C. The MIICE outcomes related to the abilities and attitudes of learners
2. Skills development
This relates to learners' development of systematic skills in using ICT tools for a purpose
Here is a number of illustrations from Scottish schools and education authorities - from Brae in Shetland in the north to Duns in the south; from Gairloch in the west to St Andrews in the east - of each of the 3 components. In each case there is one or more related capacities associated with A Curriculum for Excellence
2. Skills development: effective and responsible use of ICT
Elaine Valiris is an early years officer at St Andrews Nursery, in St Andrews in Fife, and has responsibility for ICT development. She has introduced a wide variety of ICT resources including programmable toys and an interactive whiteboard. During activity time pupils are allowed to choose which activity they wish to take part in. These activities promote investigative play. One activity uses the digital microscope to investigate leaves, twigs and flowers that they have collected and another involves the use of their new interactive whiteboard to draw freehand
Investigative play with a digital microscope
"it [interactive whiteboard] offers amazing possibilities and is looking forward to creating activities for it. These will include getting pupils to take photos of themselves and writing their names underneath them" (Elaine Valiris of St Andrew's Nursery)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Confident individuals: achieve success in different areas of activity
Keith Russell of Priorsford Primary School in Peebles uses the Digital Blue camera, and one of those uses is for (simple) animation. Watch highlights of Keith's presentation about this work to the Scottish Borders Masterclass ICT event in May 2005 (315 seconds on video)
Animation in class (national priorities website)
"First and foremost it is good fun; it's a great laugh actually. It's very motivating for the children, 'cause you get so many things to play with. When you're doing it it provides - the collaboration that's involved, the actual discussion, teamwork and sorting themselves out. It's an amazing tool, if you like, to allow that to happen in your classroom. Thinking skills and problem solving"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: creative and independent thinking
- Effective contributors: creating and developing
Two pupils from Monifieth High School speak about how they think that ICT has benefited their learning (29 seconds on video)
"We had a test just before the laptops, and I know that I didn't get as much as I thought I would. And after the laptops it increased my test results; so it did help me learn, just by the animations and tests and games, which make it fun. ... There's animations that show you how things work and, you know, go back and go over things that you don't know as well and just make them more interesting"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: enthusiastic and motivated to learn
2. Skills development: creation and presentation of their own material
Debbie Higson and some of her P6 pupils from Duns Primary School did a presentation to colleagues at the Scottish Borders Masterclass ICT event in May 2005 (261 seconds on video)
"This is something that has just recently appealed to me. That, using Digital Blue, is that we're beginning to raise attainment now" There was one little boy who came to me and he said "I've actually read my reading book", he said. "I've read the whole book from start to finish. Can I put it on to the Digital Blue camera?" And I said "Well, of course you can, yes". Now this child has never finished a book; he never takes it home; it sits on his desk, on his chair, in a tray; has never taken it home before. I spoke to Mum this week; I said "... Thanks ever so much, it's brilliant that he's read this book". She said "He actually sat on the back doorstep and read it to his little sister from cover to cover". And I'm thinking "Wow - this child has read one book this year; I'll put a tick up there somewhere"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: independent and collaborative learning
- Confident individuals: relating to others and self-organised
- Effective contributors: creating and developing
Children from Glaitness Primary School in Kirkwall have been using video technology to help them to prepare a presentation on myths of the Amazon rainforest (513 seconds on video)
"We the Arromali people of the Amazon rainforest tell this story about how the world was created. Long long ago there were 2 brothers who were the children of Abili the frog"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: learning with technology
- Effective contributors: working in partnerships and teams
Maureen Balloch of St Mary's Primary in Glasgow is convinced that use of ICT solutions has helped the children in the relatively deprived area which is served by the school in the Maryhill district of Glasgow (56 seconds on audio)
ICT & attainment (national priorities website)
"It's made the children much more motivated in their work, much more willing to complete tasks, to take themselves forward. They've found it very challenging and I think, yes, we can say it has improved their attainment, in maths and language, in their topic (environmental studies), their enterprise work"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: enthusiastic and motivated to learn
- Confident individuals: developing and communicating views and beliefs
- Effective contributors: communicating in a variety of situations
A teacher and children in Walker Road Primary School in Aberdeen use computers and drawing software to design a house; the prompts and any discussions are conducted entirely in French (172 seconds on video)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: learning with technology
- Effective contributors: creating and developing
Susan Buchanan is a primary teacher at Woodhill Primary School in Bishopbriggs. In this lesson, she is using PC tablets and a PowerPoint presentation to teach a P7 set. The subject for this session is the political leaders of World War 2. Susan's pupils are already familiar with the basic tools of PowerPoint. Her aim today is to revise what the class has learned in previous lessons and to introduce the pupils to some new tools for adding hyperlinks and action buttons to the PowerPoint presentation
"PowerPoint is a new and interesting way for pupils to display their work, which increases pupil motivation and creativity" (Susan Buchanan of Woodhill Primary)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: use technology for learning
Jim Henderson of Gairloch High School uses the First Class package of communication tools (messages, conferences) to assist modern studies pupils to share what they are discovering - and everybody knows that kids pay far more attention to kids than they do to teachers! (106 seconds on video)
"if they are carrying out an investigation they can publish the results of that investigation within FirstClass, they can share that information within FirstClass"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: independent and collaborative learning
- Effective contributors: communicating in a variety of situations
Gordon Watson is a Chemistry teacher at Kelso High School in the Borders. He is working with his S4 Chemistry class on what he calls the redox topic. He is using ICT to revise earlier work carried out in S3 on electron transfer, ionic bonding and the concepts of oxidation and reduction in the context of reactions of metals. During this revision it has become apparent that the pupils require a greater understanding of the first principles of chemistry such as atomic structure, electron arrangement, and so on. These are traditionally difficult concepts and, because of their abstract nature, make great demands on the pupils' ability to accept and visualise our model of the atom
"there is no doubt that the pupils enjoyed the animations and found the concepts much easier to grasp. The highly visual aspects of Flash helped him to get over some potentially tricky ideas quickly and easily" (Gordon Watson of Kelso High School)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: use technology for learning
Martyn Crawshaw of Millburn Academy in Inverness talks about the uses of digital video among his colleagues in the science department (43 seconds on audio)
"There's 4 out of a department of 10 have used digital video with their classes now. Some in formative assessment, for recording with second year groups who each do a PowerPoint presentation, and then they video the PowerPoint presentations and they can analyse their own presentations by replaying the video"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Confident individuals: developing and communicating beliefs and views
- Effective contributors: communicating in a variety of situations
Pupils of Monifieth High School show their teacher their method of exploring wave energy and use PowerPoint to present the results of their (practical) investigations into wave energy (70 seconds on video)
"The diagram above shows how waves are made. The sun heats the air, which rises and cooler air comes along taking its place further down, producing the waves. Wave energy is a good source of energy, because it is a renewable source of energy"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: being literate, communicative, numerate
- Effective contributors: communicating in a variety of situations
Noel Eadie teaches audio-visual studies to S3-S4 pupils at Nicolson Institute in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. His S4 pupils are making a pop record and in today's session he is teaching them basic sound recording and mixing techniques, using software called GarageBand
"the pupils really expressed their creativity and enjoyed making progress with their song" (Noel Eadie of The Nicolson Institute)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Effective contributors: create and develop
Manuel Montenegro teaches modern languages at St Thomas of Aquins High School in Edinburgh. In today's lesson he teaches Spanish to an S4 class using Kar2ouche, a multimedia authoring tool that allows the pupils to create cartoon stories featuring dialogue that they have themselves written and recorded in Spanish
"through the exercise the pupils practised their spoken and written Spanish and came up with some interesting and creative pieces of work" (Manual Montenegro of St Thomas of Aquins High)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Effective contributors: create and develop
Heidi Fawcett, a primary head teacher seconded to the Educational Improvement Service in Glasgow City Council, speak about the way in which creativity in the use of ICT makes the young people really think about what they are learning (92 seconds on audio)
"that's another area where there are open-ended possibilities and outcomes for pupils to direct ways in which they want us to see the world. And when we put the pupil in the driving seat that really does demand that the pupil is thinking"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: enthusiastic and motivated to learn
- Effective contributors: creating and developing
2. Skills development: collection and analysis of information
Elaine Wyllie won the 2004 Primary ICT in Practice Award from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta). She is passionate about pupils having their own say in cyberspace - being internet publishers as well as consumers. Her P7 class at St Ninian's Primary School in Stirling has created a website featuring astronomical photographs. Some of these were taken by the pupils themselves, using a digital camera and the telescope in their classroom. In this lesson, pupils add more pictures to their website
"peer tutoring happens often in this project and really drives the learning forward" (Elaine Wylie of St Ninian's Primary)
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Effective contributors: apply critical thinking in new contexts
Ishbel Kerr, Head Teacher of Torbain Primary School in Kirkcaldy, talks about how ICT has helped them to review and revise their policy in mathematics (49 seconds on audio)
"We now have an ICT Resource Base where children can go along as a whole class, work on issues like logo, spreadsheets, databases, shape position, movement and marry the two policies of maths and ICT together"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: being literate, communicative, numerate
- Effective contributors: solving problems
A student from King's Park Secondary in Glasgow answers some questions from a teacher about the usefulness of a website about classical composers for Higher and Advanced Higher courses (53 seconds on video)
"At the end of the website it gives you a list of all the works they've been working on throughout their life"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: learning with technology
Tony Gavin, formerly Head Teacher of St Margaret's Academy in Livingston, interviews a group of 6 students from the school about their views on the use of the virtual learning environment (195 seconds on video)
"It does lots of things, it can help you revise for tests; it can help you with homework, things like that. ...I just look up help for my homework, and that. ... I've used it at home to play games and stuff; it's fun; it's no' like boring stuff, like just copying off the board; you can play games and learn at the same time"
A Curriculum for Excellence
- Successful learners: learning with technology
- Successful learners: applying learning in new situations