Using a whiteboard and digital video in modern languages
Teacher profile
Pat has been teaching since 1976, with a break when her children were small. She's taught in five schools, including one in France as an exchange teacher. For the last eight years she's been head of modern languages at Kilmarnock Academy and teaches French, German and some Spanish. She is extremely enthusiastic about the use of ICT in modern languages teaching and sees it as highly motivational for the pupils.
In her room she has a laptop, interactive whiteboard and a data projector and uses the technology every day. She was given the whiteboard as part of a pilot scheme two years ago and says it is 'magic'! Pat uses the cameras either in projects where the pupils film and edit an advertisement, for example, or simply to record and play back pupils acting out scenes.
Pat attended a Masterclass where she had training in the use of digital video and editing software but otherwise her ICT skills are mostly self-taught. She enjoys 'playing' with the technology and often takes her laptop home to explore the software and create exercises for use on the interactive whiteboard.
School profile
Kilmarnock Academy is in the centre of Kilmarnock, in East Ayrshire, and has 850 pupils. Sir Alexander Fleming is a famous old boy. The original building, the 'Old Academy', was opened in 1899 and there are two modern blocks and a PE block all linked by internal corridors. There are four pupils with special records and none with English as a second language.
The school has 150 PCs connected in a local network and more than one dedicated ICT room. There is an ICT coordinator but this is not a full-time post. Some ICT training is available in-school for staff, supplemented by education authority courses and national courses, like Masterclass. The modern languages department has three interactive whiteboards and two digital video cameras.