Making greeting cards using Appleworks

Diane Irvine is working with a group of children on an Enterprise project. This is known in the school as the Giffnock Card Company and involves making and selling greeting cards for different occasions. The sale of Mother’s Day cards made £70. Today they are continuing work on birthday cards designed on a computer. 

After Ms Irvine has introduced the pupils to some new features of AppleWorks using the school’s interactive whiteboard, most of the children go off to work in the computer suites. Ms Irvine and a small group of pupils start filming a video about the Giffnock Card Company, which will be shown to other children and at the school’s open evening.

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Ms Irvine trained at Hamilton College of Education and has been teaching for 20 years. Ms Irvine has a postgraduate certificate in educational computing and spends a lot of time adding to her ICT skills. She uses ICT every day in her teaching but the interactive whiteboard is a new piece of equipment – it has only been in the school for a couple of weeks, and is currently in the school’s library. Ms Irvine says she would use it every day if it were in her own classroom. 

Giffnock Primary School is in a suburban area to the south of Glasgow. There are 268 pupils, with a further 60 in the nursery. 75 pupils speak English as a second language, 23 have free school lunches and there are two children with special educational needs. 

The school has won a Dyslexia Friendly Schools award and a Gold Standard in Enterprise. One of their earlier Enterprise projects was making and selling fridge magnets. 

The school has 45 computers and a broadband network connection. Each classroom has a computer and there are two dedicated computer suites. Part of the depute headteacher’s remit is to take on the role of ICT coordinator. Masterclass, New Opportunities Fund (NOF) training and local authority ICT courses are available to staff.