This part is mainly for parents or teachers.
Our site is aimed at giving young people, and any others who wish to join in, more knowledge about the world they inhabit. There is no defined age
range. If pushed, I would say age 5 to 13 but older children can easily use it and the youngest can do so with adult, or older sibling, help.
We want to create,
within those who follow us, an infectious desire to learn. The material we upload can be used in a variety of ways and will, hopefully, encourage people to
actually become part of the whole learning process. There is, however, no specific or prescribed way to make use of our site. We provide the necessary tools
for you to build the learning machine. To be absolutely honest, as one teacher involved in the development of the site said to me, if you can't find parts to
both motivate your pupils and make their learning more fun and also more meaningful, you may be in the wrong profession.
This is the position as at the beginning of August 2020 with information about our future plans.
SECTIONS ALREADY ON THE SITE
THE WORLD
These pages are to introduce our followers to the various countries around the world. They give a brief but interesting introduction to these
countries. Information is geared, in part, to what might interest young people but, for each country, identical topics are covered so comparisons are easy. We use
a lot of statistical date represented in different ways and, as such, it achieves our aim of a cross-curricula project. Children can be encouraged to make
comparisons between countries that we do not and decide how to represent their findings.
Each diagram is uploaded to the site as a jpg file and so can, individually, be saved by the users. This, we hope, makes producing comparative data
not only easier but also a little bit more exciting.
Due to the extra work COVID-19 has given us we will now update all figures in May and June 2021. We would welcome any suggestions with regard to
adding/deleting any categories.
TIMES PAST
England's history has been divided into 24 separate time periods. Within each period, except the first one, there are 3 parts:-
A timeline and narrative, the timeline of which is divided into various calendar years which can be clicked to read more about the events in that year.
A series of hoots, “written” by Owlbut in his own style, and showing everyday life in the chosen period. He covers homes, clothes, food, daily life and culture for each period.
A story about the period, for which we are asking our followers to submit a drawing or picture, the best of which will then appear with the relevant story. Each story has an audio version too.
GET CREATIVE
In this section we have set out various projects that can be done by young people from all over the world. Their finished work will then appear as a
link to a genuine school site.
The projects cater for all age groups and all levels of learners. There are those to be done on your own and those to be done with others, the ones
most likely to be done in a school situation. Two more highly topical projects will be added at the start of January 2021.
Each project has instructions and information on how to submit it plus, where applicable, some examples of work done previously.
With the projects we also want to involve the older generation, apart from me, in our site and one project in particular hopes to achieve this aim.
We are well aware that teachers may need time to integrate these projects into their programmes of work and so we will not upload any projects or links
until September 2021 although there is nothing to stop you putting the work on your own school site before then.
SECTIONS TO BE ADDED BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 2020 AND JULY 2021
EXPLAINING HISTORY AND LOOKING AT THE ENGLISH COUNTIES
In order to maintain some new weekly material on the site each week, we have two new uploads. Each Monday, at 10.00pm GMT, we will add a video podcast
introduction to a separate period of our Times Past section. The uploads will occur chronologically and take into account English school holidays. The dates can be
found here. Once these finish, at the end of April 2021, we will then update the figures for
the countries in the The World section. These will also appear each Monday for seven weeks, continent by continent, starting with Europe, on 10th May 2021.
Then, each Friday at 10.00am GMT, we will upload some information and fun facts about a new county, or set of counties, on our English counties page.
SECTIONS TO BE ADDED BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 2021 AND JULY 2022
A JOURNEY THROUGH ENGLAND - BRINGING GEOGRAPHY ALIVE
From Autumn 2021 until Summer 2022
we will be travelling through England, visiting every county and metropolitan borough. Material gathered from the journey will be uploaded to the site on a
weekly basis. There will be 3 main sections:-
The diary which will be a mixture of text, video and picture, being intended for Key Stage 2 pupils and being a genuine diary record of our journey. It will also cover some parts of the locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography and indeed skills and fieldwork of the KS2 English geography curriculum. Furthermore, one of our projects in the Your Turn section, namely My School, encourages them to observe, measure, record and present the human and physical features of a local area using a range of methods.
Owlbut's blog, produced especially for younger children and having a text and picture record of our week, part of which will allow us to introduce the geographical vocabulary detailed in the human and physical geography part of Key Stage 1 of the curriculum, both physical and human features. By describing the places we visit and using simple compass directions we can also cover some of the geographical skills and fieldwork of the same curriculum. Owlbut will also instigate a discussion topic each week.
Each week we will also cover a wider geography topic, not specific to any particular curriculum. The topics will be announced in due course.
Each week we will also have an audio story about a myth or legend peculiar to that area, a look at how places have changed over the
last 50 or so years, the winners from our limerick competition, as detailed on our club pages and a gallery page of photos we haven't used elsewhere..
It will be a real and exciting journey for children to follow and may inspire them to go out and look more at their own area.
SECTIONS TO BE ADDED FROM SEPTEMBER 2022
A DELAYED JOURNEY THROUGH ENGLAND - BRINGING HISTORY ALIVE
During the course of our 2021-2022 journey we will collect some footage that will be added to various parts of our Times Past sections and
all is revealed in our Journeys Intro section. Sadly History does not happen in a neat geographical order
so, rather than add random pieces each week, we will upload to each part, in a chronological order, starting on September 12th 2021 with the Mesolithic Age and
then weekly, allowing for school holidays, until 20th March 2023, when we will reach our “Into The 21st Century” section. This will effectively allow us
to upload new material to our site each week from September 2021 until March 2023. Oh we have plans for after that too.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland look out. The material collected will be used to:-
ENHANCE THE TIMELINE
During our journey we will film material covering many of the events and places on our timeline. These short videos and some new pictures will then be
uploaded to the site as detailed above.
PICTURES TO VIDEOS IN THE HOOTS SECTION
In a similar way, we will change each picture in our hoots section to a short 5 minute video, once again using material we have gathered from our journey.
This will happen at the same time as the changes to the timeline.
SUMMARY
I believe that by using the medium of travel, you can both regulate and inspire that trait of imagination, so important in understanding history,
by adding some reality to the learning process and as well as thinking how things may have been, see them as they are now.
In olden days, history could come more alive by seeing pictures in a book. That is how many of us learned. Modern technology allows us to take young
people to the site where history happened and to let them view, with a bit of guidance, the environment in which the actual scenes happened and then use their
imagination to improve their knowledge of, and thoughts about, actual events and the lifestyles of the people who lived in that time.
The project will provide the opportunity for those who cannot travel to share in a voyage of discovery and, by mixing generations as well as cultures,
it will also confirm the view of Sir Francis Bacon that travel in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. It will also,
importantly, encourage inquisitive learning. It will not be an encyclopaedic piece of work for as well as answering some questions, it will pose other tantalising
ones for the users to investigate.
It may appear to be more of a fun adventure than a curriculum resource. That is entirely intended. If learning is fun it will also be more enjoyable.
If you feel someone is filming something specially to show you, it will be appreciated far more. What is more you may also feel more inclined to try to produce your
own material, the very point of our projects in the Get Creative section.
I hope that you will encourage your own children, or those for whose learning you have a responsibility, to join in and use the material I have devised
and become a part of their own learning journey too.
