How to film and edit a poem
Isobel Taggart introduces her S1 class to digital video and asks them to make a short film of a poem they have chosen. This session is part of a 12-week pilot programme, which Ms Taggart has devised with the English department. She defines the project as an integrated approach to learning involving enterprise, English, personal and social education (PSE), technology and IT.
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Teacher profile
Ms Taggart has been teaching since 1977, in three different secondary schools. She first started teaching English in Glasgow. Later, she worked on various secondments for health-related education projects: for example, she worked for some time as a staff tutor in health education.
For the last years 12 she has taught at Notre Dame High School and for the last eight years, she has been depute headteacher, and latterly ICT co-ordinator.
Ms Taggart is very enthusiastic about the use of ICT in the curriculum and sees it as highly motivational for the pupils. She devised the video project in collaboration with the English department and sees the use of film-making in exploring poetry as the next natural development for the pupils who are already technology-aware.
Ms Taggart attended the SEED (Scottish Executive Education Department) Masterclass initiative in 2002, where she had training in the use of digital video and editing software. Otherwise, her ICT skills are mostly self-taught and have been developed through practice.
In her role as ICT co-ordinator, Ms Taggart supports the use of various technologies in school. Isobel has been on several different ICT courses including a recent New Opportunities Fund (NOF) course.
School profile
Notre Dame High School is situated in the west of Glasgow city.
There are 820 pupils, six of whom are recorded as having special educational needs. About 140 of the pupils have English as their second language and around 160 have free school lunches.
The school has approximately 240 computers connected in a local network and six dedicated ICT rooms. One of the senior management team also has the role of ICT co-ordinator. ICT courses available to staff include education authority courses, external training and national courses such as Masterclass.