CANVAS

Long gone are the days of school children creating minor masterpieces in art class only to take them home for mum to pin on the fridge. Pioneered as part of a wider initiative to discover innovative ways of bringing new technologies and computer games-based learning into the classroom in Scotland, CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland) will allow Scottish school kids the chance to display their work to thousands of other pupils in a specially-designed, safe and secure online domain. Better still, they’ll then be able to create their own avatars and discuss their creations in-world.

A school in Edinburgh, Scotland, has developed an innovative alternative to the rigmarole of loading kids onto a bus for a visit to the museum – bringing the museum to the kids. Developed with £10,000 from the Big Lottery Fund, the Living Links Museum at South Queensferry’s Echline Primary School will represent the only in-school museum of its kind in Scotland, and feature displays relating to the Vikings and the ancient Egyptians and Africans.