On 18th November, the whole of Stenton school visited Dunbar Grammar science department for a lesson on Electricity.  Veronica Brunton, headteacher of Stenton Primary, initiated the link up and will liaise with the science teachers to build on the success of this week’s visit.  Read all about it and see the photo gallery at http://edubuzz.org/blogs/stenton/

If you can’t see the viewer above, the leaflet’s also available to download here: Arts-education-booklet (560KB, 24 pages, Adobe PDF)

Inside you’ll find:

• Projects For Nursery Schools
• Projects For Primary Schools
• Projects For Secondary Schools
• Dance
• Drama
• Film
• CPD for teachers
• Out Of School Activities
• Brunton Theatre Events

To book any activity please complete and return the booking form to: Arts Service Admin, East Lothian Council, Brunton Hall, Ladywell Way, Musselburgh EH21 6AF or fax to 0131 653 5265.You can also request a booking form by emailing  artsservice at eastlothian.gov.uk.
For more information please contact the Arts Service on 0131 665 9900.

If you need to use GlowMail, it will be available on Mon 20 Jul and Tue 21 Jul, but you’ll need to access GlowMail directly via https://webmail.glowscotland.org.uk rather than via the portal.

Following the giveaway of some materials to secondary schools, we have a very few left over.  Teachers from any East Lothian school are very welcome to drop us an email if they would like some.

Here’s what we have:

Educational items

• “Welcome to the European Parliament” (brochure and DVD)
• “What are my rights as an EU citizen? ” (13-page booklet)
• “What do your MEPs do?” (21-page booklet)
• “What are your MEPs doing about the Environment” (9-page booklet)
• “Opportunities and resources for young people in the EU” (17-page booklet about educational exchange programmes and careers in the EU institutions)
• European Union wall map (A1 size) showing countries and flags
• European Union map, laminated, A3 size
• 13 European flag memory games, made of card, scissoring required (these will go as a job-lot)

Promotional items

• 17 promotional rulers (job-lot)
• 16 pens (with flags on, job-lot)
• 15 carrier bags.

The last 4 items on the list could be used as rewards for participation in some relevant activity. 

If you are a teacher and would like to request any of these items, please email cdora@eastlothian.gov.uk with your name, your school, and the items you would like. First-come, first-served.  Good luck!

How could you make a bedtime story into a must-see event for parents? Ormiston Primary School found that one way was to have it read live from Australia - using a web videoconference.

The event was attended by a horde of pyjama-clad children, who enjoyed hot chocolate while they listened to the story and watched pictures from the book appear on screen. Large numbers of parents wanted to make sure they didn’t miss out, and also squeezed into the classroom. The story was read by a teacher from Ormiston State School in Queensland Australia, which has linked with Ormiston Primary to develop reading by use of a web site where book reviews and recommendations can be shared by pupils. You can read more, and see some more photos, over on the Ormiston school site.

The video has also been embedded on their school web site, where it can be easily found by parents. Since YouTube was recently made available in East Lothian schools, it has proved to be a valuable learning resource.

If you’re an edubuzz blogger and you’d like to embed a YouTube video on your site, just use the toolbar button that’s a yellow circle with a letter “A” on it to paste in the video’s web address and publish as normal.

The views of parents and carers informed the report ‘Evaluation of implementation of the Additional Support for Learning (Scotland) Act’.

You can read the full report of the audit at: http://edubuzz.org/blogs/supportforall/a… or contact Lisa Shine on 01 620 827167 to arrange for a copy of the report to be sent out to you. 2004′

The next stage of this consultation process is to invite parents and carers to tell us what you think are the main areas that we need to improve on and what actions need to be prioritised.

So if you are a parent or carer of a child or young person who receives or needs extra help with learning, we want to hear your views. Please come along to one of these consultation sessions:

Thursday 5th Feb, 6.00 - 7.30pm in Conference Room 1,
John Muir House, Haddington
OR
Weds 18th Feb, 6.00 - 7.30pm in Lounge Room,
Brunton Hall, Musselburgh

If you would like to attend, please contact Morag Steven, Common Ground Mediation on 0131 664 9324 or 07760 486 465 or email: morag@commongroundmediation.co.uk

It would also be helpful to give us any other information you feel we should know including any access, dietary or other requirements prior to the event. If you can’t manage to attend but would still like to have your views included please contact Morag Steven on the number above.

Download “What you think matters” flyer for parents and carers (4.4MB, MS Word)

Download booking forms for interpretation and translation

It was so successful it is now being rolled out across almost all primary and secondary schools in the county.

Pupils used the themes in the game as the basis for art, music, PE and English projects. They then shared their work with children who had come from other primary schools.

They introduced the project to help ease the transition for primary seven pupils moving up to Musselburgh Grammar School. (Link)

You’ll find more on the use of Guitar Hero to provide a context for learning on the Learning & Teaching Scotland ICT in Education site.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific.

It’s used by a wide range of people and organisations, from 10 Downing Street to Stephen Fry to quite a few of the online education community. How might schools use it? Here are some possibilities:

• Use text message Twitter updates to post on-the-spot updates from school trips or visits
• Display the Twitter updates in the sidebar of the school or class blog
• Follow a topical Twitterer - such as Barack Obama - to get news stories faster than radio or TV

Now you can display your latest Twitter updates (or anyone else’s) using a widget on your edubuzz WordPress blog using Rick’s Twitter for WordPress plugin.  Just activate the plugin and configure your Twitter widget(s).