New online resources from National Records of Scotland

Introduction

Welcome to our pilot site. We are currently developing a new online resources section on our website to provide teachers and learners of all ages with access to unique primary sources from the National Records of Scotland to support the delivery of Curriculum of Excellence and National Qualifications.

Our approach is simple and straightforward. We wish to provide content that can be adapted by teachers to support different topics, themes and areas within the Scottish curriculum at different teaching levels. Our units will offer images of original sources, transcripts and background notes.

Suffragettes

Sources from the National Records of Scotland relating to the experiences of Scottish suffragettes, action and re-action in Scotland.

Letters and Diaries

A thematic approach looking at examples of letters and diaries from the sixteenth through to the twentieth centuries.

The Great War in Scotland

Sources relating to the experience of the Great War in Scotland.

Please assist with the evaluation of these pilot resources

We would like to make more source material available online, but we want to be sure that we are presenting it in the most flexible and helpful way.

Your feedback is essential to the development of our online service. Please email [email protected] with answers to the following questions and any other comments that you wish to make.

Content and supporting text

• Which units did you use and how did you adapt them for your purposes?
• Was sufficient context provided to enable you to make full use of the resources?
• Could you read and understand the content?
• We have chosen to make complete documents available as far as possible, believing that students should encounter the whole source rather than just selected extracts. Do you agree with this approach?
• We have presented both topic-based (eg. Scottish Suffagettes and The Great War) and thematic units (Letters and Diaries). Do you have a preference for either presentation and, if so, why?
• We would welcome suggestions for other Scottish topics and themes for us to consider developing. Please suggest any that would be of particular interest to you and your students.

Style and layout on screen

• Were you able to navigate the units to identify sources of relevance to you and your students? Do you have a particular preference for the style of the pages?
• Were you able to right click and save the images, and were they of sufficient quality for you and your students to use them both electronically and in print form?
• The images and transcripts provided should be of sufficient quality to use on a smartboard. Did you use the sources on a smartboard? Did you encounter any technical problems opening or using them? If so, please suggest improvements that we could make in the presentation of sources.
• We have provided the transcriptions as printable Rich Text Format documents (rtfs). Were you able to access this type of file or would an alternative eg. pdf be preferable?
• Did you encounter any technical issues using the resources?