Learning from Experience: How to Evaluate Education and Outreach Programmes and Develop Sustainable Outcomes

Archives for Learning and Education Section Training Event

Huntly Room,London Metropolitan Archives

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Do you want to know how successful your educational activity or workshop have been? Have you ever considered how to measure impact and embed sustainable learning outcomes in your outreach programme? Whether you run education and outreach activities on a shoe-string budget or whether you have the full works, this training event is for you.

Come and join our experienced panel of experts from the archive and museum sector for a day of practical sessions and exercises on how to evaluate education programmes and plan sustainable learning outcomes. Speakers include:

• Jan Pimblett, Principal Development Officer, London Metropolitan Archives
• Jane Avison, Heritage Learning Manager at Hull Cicy Council
• Joan Heggie, Research Fellow, Social Futures Institute, Teesside University

The event will be held at the Huntly Room in the London Metropolitan Archives: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/archives-and-city-history/london-metropolitan-archives/visitor-information/Pages/default.aspx

Cost: £20 members, £25 non-members, including tea/coffee and buffet lunch.

To book a place at the conference please fill in the booking form below and send it to membership@archives.org.uk, or fax it to 01823 271719 or by post to the office address on the form: http://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/ARA_Event_Booking_Form.doc

PROGRAMME

09:45 – 10:05            Registration and tea/coffee

10:05 – 10:15            Welcome and Introduction

10:15 – 11:15            Jan Pimblett, Principal Development Officer, London Metropolitan Archives

11:15 – 11:30            Tea/coffee break

11:30 – 12:30            Jane Avison, Heritage Learning Manager, Hull City Council

12:30 – 13:30            Lunch

13:30 – 14:30            Joan Heggie, Research Fellow, Social Futures Institute, Teesside University

14:30 – 14:45            Tea/coffee break

14:45 – 15:30            Round up session with speakers and delegates

15:30                          Final remarks and departure

15:30 – 16:30            ALES meeting

Update from ALES training event:evaluating projects

Those of you who were able to attend the ALES training event, Not just for the Children, in Hull last week will have heard Jane Avison’s interesting talk on evaluating projects. Jane focussed on four essential components to successful evaluation:
Listening to stakeholders’ requirements and speaking their language
Understanding what drives the stakeholders and being aware of what they need to achieve and how it will be measured
Setting clear boundaries so that partners know precisely who is doing what
Collecting the right evidence at the right time so that the project can be mapped from start to finish

In relation to the first of these components I would draw your attention to a new paper that has just been issued by Scottish Government: Strategic Guidance for Community Planning Partnerships: Community Learning and Development. It can be accessed as a pdf at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0039/00394611.pdf, and provides an introduction to the language that community events in Scotland will need to speak over the next few years.

Those of you who couldn’t make the conference – commiserations! But the papers will hopefully go up on the ALES pages of the ARA website (http://www.archives.org.uk/si-aelg/news-and-events.html ) in the near future.

Alison Diamond
Chair, ALES

School Pupils Create Their Own Archive

2012 is an important year for Livingston. April marked  50 years since the designation of Livingston as a new town.  The celebrations have provided West Lothian Archives with the opportunity to both celebrate and promote the recent history of the town.

Back in 2011, we started to think of ways in which the archive could permanently document this important year in Livingston’s history. We came up with the idea of creating an archive of Livingston life  in 2011-2012 and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to work with schools.  With that in mind, last August we went out to talk to local primary pupils about archives and to show them some of the archives material of the Livingston Development Corporation. Pupils were provided with archive boxes and were invited to start putting together their own archive of life in  Livingston. They started collecting pictures of school events, writing diaries and collecting other materials. Once pupils had collected the material, we went back out to visit the pupils to talk to them about archival appraisal. Pupils were then supported to go through the collected material, making appraisal decisions on what would form part of the finished archive. The material will shortly be transferred to the archives.  The pupils have really enjoyed working on the project and in doing so have become the creators of history. In fifty years time, we all hope that our new Livingston archive will form part of the Livingston 100 celebrations.

ALES Conference 2012: Not Just for the Children: Using Archives in Adult and Community Education

This year’s conference will focus on how archivists use their rich collections to engage with adult learners and community groups. The day will bring together an exciting mixture of speakers from across the UK and Ireland who will share their first hand experience and knowledge about a wide range of issues.

The conference will be held in the Lecture Theatre at the Hull History Centre on Monday 11 June.

For information about how to get to the Hull History Centre please follow this link: http://www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk/discover/hull_history_centre/visit_us/planning_your_visit/location.aspx

Cost: £70 for members, £85 non-members, including lunch and refreshments.

To book a place at the conference please fill in the booking form below and send it to membership@archives.org.uk, or fax it to 01823 271719 or by post to the office address on the form: http://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/ARA_Event_Booking_Form.doc

ARCHIVES GO TO THE LANGLEY ACADEMY ON A SUNNY SPRING DAY

On Friday 23 March ALES held a training event in partnership with the Langley Academy, which is the first school in the UK to offer Museum and Heritage Studies as part of the curriculum.

The idea of running a training day in a school was suggested at a meeting of the ALES committee at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies in September 2011. The theme of the day was how archivists could engage more proactively with teachers and educators in order to create resources which were relevant to the classroom and enhanced the learning experience.

The programme included six speakers who offered a mixture of practical sessions and case study presentations. Mary Mills from English Heritage conducted a practical demonstration of Heritage Explorer, which provides access to over 9,000 images that can be used to create teaching resources adapted to the students’ needs. Clare Horrie from TNA provided a fascinating presentation of their new web resource, ‘The Victorians’, which has been developed in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, and whose aim is to encourage primary school pupils (Key stage 2) to work and think like historians by using primary sources.
Jenny Blay and Suzie Parr from the Langley Academy presented some of the work they have developed with their students around museum learning and encouraged archivists to build bridges with teachers and educators from an early stage. Guy Baxter, the archivist at the University of Reading, explored the concept of reaching audiences through internal partnerships developed between the archives and various university departments.
The afternoon session had a Scottish accent. The Aberdeenshire Heritage Partnership highlighted the benefits of collaborative working between the archives, libraries, registrars and the arts development team at Aberdeenshire. The introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland in 2010 had provided the partnership with a springboard for the creation of linked educational resources. Finally, Margaret McBryde from the National Records of Scotland explored the process of developing an interesting resource on WW2 for upper primary/lower secondary pupils based on government records and those of the Northern Lighthouse Board. The session included practical tips on how to create a flexible resource on a shoe string budget.

The event proved really popular. 31 delegates from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, including several school archivists, and some teachers from the Langley Academy attended the training day. Discussion was lively and stimulating throughout and most participants mentioned that the day had provided many ideas and opportunities for networking and future partnerships.

Most speakers are very keen to have their presentations uploaded in the ALES section of the ARA website, so we hope to make another announcement as soon as they become available online.

Thoughts from the Home Front

Yesterday saw the delivery of the last workshop in the 2011-12 National Records of Scotland (NRS) schools programme, providing a moment to reflect on the impact of Curriculum for Excellence. Those of you who are not working in Scotland may be unaware of the replacement of the schools’ curriculum in Scotland with Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).  CfE is intended to provide a framework for educating the whole child to become an informed and responsible citizen, able to plan and direct his or her own learning. There is no structured syllabus, instead pupils and teachers are able to follow their particular interests.

We (the Education team at NRS) have warmly welcomed this new opportunity to create interesting, quirky and diverse workshops for schools and have expanded our programme to include sessions on the ‘Snail in the Bottle’ legal case, the effect of the Second World War on lightkeepers and their families, and the chequered history of Scottish tartan. And yet, during this academic year the most popular workshop has remained the World War II: The Scottish Home Front workshop. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really good workshop in which the children use Valuation Rolls and other sources to trace the story of two streets in Greenock during the war… but I can’t help wondering when CfE is really going to kick in and when teachers are going to start thinking beyond the project boxes and try something new….

ALES Spring Training Event: Friday 23 March

Archives go to school: creating educational resources for teachers that teachers want  

This training event will show teachers and educators how they can use archives to enrich the learning experience. 

Speakers include archive professionals, learning and outreach officers as well as educators. The day will feature case studies and practical sessions with an emphasis on:

• creating user-friendly resources that teachers want
• letting teachers know what we've created and what else we can offer

The event will be held at The Langley Academy, Slough, which is the first school in the UK to introduce Museum Learning as a dedicated programme which gives students access to internationally significant collections and archives 

Cost: £45 members, £60 non-members, including tea/coffee and buffet lunch

Please contact the ARA to make a booking or download a booking form at :

http://www.archives.org.uk/events/sections/interest-groups/archives-for-education-and-learning-group/viewevent.html?eventid=135