From the Atlantic Ocean to Glow

We spent our summer holidays on the beautiful island of Islay this year. We were so lucky with the weather and as a result much of our week there was spent on the beautiful Kilchoman Beach at Machir Bay. This stunning beach with its untouched sands and incessantly crashing Atlantic Ocean waves was virtually deserted with the next stop West being America!

Collecting water for All the Seas

I took the chance to get my children to get involved with the All the Seas exhibition that the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh will be showing in 2014. I came across this through the recently released Learning Experiences Catalogue in Glow - the Scottish Schools National Intranet. This catalogue is packed with a wide range of powerfully creative and original ideas that are all about impact on learning and getting learners to get involved, work together, share their expertise, explore their curiosity and showcase just what they can do. I'm really excited about the possibilities and potential of this approach and I think these rich and thoughtfully crafted learning experiences can encourage teachers and learners alike to get involved and help bring life to these superb ideas.

I interviewed my youngest daughter in the surf of the beach as she and her sister filled their empty plastic bottles with water from the Atlantic Ocean. Have a listen to our chat to capture a mental image of the waves and just how incredibly beautiful this place was:

As a result of this experience we had a subsequent chat about oceans and seas and continents and countries and the creatures that lurked beneath the waves. I really think that opportunities such as

Mission accomplished!

this can prove to be purposeful and inspiring ways to get learners engaged with learning. I will definitiely be sharing this resource and the others in this season's learning experience catalogue with the students that I work with.

If you want to get involved in this and send water to the exhibition from seas as distant as  the Dead, Red, Baltic or Caspian Sea or a s close as the North Sea or Atlantic Ocean then check out the All the Seas details on the Fruitmarket gallery's website to get the submission details, BUT if you are at school in Scotland then email your details to the [email protected] and will be sent a special label to attach to your bottle of water to show that you learned about Tania Kovats through Glow with The Fruitmarket Gallery.

It would be great to see this exhibiton being supported and also for Scottish teachers and families to get involved with the Glow aspect of things. You can read more about All the Seas and Glow here.