Changes are on the Horizon for the curriculum in Wales, and People’s Collection Wales have updated the learning pages to help teachers rise to the challenge.

The Digital Competence Framework

Teaching will become much more cross-curicular, with more emphasis on getting children and Young people ready fo the future by developing abilities to learn new skills, and using Information effectively and creatively.

One of the big changes is the introduction of the Digital Competence Framework. The Framework aims to develop not only digital creating skills, but also planning and evaluating which are valuable skills across the board, and recognises the role of digital media in our lives today.

The framework is made up of several strands. As well as planning and evaluating, interacting and collaborating and producing, there are citizenship and computational thinking strands. These two elements are a cause for concern for some teachers, as they involve coding and problem solving as well as copyright and being responsible online.

Using People’s Collection Wales

The new pages aim to help teachers with all strands within the Digital Competence Framework. We’ve also created help pages for thoes elements that teachers ar less confident with.

Thre is also help and examples for creating projects, to develop many skills within the Digital Competence Framework, by planning, producing and evaluating.

Creating Content and Developing Skills

Schools can create Accounts for their classes, and then use digital skills to create content for a global audience.

Content can be images, documents and videos, or a story that can include all these and a large body of text to add more detail. Another content type is trails, where content can be plotted on a map to create a digital trail to tell a story.

Prreparing and researching, using digital skills and programmes to produce content uses many skills within the Framework, especially if the clas evaluates the work afterwards.

Find Resources and Develop Skills Further

The teaching packs have also changes, here is an example. There are lots of resources on the website, but they are now packaged differently. The new packs are laid out better, with links straight to colelctions on the website.

Also, there are additional digital tasks with the Digital Competence Framework in mind.

People’s Collection Wales is a website for everyone, connecting hte people of Wales and the world with Welsh heritage and culture. For teachers, it is not just a resource bank, it is now a useful tool to develop and use digital skills in the classroom.

Arrange training for your school

Are you a school with interest in training on using the website to contribute content, discover resources and develop skills within the Digital Competence Framework? Contact us via the website for more Information.

 

Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales and The Saving Treasures; Telling Stories Project have teamed up with the University of South Wales and students on the journalism course.

Working in the Archaeology and Communications departments, using their media and journalistic knowledge, the students will be bringing to life significant archaeological discoveries and telling the stories behind the items and the people who found them. There will be a series of two week work placements from a variety of students.

Here’s what our most recent students had to say about their time working on Saving Treasures; Telling Stories:

Our experience working on Saving Treasures; Telling Stories Project

Coming from a journalism background we were anticipating our placement with the Saving Treasures; Telling Stories project and had a lot of questions of what to expect.

What is Archaeology?

What do Archaeologists do?

And what is the Saving Treasures Project?

On our first day Rhianydd, Mark, Adam and the rest of the team were more than welcoming which is always reassuring when on a work placement. They spent the day showing us some mesmerising objects found during archaeological excavations or by metal detectorists and then teaching us everything we needed to know (which wasn’t easy as there are a lot to remember!) It was fascinating for us to begin to understand objects dating back thousands of years ago and their significance to our lives at present.

Here is where the fun started.

What we did

The rest of our first week we travelled around South Wales to places such as Swansea and Brecon to start recording our interviews about some of the most recently discovered objects.

It was a gloomy and rainy Tuesday but nevertheless we travelled to Brecon to meet with Nigel Blackamore and the team at Brecknock Museum (they even gave us biscuits!) who let us spend the day interviewing in their library.

We interviewed a local metal detectorist as well as a married couple who, over forty years ago, found a dagger in Swansea Bay and have kept it ever since for good luck and as a symbol of their relationship. An earlier blog about the Swansea Bay dagger can be found here.

We also spoke to Nigel about the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the future of museums; as a journalist it’s all about telling stories and getting important information to the public.

Roqib also had the chance of fulfilling a lifetime dream of holding a metal detector. (He was really excited).

Our student journalist, Roqib, is happy to give metal detecting a go.

Putting our journalism skills to work

On the Wednesday we went to Swansea Museum to meet with Emma Williams and Phil Treseder about Swansea’s involvement with the Saving Treasures Project and what their aims are for the future of Swansea Museum. We also interviewed collector Geoff Archer, who recently found a very rare Bronze Age mould for making axe heads.

To spend the week interviewing people who are so passionate about preserving the archaeology and heritage of South Wales for future generations, in whatever form they can, was an honour and a privilege and certainly put our journalistic interview techniques to the test.

Over the following week we were able to edit the interviews and write our articles with the overlooking expertise of Catrin Taylor and the Communications department; again linking in our journalism skills to help tell the stories of the people and objects.

A thank you from us

We’ve had a wonderful and insightful two weeks and we’ve met some incredible people during this time. The support we’ve received to create the best possible content has been outstanding and we now know what archaeology is, what an archaeologist does and what the Saving Treasures Project is!

We can’t wait to continue to work closely with the Saving Treasures, Telling Stories project and follow its success until 2019. Thank you to everyone who we have met and worked with!

@A_Dickinson_

@MonsurMedia

Scanning a rodent skull using the 3D scanner

Working on the collections in the Natural Sciences Department of the National Museum Wales can be both enlightening and complex. Visiting from Bangor University for a week in Cardiff, we were involved with work in the invertebrate biodiversity section, in particular with bivalves and polychaetes. We were very privileged to gain lots of laboratory skills during this process and undertook a huge variety of tasks!

Worm hunting

We were got down to business with sorting a benthic survey sample from 2013 into Polychaeta, Mollusca, Crustacea and Echinodermata by investigating samples under the microscope. To our amazement, we found a big diversity of species just within the samples we looked through, finding everything from bristle worms to isopods! Later in the week we also took on the challenge of trying to identify the polychaete species we found, with some kind help from Teresa. Whilst it was challenging at first, we all became much better by the end and even managed to identify some just by their tails! Teresa also kindly showed us how polychaetes are photographed for publication and identification guides, which was very interesting – it takes a lot of patience and is quite fiddly but the final results are incredible!

A Serpulidae worm that we liberated from its rock!

Another aspect of the laboratory work included sorting some live polychaete samples brought in by Andy from a recent survey. This included smashing up some of the rocks to get to all the invertebrates hiding inside, a bit like cracking an Easter egg open! One of the most stunning specimens we found was of a Serpulidae worm, which at first was curled up with just the operculum visible, but after waiting patiently it uncurled into a beautiful fan-like structure!

 

Ensis - razor clams - from the Mollusca collections

Molluscs

Our work with bivalves began by sorting a collection donated by CCW - Countryside Council for Wales (now Natural Resources Wales) - originally collected by Bangor University back in the 50’s, and inputting the collection details onto the museum's digital database. However, obstacles were met along the way: some sections contained more than one label indicating that more than one species were in the same container, as well as the same species all from different places! But Anna kindly trained us up so we were able to organise shells into the correct species groups and off we went!  We sorted some beautiful shells, including razor clams! For some specimens, a light microscope was needed in order to see the most important features for identification. By using the British Bivalves online database, created by museum staff, we were able to ensure that the names of the shells were up to date.

While there we had an explore around the collection and came across some stunning shells, including a huge Triton shell, which is from a species of sea snail that preys on Crown-of-Thorns starfish! The mollusc collection at the museum contains lots of other shell bearing creatures such as limpets and snail-like shells, as well as books on molluscs dating all the way back to the 17th century that contain a wealth of knowledge, and are stored in a glass bookcase to protect them from the environment.

Chiselling rocks to find burrowing worms and bivalves

While the hands-on science occupied the majority of our time at the museum, we also got to explore the treasure trove of wonderful collections that is the Natural Sciences Department of the National Museum Wales. We started off with a behind the scenes tour of a variety of collections, from some containing thousands of shells to others with all the bee species in Britain! We can definitely say we never knew there were so many different species! We slowly explored a snippet of the wonders the museum holds, and the knowledge available from the specimens kept there and the staff who care for them (our 11 o’clock coffee breaks were a great time to discuss the ins and outs of curating a collection with museum staff, from seaweed – which you can press just like a flower! - to penguins and of course, worms!).

 

 

3D printing

Scanning a rodent skull using the 3D scanner

Our adventures behind the scenes didn’t stop there! While working on the collections we were lucky enough to have a go at 3D printing, which is a mesmerising process to behold. In addition to the printing we witnessed how the fantastic images you see on display in the museum gallery and within books and papers from the staff are created. A fine art of patience and care creates beautiful imagery of amazing detail. Our time at the museum was spent just prior to Christmas allowing us to join the wonderful museum carol service, which was held in the main hall and made up of members of the museum staff, all with amazing voices. As for Cardiff, it was our first time in this vibrant city for all three of us; the foods in Cardiff market are amazing and some of the restaurants are a must go – and of course ice skating in front of the beautiful collection of buildings, one of which is the museum (we didn’t fall over either)! 

 

The week we spent with the museum has given us an insight into how the amazing collections on display are put together, as well as gaining some hands-on science experience, and we will hopefully return again soon!

The printed result of the 3D scan!

‘The most beautiful work of art’ - the Eisteddfod chair

In the Rhondda Fawr on Good Friday, April 10th 1903, the fifth Blaenclydach Chair Eisteddfod was held in the village’s Gosen Chapel.

Seventeen competitors took part in the ‘best poetical competition’, the prize being £1.11.6d and a handsome chair (The Rhondda Leader described it as ‘the most beautiful work of art’) given by Mr Joseph Jones of Blaenclydach. The competitors’ task was to write 120 lines on the subject of ‘Adgof’ (memory or reminiscence) and the adjudicator was Ap Ionawr of Llansamlet.

The competition was won by ‘Esyllwg’ (the ancient name for south-east Wales), the bardic name of Thomas Jones, a thirty year old collier from Mountain Ash. The Aberdare Leader announced that ‘… the first chaired bard of Mountain Ash is a young man with a promising career’ and went on to say that ‘it is intended to have a repetition of the chairing ceremony at Bethania Hall (Mountain Ash) sometime next month.’ Sadly, that ceremony never took place.

Thomas’s father, David Thomas Jones, was born in Brynaman in 1846 and came to work in Nixon’s Navigation Colliery in Mountain Ash. ‘Esyllwg’ followed his father into the colliery but was also well known as a teacher of Welsh classes in the Science and Art Department of the Continuation School at Mountain Ash, a faithful member of Bethania Welsh Congregational Chapel and a member of the Caegarw String Band.

Bethania Chapel, Mountain Ash

Soar Chapel, Mountain Ash

Thomas Jones' memorial stone

Thomas Jones

Esyllwg's Accident

On the 4th May, almost a month after his Eisteddfod success, Thomas was working in the 2’9” seam of Deep Duffryn Colliery when he was killed under a fall of roof. His Majesty’s Inspector of Mines Inspector’s Report for 1903 describes the incident as follows:-

“Fall of roof: no.42, Thomas Jones, 30, collier, 4 May 1903, 12.30pm, Deep Duffryn Colliery, Glamorgan, Nixon’s Navigation Co Ltd. “At face, cliff, 10 ft. by 4ft 8 ins. by 44 ins. thick. Deceased wanted to get this stone down, so commenced knocking the props out from under it, and, when he knocked out the last, the fall occurred. Its falling so suddenly was due to a “false slip” in the roof, which could not be seen previous to the fall. Two feet nine seam.”

The Aberdare Leader for the 9th May 1903 announced the death under the headline “Esyllwg’s Sad Fate” and described him as “The sweet singer of Pennar”. The article ends “The blighting of a budding genius by the grim hand of death is always distressing, but the tragic circumstances make the demise of our friend doubly pathetic. His relatives are the objects of the most sincere sympathy.”

In 1904 Thomas Jones’s sister Claudia dedicated a memorial stone on the outside wall of the, then, newly-built Soar Chapel in High Street, Mountain Ash. Although disused the chapel is still there but the stone is now so worn as to be almost unreadable.

The chair is now in the coal mining collection of Amgueddfa Cymru: National Museum Wales.

Poem of Remembrance

'Pryddest Goffadwriaethol' - Poem of Remembrance from his funeral.

Hi Bulb buddies,

I hope you had a lovely half term. We’ve had our first flower records in! Spring is really on the way now, with flowers in bloom! Please send in photos of your plants, your weather stations and any signs of spring!

I want to let you know about new teaching resources being launched through People’s Collection Wales. Peoples Collection Wales is a project and website funded by the Welsh Government and run in partnership between National Museum Wales, The National Library and The Royal Commission. The website is a platform for documenting the history of Wales and Welsh people. The site is a public resource, to which anyone can contribute, resulting in new items and previously unheard stories being shared for the first time.

The new Learn pages cater for teachers, providing clear guidelines on how to utilise the website to support the emerging Digital Competence Framework (DCF). There are help pages offering additional support around copyright, metadata and DCF. There are numerous ready-to-go teaching packs focussed on subjects that support the Welsh Curriculum. The extensive materials available for research enable different levels of engagement with the site, and the variety of media utilised ensures the content is varied and engaging.

Contributors to the site vary from Museums and National archives uploading their digitised collections, to individuals uploading their family histories and schools sharing projects they have produced in class.

The website itself is a fantastic resource for schools, and has been utilised to support of a variety of class projects. Here are some ideas on how your class could develop digital skills through utilising this site:

• Use the site to research topics such as local history or famous Welsh people.
• Create a profile so that your class can showcase their work by creating favourite lists and uploading items to create collections, stories and trails.
• Upload your own teaching resources or learning plans to make the material available to others.
• Explore the learn pages for innovative and engaging teaching resources that utilise the online material.
• Check in to see what other schools have produced and be inspired.

Read our guidelines for approaching the Digital Competency Framework, and how engagement in the above activities meets this criteria.

Be inventive, there are a wealth of innovative ways to embrace digital media in the classroom. Let your class take the lead and put the material available on Peoples Collection Wales through its paces. There’s so much opportunity to be creative, and we’re excited to see what you come up with!

Training and support is available, please contact a member of the team if you’d like additional support or would like to suggest a collaborative project with Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales.

Llanharan Primary, who have participated in the Spring Bulbs for Schools Project since 2014, have produced a fantastic audio trail of their local area: https://www.peoplescollection.wales/collections/384915

Keep up the good work Bulb Buddies!

Professor Plant