Investigating flowers with a digital microscope

Pauline Carruthers teaches a P7 class at Gylemuir Primary School. In today’s science lesson, her pupils are using digital microscopes to study the structure of flowers and leaves that they collect from the school courtyard. The microscopes are connected to PCs that allow the pupils to view magnified images of their specimens on the computer screen.

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Teacher profile

Ms Carruthers studied history at the University of Stirling and did her PGCE at Moray House College of Education. She has been teaching for 17 years. She is currently teaching a P7 class and has special responsibility for ICT, science and reading.

Ms Carruthers has taken modular masters units in ICT provided by Moray House and has attended CPD courses provided by the City of Edinburgh. She has also had training in Adobe Photoshop, databases and iMovie and now trains classroom assistants in the use of iMovie.

She uses ICT extensively in her teaching, from producing designs for T-shirts to making videos and animations. Her aim is to make more use of online learning materials.

Gylemuir Primary School is in the town of South Gyle, to the west of Edinburgh. There are 540 pupils in the primary school, with a further 120 in the nursery. Approximately 25 pupils have free school lunches.

The school has 30 iMacs in the classrooms, 21 iMacs in the computer suite, three iMacs in the library, three PCs in the science labs and two in the library as well as ten iBooks. All the computers are on a network provided by the City of Edinburgh. There is also an interactive whiteboard in the school.

Responsibility for ICT is divided between two ICT coordinators (one of whom is Ms Carruthers) under the guidance of the head teacher. Teachers have ICT training sessions in school and continuing professional development (CPD) courses are available: these are run by the Education Department’s IT support unit.

Gylemuir Primary School won the Standard Life Education Award 2002 in the ICT category.