educational community, support the values, purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence and build on the Assessment is for Learning programme.  The Scottish Survey of Achievement will also be redesigned to provide more information about young people’s literacy and numeracy skills.

The website also has a link to an Assessment strategy questions and answers PDF which contains 55 questions and answers. Including information that that they are "expecting schools and local authorities to develop their thinking about how they will work with the new standards and expectations over the course of this year" and that the "expectation is that from August 2010 assessment will be elated to the standards and expectations within the assesment framework".

The Strategic vision document says that

The Framework for Assessment from 3 to 18 aims to create: 

• a more effective assessment system which supports greater breadth and depth of learning and a greater focus on skills development


• through collaborative working, a better-connected assessment system with better links between pre-school, primary and secondary schools, colleges and other settings to promote smooth transitions in learning 


• better understanding of effective assessment practice and sharing of standards and expectations as well as more consistent assessment


• more autonomy and professional responsibility for teachers.

Information Literacy Case Studies and Curriculum for Excellence Literacy and English experiences and outcomes

The project has been working with Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS):

North Lanarkshire Council, Education Resource Service

City of Edinburgh Council, Children and Families Department, Information and Learning Resources,

North Ayrshire Education Resources Service 

 

to  identify exemplars of good practice / case studies within the cross curricular area of information literacy for dissemination through the LTS (Learning and Teaching Scotland) website which offers an important mechanism to keep education authority and school staff informed and supported.

Thanks to the above parties, LTS Curriculum for Excellence Literacy and English Team and the school librarians involved the case studies are now live and can be viewed on the LTS Information Literacy Website under sharing practice  - two more case studies are still to be finalised by LTS. Hopefully more case studies will be added in the future. 

The addition of these sharing practice case studies / exemplars of good practice linked to the Curriculum for Excellence four capacities (to enable each child or young person to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor) will add value to the LTS resources:

• facilitating access to practitioners’ good practices and classroom resources within this important cross curricular area


• demonstrating how specific information literacy competencies can be applied in practice


• identifying exemplars linked to different levels within the curriculum, subjects and resources.

This is an important development with the inclusion of information literacy as part of the Curriculum for Excellence Literacy and English experiences and outcomes specifically

• finding and using information in the listening and talking, and reading sections


• understanding, analysing and evaluating in listening and talking, and reading sections "to encourage progression in understanding of texts, developing not only literal understanding but also the higher order skills"


• organising and using information in the writing section

For more details see Curriculum for Excellence: Literacy and English experiences and outcomes also the accompanying  - principles and practice paper / document.