Shetland Islands Council
		Education Department

5-14 Environmental Studies

Project - A Model for National Curriculum Development Using the Internet

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Aim and Objectives of the Project
3. Structure
4. Explanation of Structure
5. Communicating with the Project
6. Credits
7. 5-14 Environmental Studies

Introduction

This is a project which develops a 5-14 Environmental Studies Curriculum Package in the format of World Wide Web pages.

It comprises the Key Features detailed in Section 2 of the original official report and a definition of pupil learning outcomes appropriate to each key feature.

Crown copyright material from the Curriculum and Assessment in Scotland National Guidelines Environmental Studies 5-14 has been reproduced under licence from the Controller of her Majesty's Stationery Office.

Permitted Uses of that material

End-Users may access the Material and download it onto electronic, magnetic, optical or similar storage media provided that such activities are for private research, study or in-house use only.

Restricted uses of that material

End-Users must not copy, distribute, sell or publish the Material.

The task of defining the pupil learning outcomes was undertaken by Shetland teachers and advisers and led to the production of a substantial volume of documentation which currently comprises the largest component of this presentation.

The complete resulting package has been converted into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML or WWW pages). The reasons for doing this were to try and reduce usage of paper and to simplify both the updating and navigation of the information.

The next stage is to add WWW pages of activities relating to each learning outcome. These pages can be teachers' and pupils' notes, with assessment and extension material.

The project is in its infancy and obviously the latter stage will take a large amount of effort in terms of researching, writing, editing, collating and finally converting to WWW page format.

This leads to what is, perhaps, the most important reason for the project. The WWW format of the package provides us with a way of developing the curriculum further on a national basis using the Internet and its accompanying e-mail facilities.

Publishing the converted 5-14 Environmental Studies package (in its present state of development) on the Internet as we have done here will (in theory) allow teachers with Internet access to monitor, debate and contribute material to that package if they wish to.

Obviously, this is an over-simplification as there are many issues arising such as:

1. would contributions require moderation? If so...
2. who would moderate them and how?
3. how to reach and involve those teachers who lack the necessary skills and/or facilities to access the Internet i.e. the majority at present?
4. in view of the above and telephone costs, would it be worth transposing it onto CDROM format and issuing it to all schools periodically (as an off-line version)?
5. copyright and ownership.

and doubtless there are many more.

However, we feel that the whole idea is worth further consideration and this is the reason we have "gone live" on the Internet, i.e. to provide an exemplar that, hopefully, may stimulate that consideration and discussion.

The idea has been framed in the context 5-14 Environmental Studies package only because the latter has been partially developed and thus far, has proven to be feasible in principle at least. This approach to curriculum development is transferrable to Higher Still even though the scale is an order of magnitude greater but now would be the time to consider it. At least the Draft Frameworks have been produced in Acrobat format. It shouldn't be too difficult to convert to HTML.

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Project Aim and Objectives

Aim

To present a functioning exemplar of a model for national curriculum development using the Internet

Objectives

1. To provide a paperless easily navigated repository of 5-14 Environmental Studies curriculum material that can be readily accessed and used by teachers to review, select, produce and amend course material appropriate to their needs.
2. To provide a mechanism that will allow that repository to grow to cover the above needs of the majority of teachers irrespective of Regional constraints.
3. To provide a mechanism whereby the currency of that material can be readily maintained to the consensus of the majority of teachers using it.

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Explanation of Structure

The diagram should be largely self-explanatory.

This page is the Homepage which is basically an introduction and explanation of the package. The Project proper starts on the page below and this provides a "jumping off" point to whichever section of document the user wishes to review.

The level below comprises the pages which list the key features for each subject area as detailed in the original report. At this level the user is able to move to the learning outcomes that relate to a key feature which is of particular interest. This is achieved by clicking on the appropriate learning outcome icon ..

This will take the user to the set of learning outcomes that correspond to the parent key feature.

Although not yet completely defined in every case, the user should observe that for each learning outcome there should be a short statement or statements each indicating an activity for pupils which, once completed, should lead to the pupil being able to achieve the learning outcome in question. Eventually, each one of these brief statements should be expandable into local documentation (see below). That is the whole point of the project - to collect enough suitable material that is acceptable and useful to, easily accessible by, and which provides a choice for teachers.

Once at learning outcomes level, in general there could be four possible routes to follow:

• A topic thread whereby there is a highlighted word or topic that also occurs in other locations somewhere in this level and the same age group . Invariably these occur in other subject areas. All threads are circular and continued selection will bring the user back to the starting point.
• A local document link represented by the icon..

  A local document is one whereby activities corresponding to the brief parent statement is expanded into what can be teachers' and pupils' notes, with assessment and extension material.

  These can be browsed, saved or printed out as required.

• A link to a reference to published material represented by the icon...

  The reference is for published material in any format e.g. book, video, radio programme, software, CD-ROM etc. that covers the scope of the learning outcome with which it is associated.

  Publishers are invited to nominate their material where they consider it to be relevant (see Communicating with the Project for details).

• A live link to an Internet page represented by the icon..

  These will take the user to a WWW page somewhere on the Internet which has information relevant to the learning outcome in question. Invariably there will be additional pages linked to the entry page which would be worth exploring.

  This information, if considered suitable, could be saved for local use giving due regard to copyright restrictions if applicable.

  There is an off-line version of this project and some WWW pages have been captured and added to simulate the on-line feature.

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Communicating with the Project

We would be very pleased to receive feedback on the project from any sector whatsoever.

The form of the feed back can be about any aspect but possible categories are given below:

1. Comment on the aims and objectives of the project and how realistic they are in terms of the model.
2. What problems can be anticipated and possible solutions.
3. WWW sites appropriate to the learning outcomes and corresponding age group.
4. Curricular material that is either copyright free or permission to reproduce has been granted (hardcopy evidence would be required). The source and authorship of the material will be acknowledged automatically .
5. References to relevant published material that fulfills the same role as the items 3 and 4 above.
6. Any errors e.g. typing, omissions etc. and any improvements that might be incorporated.
7. General comment such as whether it would be worth setting up a newsgroup to collect all correspondence together.

If material is submitted under items 3, 4 and 5 please state clearly the path to the point where it is to be inserted e.g.

• Science/Earth and Space/P3-4/On Planet Earth/changes in environment related to seasons/observe and record the changes related to the seasons

Please send submissions to:

John Pedley - Adviser for Science and Technology
Shetland Education Department
Gremista
Lerwick
Shetland ZE1 0PX

Telephone (Work) 01595744326 Fax 01595692810 (Home) 01595870281
E-mail: john.pedley@zetnet.co.uk Compuserve: 100432,2613

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Credits

We wish to acknowledge the the debt due to the various groups that were involved in producing the material thus far. These groups were as follows:

Environmental Studies 5-14 Co-ordinating Group

5-14 IT Group

5-14 Science Group

5-14 Health Group

5-14 Technology Group

Adviser Support

The conversion of the documentation to HTML format and the adding of some exemplar material was done by John Pedley

The Key Features as defined in Section 2 of the 5-14 Environmental Studies Guidelines are reproduced by kind permission of HMSO and in so doing their copyright and ownership of the material are not affected. (See also their copyright statement included in the introductory section of this document)

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