Planning a school outing on an interactive whiteboard

Teacher

Tracey Morrison teaches special educational needs pupils at Kersland School. In today’s class she uses an interactive whiteboard with a class of 18–19 year olds. Tracey has created flipcharts using graphics and photos around the theme of planning a journey. The pupils come to the whiteboard to identify people and places from yesterday’s birthday trip to a Chinese restaurant.

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Teacher profile

Tracey has been teaching for nine years, all of them at Kersland school. She is currently teaching an older group, aged 17–19 years. On top of her teaching, which covers all subjects, Tracey is the principal teacher with responsibility for transition post school and SQA.

Tracey has attended New Opportunities Fund (NOF) and European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) courses augmented with in-service courses about Clicker and the interactive whiteboard.

Tracey works with the ICT coordinator on a regular basis and uses technology every day in her teaching. She uses the interactive whiteboard for group lessons, and simple games or word processing with individual pupils. She also uses ICT to prepare teaching materials for her lessons.

School profile

Kersland School, for pupils with moderate to complex learning difficulties, is situated in Paisley, to the west of Glasgow. There is a main building with five classrooms and an annexe with two classrooms. The school also has a swimming pool, a soft play room, a multisensory room and a leisure room where older pupils can play pool, listen to music and read magazines.

There are 70 pupils in the school, all of whom have free school lunches. In the last two years Kersland has been awarded the Chartermark, the Schools Curriculum Award and the Motorola Award for Excellence in Work Experience and Enterprise.

There are 30 computers in the school with at least two in each classroom. There is an ICT coordinator, but this is not a full-time position. ICT training is available for staff with New Opportunities Fund (NOF) and European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) training courses and other in-service programmes.