Good Practice Case Study

Schools in the Stevenage area

The Best of Both Worlds - Using ICT and Geography to Develop an Understanding of the Local Environment

The “best of both worlds” project is being run jointly by the Hertfordshire CSF Gifted and Talented, Geography and ICT Teams. Its central objective is to develop the creative use of ICT with able pupils to support understanding in Geography.

As each phase of the project is to be hosted by a secondary school and involve local primary schools, an ancillary perspective is as a transfer project, supporting links between schools. Phase 1 of the project was run in Stevenage and involved Barnwell School and six local primary schools.

Links to each school's project work and abridged videos

Digital Video and Geography

Each primary school selected a member of staff and a small group of able pupils for the project. Each week through the second half of the Autumn Term 2004, the staff and pupils met to use an ICT suite in Barnwell School. They were shown how to use the Digital Blue PC Movie Camera, how to edit footage with the related editing software and were supported in their use of other ICT tools including the Internet and Herts OS Maps. During each session the ICT input was paralled with a geography session to support pupils’ understanding in this area.

Barnwell School also arranged a visit from Stevenage Museum, so that the pupils’ work could be grounded in an understanding of the development of Stevenage as a New Town. Each pupil session was followed by a collaborative session between the advisers and the staff to progress the project and to plan the detail of the next session. All the schools in the project were provided with cameras by the Gifted and Talented team and Barnwell School loaned other resources including flash memory sticks to store and transfer resources.

Gathering Data

The children were asked to use the technology to produce a digital project related to their own local area, which would engage a mixed audience of adults and pupils and which they would present in the Spring Term 2005. Beyond this they were free to choose the focus and content for their projects.

The pupils worked as teams, planning and developing their work with support and some guidance from their teachers or LSAs. They very rapidly began to allocate roles within the team to make this process more effective. Each week, they worked in their local area to gather information and shoot the footage they needed, with the sessions at Barnwell providing further information and training, as well as a time for drawing their materials together.

The data gathering exercise varied from team to team, some carried out traffic surveys and filmed the relevant roads to support their graphs and charts, others interviewed pupils, teachers, and even local residents and shopkeepers.

Presenting the Results

The pupils drew their data into a presentation shown at St. Nicholas Primary School, Stevenage on 28th April 2005. All the schools were represented and the audience included headteachers and senior management team members, teachers, LSAs, pupils, parents, and governors, as well as all those involved within the Hertfordshire CSF teams. The presentations were all in the form of a short film, with one school using a PowerPoint to introduce their film. The pupils introduced their work together, but these personal introductions were brief – it was clear that they felt that their films could present their ideas and their creativity for them. Each film was interspersed with short input from several of the adults involved in the project. The audience was delighted and surprised by the sophistication of the work produced.

Phase 2

Integral to the project is the idea that it will be rolled out to different areas across Hertfordshire, with the support materials being re-used and developed by as the project expands. Phase 2 will now run in Welwyn, with the host secondary school being Monk’s Walk School.

Any school interested in developing a similar project in their area should contact either Shelagh Mackenzie or Jeremy Reynolds.

Links to Individual Schools' Project Work

Click on the links below for more information on each schools' project:

• Trotts Hill Primary & Nursery School (no 154)
• Knebworth Primary School (no 197)
• St Nicholas CE Primary School (no 120)
• Lodge Farm Primary School (no 141)
• Bedwell Primary School (no 127)
• Woolenwick Junior School (no 161)