Spring with Sketchbook: Live Lesson

To coincide with the day Spring finally arrived in Scotland, the team at Edinburgh Learns Digital were streamed live into classrooms across the city, supporting over 1200 Primary school pupils to creatively use the Sketchbook app to connect with nature, exploring stylised drawing and using technology to support them. 

Spring with Sketchbook consisted of two lessons with P5-7s, as well a recorded teacher session that allowed practitioners to familiarise themselves with the content, its relevance to the curriculum and in the context of their local surroundings.

We were joined by the education team at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, who in addition to sharing their expertise, made tangible connections with staff and pupils, sharing a whole variety of free resources and talking about the incredible gardens that are free to visit for all, and on our doorstep.

In our first lesson we became artists, guiding pupils and teachers through all of the features within the Sketchbook app to creatively draw spring flowers combined with knowledge shared by the RBGE.

Children were also given the opportunity to share their illustrations with all of the participants, via a shared Padlet (over 370 drawings so far!).

Our second session allowed us to become film editors and animators, bringing our Sketchbook skills together with iMovie, even experimenting with choosing suitable music from the vast Soundtrack library available on our school iPads.

Teachers and children shared skills together, with some teachers joining without the class just to learn a few new skills to adapt for future lessons. Lessons were accompanied with a playlist of help videos for pupils and teachers to watch in their own time.

This session was also the launchpad for a competition, in which winners will have their final creation (either drawing or video) displayed in on the foyer screen of the Botanic Gardens for all the visitors to see!

Entries will be judged by Jacqui Pestell, Artist in Residence at RBGE, announced shortly after the Easter break and on display from May 10th – 20th 2024.