Good Practice - Case Study

St Lukes School

School No: 635

Visualisers

St. Luke’s School in Redbourn is a Special School for children and young people with moderate learning difficulties and associated needs. The school has provision for pupils with high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome in addition to their learning difficulties. There are approximately 160 pupils on role, from years 7 to 11, with one year 5/6 Juniors class.

Recently a number of the classrooms have been equipped with GeneeVision 6100 Visualisers. The teachers have laptops which are connected to the classroom projector, and interactive whiteboard where installed, via a permanently situated docking station. By connecting the visualiser between the docking station and the projector the teacher is able to switch between projecting the laptop signal and the visualiser signal simply by pressing a button on the visualiser.

The Geneevision 6100 is a high-end visualiser that allows the user to:

• Apply very high magnification to objects and documents.
• Freeze the image on the screen.
• Split the screen to display 2 images at one time.
• Display images in negative (and therefore negatives in positive.)
• Illuminate the object from above or below.
• Scroll up and down pages and objects.
• Freeze the top part of the image to use as a title for the session / lesson objective etc.
• Mirror the image.
• Capture still and moving images.

Some examples of specific use at St. Luke’s follow.

Science

One teacher used the visualiser to show a thermometer. When zoomed in, the scale on the thermometer was very clear to the whole class, and when a hot hand was put on the thermometer bulb the mercury could clearly be seen rising.

It has also been good for microscope work as the powerful zoom allows huge magnification of microscope slides, leaves, minibeasts etc.

PSHE

The visualiser has been particularly useful in showing and comparing objects, and reading the labels on objects etc. For example, to show what illegal drugs might look like, the teacher makes up realistic looking ‘drug samples’ (eg, a wrap of white powder) and puts these on the visualiser. These can be compared with legal drugs, which always come in packaging which contains a name, instructions for use, warnings etc.

Even curved objects such as the labels on alcohol bottles show up extremely well on the visualiser. The teacher uses the image capture program to add digital images to her Smart Notebook lessons, and commented on how much better the images are than using stock clipart.

RE

The pupils mark their work together as a class by placing it under the visualiser so everyone can see it at once. It is effective in showing artefacts such as prayer beads, though it is also good to pass these around so that the pupils can touch and feel the objects. Textbooks and worksheets can easily be presented to the whole class, and the teacher gets individual pupils to do certain activities on the visualiser as an example of how to carry out the task.

Textiles

The visualiser has been really good for explaining and going over homework tasks, but will really come into its own when the teacher needs to demonstrate tacking stitch and weaving, which she will be able to do under the camera so the pupils can see the process in great detail.

Mathematics

Useful for doing worksheet activities together as a class, as the sheet can be placed under the visualiser and written onto. This saves the teacher copying the sheet onto a dry wipe board or scanning it for use on the interactive whiteboard. Another effective use has been with Multilink blocks, for lessons on counting, symmetry, multiplication etc.

Geography

The Visualiser is used to display maps, photos and diagrams from textbooks and pupils’ work. It has been especially useful in demonstrating how to complete worksheets. For example, if the task requires the students to colour in certain areas of a map, it is easy and effective to demonstrate this using the visualiser rather than holding up an A4 sheet of paper for the whole class to try and see,

English

The visualiser has been particularly effective for supporting reading aloud activities. When one pupil reads aloud, the others in the group follow along in their books. However, many of the pupils find this difficult and require support such as a member of staff sitting with them and holding a ruler under the lines, which obviously only helps one pupil at a time. By putting the book under the visualiser and using the zoom and scroll functions, the teacher is able to effectively help all the pupils follow the text.

Comments from the Teachers

Some comments from the teachers who use the visualisers:

“So quick and easy…..has really given me confidence to use ICT”

“Brilliant, really easy to show things….you just put it on [the visualiser] and it’s there for the whole class to see.”

“I didn’t realise how useful it could be….I could play with it all day!”

“Anything which you would normally hold up at the front, and you know the children can’t really see very well, you just put it on the visualiser and off you go.”