Calling all Spacemen, Divas and Heroes! Eurovision season is upon us with Swedish city of Malmö hosting after Loreen stormed to victory in Liverpool in 2023. The excitement has travelled as far as Edinburgh with learners in our primary schools getting involved in the musical buzz that the annual song contest brings. Learners in our schools took part in a new Edinburgh Learns Digital live lesson delivered by Digital Development Officers Mark Morren and Andrew McArthur.
As has become tradition with the Eurovision Song Contest, many fans like to score the entries – opening up great potential with learning centred around how to use Apple’s Numbers app to create a responsive and interactive scorecard. The lesson was split up into the creation of a table, formula and transferring this data into a graph, as well as inputting scores from a selection of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest entries.
With seventy-two classes from P5 to P7 (an estimated 2000+ learners!) signed up, learning covered a wide spectrum of the curriculum including exploring digital literacy and maths and numeracy.
After a brief history of the Eurovision Song Contest and some sharing of learners’ favourite entries (from Conchita to Käärijä), we set to work making a table on Numbers with learners to score based on song, staging, vocals and costume – as well as creating an option for ‘Total Points’ and ‘Rank’. Students learned how to reshape and add columns and rows – as well as formatting cells and creating tables of different colours and styles. The lesson also delved into the different ways in which cells could be formatted, with specific use of the slider function.
The session would go on to explore how to fill in the Total column by using the Sum quick formula option. The session was differentiated and discussing the exact process that was taking place when we hit the Sum button, with some learners able to enter their own sum formula. There was then the chance to create a formula in the rank column, so entries would be ranked based on their total score.
Learners were then given the chance to turn their scorecard into an interactive bar chart that changed as they inputted scores using their sliders. Pupils also got the chance to format these into a style they liked.
The fun hit euphoric levels as learners got to sample a number of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest performances and put their scorecards into action. With highlights coming from Sweden’s entry Marcus & Martinus and Croatia’s Baby Lasagna, learners got the chance to input their own scores and watch their formula come to life.
Learners were also provided with a fully completed scorecard template which they are welcome to use to score Saturday’s Grand Final. Teachers were provided with a step by step guide exploring each aspect of the lesson if they want to further explore this with their class.
Edinburgh teachers can view our list of planned live lessons and professional learning opportunities here.
Edinburgh Learns Digital | City of Edinburgh Council 