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.

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)

The Scottish Information Literacy Project wins contract from Learning and Teaching Scotland

The Scottish Information Literacy Project has been awarded funding by Learning and Teaching Scotland to work with Learning and Teaching Scotland in an area which is a key area for both Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Information Literacy Project. One of the Project’s ‘products’ is the first draft  of the National Information Literacy Framework Scotland which is a Framework linking specific information literacy skill levels to appropriate Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework levels from primary school to workplace and lifelong learning levels.  We are currently extending and redrafting it to make it a genuine lifelong learning policy document in line with the Scottish Government’s ‘cradle to grave’ educational strategy.  We will be working with Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Literacy Team on a project entitled:

 ‘Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21^st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level)

The Project’s aims are:

To create a quality CPD Information Literacy resource pack whose target audience will be Early Years (primary 1-2).  This will contain:-

• Background Information re Information Literacy


• Learning and teaching approaches


• Supporting resources –e.g. Posters, PowerPoints.

Learning and Teaching Scotland is constructing a resource called ‘Real and Relevant - Information Literacy Skills for the 21^st Century Learner’ which is aimed at the upper primary/early secondary stages. This resource reflects the purposes and principles of Curriculum for Excellence as well as linking with specific outcomes from the Literacy and English framework. The Project, aimed at early and first level, will help us to extend the early years component of the Framework. Both projects should complement existing work already carried out by Learning and Teaching Scotland in this area, e.g. the structure and terminology that has been adapted to be in keeping with primary practice and the CfE literacy and English framework.

Meeting with Learning and Teaching Scotland / Curriculum for Excellence

On Wednesday December 10^th Christine and I, along with two of our Project partners, Cleo Jones, Principal Officer, Libraries & Resources at Edinburgh City Council and Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Centre Manager at Govan High School attended a meeting at Learning and Teaching Scotland’s (LTS) offices to discuss possible Project input to the development of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).  LTS was represented by Stuart Ritchie, Director of Curriculum at LTS, Fiona Norris, Team Leader, language and literacy and Ian Graham, Schools ICT Programme Director. Although we have been working with LTS for several years, including most recently the case studies of IL in secondary schools, this is the first opportunity we have had to engage with LTS staff at a policy level and the meeting opportunity was therefore very welcome.

We reviewed with LTS colleagues the work of the Project and Cleo and Ian explained some of their work which underlined the key role our partners play in our work. Fiona explained that she is keen to have a project involving school librarians.  Having reviewed what both sides have to offer and identified IL as sitting within the CfE Literacy team – Literacies for Learning, four action points emerged to be taken forward.

1.      A joint project is to be formulated with the CfE Literacy team. As a first stage Stuart and Fiona will discuss it and come back to us with firm proposals. Christine and I will meet with Fiona and colleagues early next year.

2.      We will work with the Literacy team on an IL proposal for presentations / workshops at the Scottish Learning Festival in September 2009

3.      There was some discussion about the presence of IL in different parts of the GLOW (the national intranet for Scottish schools) website which are not linked together. We will jointly look how at how Information Literacy should sit within Literacy

4.      Following a discussion on the need for CPD for teachers in IL we agreed that   online resources are required. Some funding will be available to support the development of this.

5.      A Literacy event is to take place at the Hilton on the 10^th March, 2009 at which the keynote speaker will be Professor David Booth from Toronto. We will discuss Project involvement in this with Fiona.

We will hear more from LTS on the implementation of these plans by mid January. 

PS Thanks to Rob Westwood for giving the blog a mention in the current issues of CILIP Gazette. Apparently we are up there with the Prime Minister and Stephen Fry.