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No updates for a wee while. No moderating/publishing of comments. The homepage team of two are on holiday for the week.

Well, half on holiday - the homepage Assistant Producer is away to Islay for the week and the site Producer is at in San Antonio.

Friend of Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Scotland Learning, Ewan McIntosh is there too - watch for any updates on .

Become an award winning film maker with CÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's me and my movie, in association with BAFTA.

The CÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú me and my movie website provides an original 3D online space where children can upload their film entries, download a free film-making resource pack, access copyright free music clips and have their first experience of editing using the special mash-up tool.

For children who would like to try their hand at movie-making, free workshops will be taking place in Glasgow on 15, 16 and 22, 23 July. Sign up at the website.

If you're aged 6 to 14, get thinking and filming now, and let Ewan know if you're getting creative this summer. BAFTA competition entries are due in by October.

would like your help in selecting the "" to appear on a special edition of the programme on 10 July.

Applicants aged 18-21 years were asked to send in a mobile phone video clip explaining why they would like to appear on . and .

As 700,000 children head into six weeks of Scottish summer, finding any and every opportunity to get back online, are you ready to dive in and see exactly what they're doing?

One could argue that it's the first time a veritable deluge of research can be found on what British tweens and teens do online, after a series of high profile research launches throughout Spring. If you have a passion for reading over 400 pages of the stuff, be my guest. I did and have lived to tell the tale, and the tale is indeed a fascinating one, providing plenty of ammunition the next time I hear from yet another keynote speaker how 'creative' our young people are online, and how much more 'digitally native' they are than us old crusties (yes, at 30 I am considered already rather crusty already by the followers of Marc Prensky's brigade).

Don't get me wrong: children can be and often are incredibly creative, particularly in school with an enigmatic teacher and clear learning goals. After a year spent in and out of primary schools in East Lothian I was ready to get my transfer to teach with those students. Without wanting to malign my delightful secondary students, who have exhibited spurts of creative passion of which Sir Alan would be proud, I had come to the same conclusion as Sir Ken Robinson made in his 2005 Scottish Learning Festival keynote: somewhere along their school careers children have every last ounce of creativity knocked out of them. Though I'm sure it was never in S2 French with Mr McIntosh.

Robinson's was a brash statement for some, probably the same teachers who will be angered to know that he still makes the point in speeches today (a keynoter's way of telling us all: "could do better"). , probably the world's most hankered after conference by and for really clever people, which is why you probably want a $6000 ticket out of next year's professional development budget, have published which has now been viewed millions of times, on every continent, and continually pops up the educational blogosphere, with ever-more desperation and enthusiasm in equal measure to "do something about the creativity problem" in our schools.

With such a worldwide uprising calling for more creativity, whatever it looks like, are all those keynote speakers, whom we can expect at this year's in America, the in September and in January next year, just plain wrong? Like teens around the world, apparently, are Scottish kids actually, well... really dull?

suggests that online creativity is, in fact, quite limited. It's limited to mostly girls, mostly through social networks. Creating a profile, uploading a picture, leaving comments on your mates' profiles... that's about as creative as the average British teen gets. Making a movie on a mobile phone or camcorder, publishing whole photo albums or writing on a blog all strike a creative chord with less than a fifth of our teens. It's long confirmed what I've witnessed in thousands of Bebo profiles, and what is suggesting: social networks are used for coordinating activity (read: nights out, skipping a lesson, gossiping about Jane and her new beau), rather than anything particularly creative.

But before we go and pull the plug on our kids' net access this summer, here's the caveat: what did youngsters do in their summer holidays three years ago, before social networks existed? What about 30 years ago? Or 50?

I'm not convinced that we were all painting, creating wicker baskets or painting blown out eggs (the latter reserved for really rainy days in Dunoon, circa 1983). I have a hunch that all this creativity - or lack of it - is relative. What I remember of summers at home back then was going for walks, playing football and, yes, playing Jet Set Willy and Horace Goes Skiing on the ZX Spectrum. Football and walks would entertain me (just) for a few hours. Computer games kept me going all day (and into the evening when it was too light to sleep). I wasn't alone - all my friends did the same, boys and girls. We even coded our own things on the Spectrum, and later created printed documents on the first Apple Macs to hit our neighbourhood.

So what's the difference between those who play creatively and those who don't? I'm not going to try to answer that yet, but I like that Stephen Heppell has started to push again and again. It's not creativity that's important - we can all "be creative". Rather, that we should be concentrating on. Sounds great, but how on earth are you going to teach it in the last week of term?

The research reports:

A summary of all four reports will be published on Learning and Teaching Scotland's this summer.

Comments

I think we certainly achieved your aim today Ewan with a Global Citizenship Day! Tomorrow Euro '08 day. I also returned home to find my son designed a computer game on paper today called 'Doggie Island'. I particularly liked the golden kibble reward pile! No basket weaving for us this summer! :-)
Lynne
Tue Jun 24 22:37:42 2008

Listen again to today's Radio Scotland programme The Computer that Changed our Future - a review of the accuracy of Jiig-Cal, the 80s computerised career search. How many people followed its advice?

Tinker, tailor - cabinet-maker? In the 1980s thousands of school children all over Scotland filled out a questionnaire which promised to reveal their destinies. Their answers were sent in a sealed van to Edinburgh University and fed into a computer which revealed what their career path would be, with some surprising results. Twenty years later we discover how many people followed Jiig-Cal's advice.

Read more about on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Scotland news website.

In case you're wondering, Jiig-Cal stands for Job Ideas & Information Generator - Computer Assisted Learning. Well, there you go.

Listen Here! is four days of seven free concerts from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Scottish Symphony Orchestra, from 19 to 22 June at Glasgow's City Halls.

Listen Here! concludes on Sunday 22 June with two matinee performances of the multimedia extravaganza, Our Planet.

CÂ鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's Kirsten O'Brien and Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Scotland's 'Heather the Weather' join the SSO for an engaging mix of music, science and interactive visuals from around the world, illustrating the geography, science and nature that make up our planet.

Featuring Holst's Mars from The Planets, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and Gershwin's An American in Paris.

On the iPlayer right now is last night's Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Four programme What Happened Next? Kingswood: A Comprehensive School.

The programme revisits the school in Corby, Northamptonshire, where a groundbreaking 1982 documentary series followed staff and pupils for a unique view of life in a secondary school.

Aged 13-19? Sign up for free workshops in tv, radio and more. Blast will be in Glasgow's George Square from Wednesday 18th till Saturday 21st.

Also on Saturday is the launch of Blast Film Live at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Have a look at video highlights, animations and photos of Blast on Tour last year from Glasgow and Dundee

The Blast truck will be making its way to Inverness in July.

New look website
We've given our Homepage a fresh new look. If there's anything you particularly dislike, please let us know, though it's always nice to hear words of encouragement too - it's a growing, changing site so if you get lost or can't find what you're looking for, get in touch.

We've got a bit of tidying up to do too, and we've got additions/modifications we want to make already.

Our main addition is this News & Views section. This consists of a monthly column from Ewan McIntosh, with a view and opinion on the growing world of technology in education and how it can benefit learning and teaching. We've also got the main Education headlines from Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú News. We'll also be bringing you appropriate headlines from Scottish news, Technology news, website launches, things to listen out for Radio Scotland, things to catch on the iPlayer - basically everything that we find from across the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú that we think would be useful for teachers, parents and learners in Scotland.

Future developments
We're going to be adding to the site all the time. A Creative Toolkit will be heading your way, with tools, tips and techniques to help you learn - more about this in the coming months. Our goal is to provide easy access to the best Learning content from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú, all from a Scottish perspective.

We have grand plans for adding to our content over time, keeping it flexible - responding to what you want. So please do get in touch.

Next Newsletter
That's all for now - a short one this month. Keep up to date with our developments by visiting the Updates page (RSS feed coming soon)- we'll bring the main headlines and site launches and news of upcoming launches in our next monthly Newsletter.

How to Subscribe
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The Breathing Places SWAT team is coming to a site near you this weekend.

On 8th June, Springwatch Action Teams will help transform outdoor spaces into Breathing Places for people and wildlife. Pick the place nearest you and get involved:

Aberdeen, Fife, Glasgow, Stirling

A panel of childhood experts try to determine if childhood in Britain really is in crisis.

A Revolution in Childhood is on the iPlayer right now, following 48 hours in the life of 22 British children.

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Scotland News reports on the , and the proposed for fifth and sixth year.

Apprentice lessons: .

No spoilers here - The interview episode from last night is available for next six days on the iPlayer, as is the interview aftermath in Apprentice: You're Fired.

World Environment Day is commemorated every year on 5th June.

Our colleagues at Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Schools have a page introducing the day for turning your mind to green issues, though it'd be the website you'd be after, rather than the England-based version they link to.

If it's a hot topic at primary school, have a look at our for 7-9 years olds which asks, "Are you Eco-Friendly?"

Find out more about World Environment Day on the website, including ideas for .