Creating an astronomical website

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 Ninians Primary School 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.

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Teacher profile

Ms Wyllie has been teaching for 22 years, having studied at Aberdeen University and Northern College. She has taught mostly at upper primary level and is currently a principal teacher with a P7 class. In addition, she is a teaching fellow at Stirling University.

Ms Wyllie has completed her European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) and says that she has otherwise acquired her ICT skills through 'hard work, motivation and determination in the face of adversity!'

ICT is crucially important in her teaching. She says it's 'the glue that binds the curriculum together'. In addition to the Astropics website, her class has produced a website for their history project on World War 2 and another about their International Bear Exchange project.

St Ninians Primary School in Stirling opened in 1875. It now has 460 pupils, 66 of whom have free school lunches. There are 60 pupils with special educational needs and 12 who speak English as a second language.

St Ninians has 45 computers, which are all located in classrooms. Ms Wyllie is the ICT coordinator and currently has an hour a week to look after ICT for the whole school. Next session, this will increase to an afternoon a week.

Teachers at St Ninians can take advantage of local authority ICT courses, though the availability is limited because of the cost of cover. There are also ICT drop-in sessons hosted by Ms Wyllie and another member of staff.