A school student's perspective
Thanks to Eva, a 6th year student, for sharing her thoughts on Understanding Glasgow and how it relates to her studies:
‘Understanding Glasgow’ is a site that aims to create an accessible resource that informs a wide audience about the wellbeing of Glasgow’s population, and is a really great website for the use of both students and teachers alike due to the vast quantity of available resources and information.
The information on the site covers a wide range of domains; displayed in the ’12 domain model’ on the homepage. These include education, health, poverty, environment, and population amongst others – and from a student’s point of view, like myself, these are all topics very much relevant to those discussed in the likes of Modern Studies at school.
The 12 domain model, known as the ‘mandala’, shows a wealth of indicators; and provides a dynamic view of their inter-relationships with one another within the city. This enables students to make links between different issues, and helps them to understand how these issues interplay and impact on the health of the city as a whole. The website also allows students to access further information about each domain displayed in the model and learn more about them through visuals and facts.
The ‘profiles’ section of the website enables students to access specific data about education, health, population, and poverty levels in different neighbourhoods in Glasgow; with comparisons to the rest of Glasgow for each area researched. The presence of graphs gives students a visual representation and deeper understanding of data presented; which aids their learning.
Students are not the only ones who can benefit from this site, however, as there is a broad Academic Resources section (the Learning Zone) of the website for the use of Modern Studies teachers; including lesson outlines and teachers notes. These Modern Studies notes develop a variety of skills for students: including data handling and analysis, evaluating evidence, and participation in debate and discussion – all of which follow the guidelines of the Curriculum for Excellence.
On top of all of this, the website has video material to allow students to learn in a more engaging way. This includes a short film titled ‘Exploring Understanding Glasgow’ which gives an insight into the content of the website for people new to the site – making it easy to use and accessible for all.
Overall, having thoroughly explored the ‘Understanding Glasgow’ website, it is clear to me that it is a really useful resource for use of both students and teachers both in schools, and for home learning.
