ICT in the Scottish school

The school in Scotland which i visited belonged to a very pure area of the town. Despite that the school had invesigated a lot in ICT and the school building was built just a couple of years ago. I think this is very positive. The first day I was visiting the school I wondered if the teachers really used the Activeboards which could be found in every single classroom. But the teachers really did use their Activeboards active. Me and my friends visited almost every class in the school from the nursery up to Primary seven (I think) and every single teacher was using the Activeboard active during their lessons. In the nursery the pupils were aloud to play games at the activeboard with easy counting games or listening to songs (when they were choosing to listen to a song they all sang with). So, despite that the school was a bit pure, they had investigated a lot in ICT. Every classroom had one Activeboard and at least one computer from Apple. The school also had their own computer room where the teachers could reserve for lessons where the pupils was in need of their own computer.

A classroom with a white board to the right and an Activeboard to the left

Two children in the nursery is playing a game at the Activeboard

A sunday in Edinburgh

We woke up at Sunday morning and went to a coffee house for some brunch. The sun was shining but it was cold so we had a good time in the coffee house looking out to the sun. I ate a hot sandwich with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and basil. I had a pot of tee and for dessert a very yummy chocolate muffin. 

After the brunch we went to the park. We found a free bench and sat down, waiting for the time to pass by. The sun was warming our faces so we had a good time. In the picture you can see our new shoes that we bought for half the price compared to the Swedish price.

We got to the central station to pick up all our bags because soon the train was leaving.

This is a Scottish train ticket! You needed to put it in a machine for the doors to the platform to open and you also needed your ticket when you were arriving to your destination because without your train ticket you could not get out of the doors to the platform. 

Then we arrived to Kilmarnock where we stayed for five days before we went back to Edinburgh or/and Glasgow. 

Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh

 

Before we went to Scotland me and Linn was talking about what we thought about Scotland. Both of us had heard that it was a beautiful country, but despite that both of us had almost the same picture in our heads. We saw a picture of a Scotland which was gray, boring and empty of people. But we were totally wrong! Especially about Edinburgh, which I now can say is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. I used to call Copenhagen the best city, because I have some beautiful memories therefrom. But now I can say that Edinburgh share the first place with Copenhagen. I think and hope I will return there someday.

Our first night in Edinburgh we went out for a walk and we stopped to see some very interesting shopwindows.

I know this isn't the best picture but this is a tree made of pencils

A dress made of clothes-pins

 

 

 

 

Snack time or Fruit moment

It seems like there are some differences between healthiness in the schools in Scotland and the schools in Sweden. I am going to tell you about one difference, and it is about the thing we in Sweden calls "frukstund". This is a moment between breakfast and lunch where the pupils (in Sweden) are aloud to eat a fruit or maybe a sandwich. The school I visited in Scotland had the same system as the schools in Sweden, but they called it snack time. The biggest difference between fruit time and snack time you can tell only by reading the two names of it: fruit time and snack time. The first day I visited the Scottish school the teacher said it was snack time I thought it was the same as in Sweden. But I almost got a chock! Because almost every student grabbed their school bag and took out tiny bags of snacks, crisps or candy. And the pupils who didn't bought a milk packet from their teacher drank lemonade. In Sweden the pupils are not aloud to bring snacks to school so this was a bit different.

But later on it showed that the teachers did try to make some difference to the pupils healthiness. After my week in the school I saw a whole different systems of how the teachers tried to motivate their pupils to bring fruit, water or buy milk instead of snacks or lemonade. One system for this which I liked a lot was that the teacher had a big paper with each pupils name on it. Every day when it was time for snack time she noted down a dot for each student who had brought anything healthy. One pupil could have maximum three dots per day; one for fruit, one for water and one for milk. At the end of this month the dots should be counted and the pupil with most dots should win a little price.

The pupils could buy milk cartons from their teachers at snack time

Hi!

Hi!

Yesterday afternoon we arrived to Kilmarnock from Edinburgh by train. At the train station the woman who we are staying with picked us up. Her name is Edith. She drove us to her house and we were unpacking our bags. Then she took us on a ride to show us Kilmarnock. Kilmarnock is a town with about 65000 inhabitants. She showed us the school, Grange Campus, which is a very big school with about 2000 pupils. In the evening she cooked us some food. It was very good. For an appetizer we were having some melon, clementins and raspberrys. Then we ate some chicken, potatoes and cooked root vegetables. This was the head dish and it was really good. I definitely think it was the best meal I’ve had since I left Sweden. We got some dessert to, I have never eaten it before but I think it was frozen raspberries mixed with white chocolate and something more. We also got vanilla ice cream. After the dinner we went to bed to read a little bit in the books we brought and after that we fell asleep because the next day was the first day in the Scottish scool, but that I will tell you about some other time!

We lived in the house in the middle of the picture.

Best wishes,
Elin

How hard can it be to buy a flight ticket?

Yesterday we were going to buy our flight tickets. We sat in the library and tried a lot of times but it didn't work. Because of that, we decided to buy the tickets at home later that day. So, when I came home I tried to buy my flight ticket. But it didn't worked there either. I thought about it for a few hours and I didn't get to any conclusion. Then, at 10 p.m. when I was logging in to FaceBook I saw that one of my travel partners was managed to book her ticket. I recognised that she didn't have the same bank as me, or the other ones who had tried to buy our tickets earlier that day. Because of that I tried to call my boyfriend so that he could try to buy a flight ticket for me with his bank card. My boyfriend has the same bank as my travel partner who was able to buy the ticket. My boyfriend only tried once to buy a ticket - and it did work! I wonder how hard it can be to buy a flight ticket.