Category Archives: CULTURE

“Our Town Stories (Edinburgh)” Number 1 choice

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Next to Bobby – with my Dad

I have just discovered an absolutely fascinating website http://www.ourtownstories.co.uk/ exploring Edinburgh’s history through Stories, Images and Historical Maps from Edinburgh Libraries.

Ideas for activities:

 “Greyfriars Bobby trail” – learners can do it independently in class or at home. They can read the story page by page. Every page features a picture/pictures of Edinburgh from the 19th century shown simultaneously on the Google map plus pictures of people involved in the story.  My favourite is the one showing Bobby sitting on the chair beside the kids of Mr Traill, who kept feeding and looking after him till Bobby’s death.  http://www.ourtownstories.co.uk/#page1 There are other stories including stories of remarkable women from Edinburgh or Robert Luis Stevenson.

“Now and Then” – by moving a slide learners can compare images of the same place from now and fifteen decades ago. Excellent for compare and contrast activity.

Stories, timelines, images, you names it – everything working perfectly well provided that you have the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari.

World Religion Day – 21 January 2013

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21 January is the World Religion 2013 Day. As stated on the Education Scotland website, “the aim of World Religion Day, (…) is to promote inter-faith understanding and harmony.” My NC 4 ESOL for Employability students are preparing a collaborative project on different religions using resources from http://www.worldreligionday.org/

I am also going to use the three beautiful interactive resources from http://www.bl.uk/learning/cult/sacredbooks/sacredintro.html. The 1st one “Sacred texts” allows you to read and listen stories from Buddhist, Muslim or Christian texts. You can explore twelve animated stories from six different religions. The 2nd, animated site as well, lets you investigate a range of religion or faith issues from the perspective of faith leaders, educators, young people, theologians and an atheist philosopher. Finally, the 3rd one “provides background and contextual information for each of the abrahamic faiths”.  This can be done in class or can be set up as a self-study activity.

All the copyrights rules are described on http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/terms/copyright/index.html  in case you want to publish/copy any material.