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Introducing Paul Adams, my friend and colleague who joined ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland's Learning department at the same time as me, back in 2001. Talking of history...

Firstly I'd like to apologise for my brass neck. It's not often you find an Englishman in Scotland who has the sheer gall to inform the Scots about their own history. I do, however, have a bit of form as the producer of the Scotland's History website.

As a foreigner to these shores one of the things that continues to surprise and impress me is the passion most Scots feel for their nation's history. There really is a strong sense of pride - a fire in the belly for what the country is and how it got there.

The other thing that never fails to surprise me is how little the average Scot actually knows about it.

Interestingly that was the starting point for the whole A History of Scotland series. In the early project meetings a panel of consultants was organised comprising largely of academics and members of the teaching profession.

The message that came out of those meetings was clear. The average level of understanding of Scottish history was pretty damn poor.

Most people's knowledge boiled down to the old favourites - Wallace, Bruce, Bannockburn, poor wee Mary Stuart and dashing Bonnie Prince Charlie. All the rest was a bit hazy.

To make matters worse, the precise chronology of these nuggets of learning were at best suspect.

And this is where the title of this blog comes in. To paraphrase Eric Morecambe, they could play all the right notes - but not necessarily in the right order.

So how can this be? How can a nation so proud of its history have such a patchwork understanding of it?

The problem seems partly to be the way Scottish history has traditionally been taught in school. Small, self-contained modules of history don't really foster a broad appreciation of a nation's history. The end result is several generations who leave school knowing a bit about Bruce, a bit about Mary Queen of Scots and a bit about World War II.

The TV series took that as a place to start and set out to try and fill in some of those blanks and add some flesh to the bones of the stuff the audience thought they knew. It seems to have worked a treat.

To back up this decision almost without exception the most viewed episodes were the ones that covered the subjects the public never really studied at school.

Episode one in particular was very popular. Focusing on Scotland up to the end of the first century it introduced the public to new heroes - Calgacus the swordsman and Constantine II, the first King of Alba. When was the last time they came up in a history lesson?

On the website the weekly debates tied into each programme were inundated with thousands of comments from the public. As well as the die-hard history enthusiasts the vast majority of punters were casual interest viewers who felt that their eyes had been opened up by the series - for the first time they understood the story of their own nation.

Take this comment as a good example:

I think the programme is fantastic, even though i have been educated in Scotland Scottish history was never really covered in school, other than that of the Highland clearances. This programme has made me more interested in my country's earlier history than ever before...

I believe this is ultimately where the success of the series lies. It not only stirred the blood, it joined the dots. While, yes, the series missed huge bits of history it did tell the story. From a land of warring painted tribes in programme one to a modern, devolved nation in programme 10.

In this approach I think there are some lessons that can be learnt in the way history is taught in our schools. Every story in the world has a beginning, middle and end. It does help to have all of them and, as Eric Morecambe would agree, it usually helps to have them in the right order.

The response to the series certainly inspired me in making the Scotland's History site. It could have been anything it wanted to be - it's ended up as a video chronology of Scottish history. It tells the story.

Hopefully it has inspired a few teachers to do the same and take their pupils on an epic journey; to join those dots and show the next generation who they are and how exactly they got here.