Historic Environment Scotland (HES) is launching a free online educational resource to help support home educators and learners during the Coronavirus lockdown – including free access to its Scran website featuring around 400,000 archive images and materials.
The HES Learning programme helps people at all stages of their lifelong learning journey access HES sites, with archives and digital resources available for a wide range of learning purposes. In the last year HES engaged with over 128,000 learners through a range of access schemes and programmes, including self-led site visits and on-site and outreach activities in school and community venues.
Building on the success of its existing learning programme, Learn at Home is a new initiative from HES in response to the current situation whilst schools remain closed. It will allow the national heritage body to support educators and parents by providing free access to digital resources through its website.
Suitable for learners of all ages, the Learn at Home resources include: games to play, Gaelic learning, art activities, crafts to make, recipes to try and educational videos to watch. Users can also choose to dive into the ‘Investigate’ section to explore historic sites and topics in more depth.
To ensure these resources are now easily accessible to all, a special area has been created on the learn section of the HES website that will gather regularly updated digital content from across the organisation and provide links to further information.
To further help and enable learning from home during this period, access to the HES Scran website has been made free for the next three months. This online database – accessible at Scran.ac.uk – features over 400,000 images, film and audio files from archives, galleries and museums across Scotland and the UK. These resources are browsable by topic and linked to the Curriculum for Excellence in over 600 educational Pathfinder packs.
Teachers working from home can continue with existing access routes or by registering here. Home educators and parents can also get in touch via archives@hes.scot for access.
As part of the new venture HES will use the hashtag #LearningWithHES across its social media channels to help inspire and support educators and those learning at home as well as addressing queries from learners.
Craig Fletcher, Senor Learning Manager at HES said “Throughout this strange and stressful time, we know it can be a challenge to keep children entertained and a struggle to be productive indoors.
“With this in mind, we wanted to help in whatever way we could, using heritage themed materials, to support and inspire educators, parent, and learners. So, we’ve created a new online learning portal with digital resources that are easily accessible and updated regularly. Our goal is that these will be useful tools for anyone learning at home or looking for something different to do.”
He went on: “These resources will allow us to engage with audiences and provide new fun ways for everyone to learn and connect with Scotland’s historic environment from the safety of their home.”
More information on Learning with HES can be found here
