Category Archives: Technical Troopers

Digital Learning Week 2018, Second Level, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Primary 7 Digital Learning Week 2018!

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In P7 this week, we have completed lots of different exciting tasks using digital technologies to enhance our learning!

We completed a VR session with P1 and P3 all about space.  We looked at the International Space Station and taught our P3 buddies how to use the VR headsets.  We also looked at a variety of castles with P1.

Calum – “It was very fun teaching the P3s how to use the VR headsets and seeing their faces when it came up!”

Jamie – “It was good listening to what they thought about the VR headsets.”

Zachariah – “It was an immersive experience.”

We also had a teaching session from a young, budding teacher – Miss Murchison – who taught P7 and P3 about how to access and use Glow FORMS.  We learned how to create a range of questions, upload them our Yammer page and how to answer the surveys we had created focused on our transition to high school.

We also spent some time on our newly formed class Yammer page – which will be used until the end of term as an excellent way to share our learning and successes in P7.

#ndlw18

 

 

 

Achievements, Events, Nursery, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, School News, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Mid Calder Primary Wins National Award for Excellence in Digital Teaching and Learning

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Wednesday 6th September – Mid Calder Primary and Nursery School have gained national ‘Digital School’ status for excellence in digital technology in teaching and learning.

The Digital Schools Award recognises the dedication and innovation shown by Mid Calder Primary in areas of leadership and vision, digital technology for learning and teaching, school culture, professional development and resources and infrastructure.

22 primary schools from cities and towns across Scotland were recognised for their work on digital technology in the classroom at a special presentation ceremony.

Recognised by Education Scotland and supported by HP, Microsoft and Intel, the award is designed to encourage and recognise schools that make the best use of digital technology in the classroom.

Shirley-Anne Somerville, Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science, said: “This programme positively impacts upon pupils’ motivation to learn as well as recognising achievement by teachers and schools in advancing the integration of technology in the classroom. I commend all the primary schools receiving their digital schools award on their great achievement.”

Depute Head Teacher, Sarah Burton, of Mid Calder Primary, West Lothian said: “The Digital Schools programme offered our  school a supportive structure to evaluate our digital learning journey and where we needed to go.”

“It has also enabled our Technical Troopers pupil group, to take on a valuable leadership opportunity within our school. We are very proud of how digital learning is embedded in our school from nursery to primary 7, and this award was a chance to celebrate this work and share with others.”

Mid Calder Primary in West Lothian is now among 43 Scottish primary schools from across Scotland that are recognised for excellence in digital teaching and learning

 

 

 

 

Achievement Awards, Anytime Anywhere Learning, Events, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Schools Award Accreditation

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27th June 2017

Dear Mid Calder Primary,

Following your recent Digital Schools Award Scotland validation visit by June Jelly, I am delighted to inform you that Mid Calder Primary School has been successful in its application to become a Digital School in Scotland.

On behalf of all the partners involved in the Digital Schools Award Scotland I would like to congratulate the whole school on achieving this award.

The Digital School Award is recognised by Education Scotland and we are delighted that your school has been among the first to receive this new award.

We are confident that Mid Calder Primary School will be a pioneer among schools where digitally enhanced teaching and learning is helping our children and young people prepare for living and working in the 21st Century.

Kind regards

Aoife O’Connor

Programme Coordinator
Digital Schools Award Scotland

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Events, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Schools Award Validation Visit

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This afternoon, Mid Calder Primary School welcomed a special visitor- Mrs Jelly, a Digital Schools Award validator. The purpose of this was to find out if our school could become the third one in West Lothian Council to be given the Digital Schools Award.

Mrs Jelly’s visit began with a presentation from some of our past and present Technical Troopers who shared examples of the amazing digital learning that goes on in our school. They described Mid Calder’s journey to becoming a Bring Your Own Device school, as well as explaining the impact that this has on both our pupils and staff. Miss Burton and Miss Sherlow also shared the many achievements and recognition Mid Calder has received for our use of a range of digital tools to support and enhance learning.

Mrs Jelly was then invited to visit our nursery and several classes across the school to see digital learning taking place first hand and to engage in discussions with our pupils and staff. Both her and Mrs Compton, who joined Mrs Jelly on her visit, were extremely impressed by what they saw and heard.

A big thank you to all of the pupils and staff who showcased digital learning so confidently, and to Mrs Compton for her continued advice and support. We eagerly await the results in the post. Watch this space…

 

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 1, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

Digital Learning in P1

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This  week we practised logging on and off  the netbooks independently.

Logging on can still be quite tricky as we need  to recognise both lowercase and uppercase letters.  Logging off correctly means that the netbook is ready for the next person to use.

The Technical Troopers came down to support us with all of this which was very helpful. Once we had all logged on successsfully, we discovered that the Technical Troopers had planned a Purple Mash activity to help us consolidate some of our learning about pirate ships.

As we painted each part of the ship we were able to name the part and say something about its purpose. We were then shown how to save our work too, so we can share it with our families at home.

A very big thank you to the Technical Troopers for helping and supporting our Digital Learning this week. We loved having you in our classroom.

We also used the netbooks and  i-pads this week in Literacy and Numeracy tasks. A very popular game that helped us to recognise and read words was the Poop Deck Pirates game.

 

In Maths and Numeracy we used Hit the Button and Dino Park Maths to practise our addition and subtraction.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Nursery, Primary 1, Primary 2, Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Leaders for Digital Learning Week

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To celebrate Education Scotland’s National Digital Learning Week, our Technical Troopers have been working extremely hard to make a #digitaldifference in Mid Calder Primary School. They have delivered lessons across all stages of our school, teaching our pupils how to use a range of digital tools to enhance their learning. Primary 4A, 4B and P3 received a lesson on how to use the Glow tool Forms, while P7/6 and P5A learned how to the Glow tool Sway. The Technical Troopers helped our Nursery children to develop their positional language by using the Bee-Bots, as well as supporting P1 with logging onto the netbooks and accessing a pirate themed activity using Purple Mash. Primary 6 were taught about the language of coding using Hour of Code, while P5B continued to develop their programming skills using Scratch to create a simple game. P3/2 were shown how to use the different features of iMovie to create a short film about their IDL context.

The Technical Troopers received lots of positive feedback from both the teachers and the pupils, and they did a fantastic job at sharing their own digital skills confidently to make a #digitaldifference.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 7, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

Digital Learning Week in P7/6

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It has been Digital Learning week across the country and we at MCPS have been celebrating by  sharing our learning across all levels. The technical troopers have many talents and Cailin and Olivia  shared their knowledge of Sway, a tool for producing presentations, where the children can either work independently or contribute to a group Sway. Cailin and Olivia were the teachers for the morning and gave a short presentation as to how to use Sway and the features that can be used. Some of the children had already used Sway and were just building upon their knowledge but others had not used it before and needed a little bit more guidance. By the end of the lesson all children were able to contribute to our class ‘How does your garden grow?’ Sway and had made their own, some added pictures and some added videos. It was good to see Amy continuing with her Sway during free time Friday this week and building on her knowledge. I hope that some children might just use Sway in the future when presenting.

I hope you all have a fantastic holiday weekend.

Miss Anderson

 

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Learning Week in P6

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On Tuesday, Primary 6 were lucky to have some Technical Troopers come into class and lead a session exploring coding. We were shown some resources such as https://code.org/learn to help us get started. This resource can be used at home to continue learning. The pupils were incredibly enthusiastic as they were given an opportunity to experience something completely new. We will follow this up over the coming weeks.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Nursery, Primary 5, Technical Troopers, Technologies

Digital Learning Week in the Nursery

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The Primary 5 boys and girls came to the nursery to show us how to use the beebots. They learned positional language, forwards, backwards, side to side, left and right. They used these directions to program the beebots and make them move. They linked it to number by rolling the dice and the number they rolled was the number of moves the beebot would make.

“They were going backwards and front ways!” – Sophia

“They were really fun.” – Eilidh

“I liked the beebots because I made mine go round in a circle.” – Hannah

 

We used the visualiser to project the children’s writing on to the smartboard. They were able to show their friends how they wrote their name and how they formed letters. They loved seeing their work on display.

The children have continued to use the ipad apps and have enjoyed choosing songs for the new ipod! They are now in control of the music in the nursery!

The go pro was in full swing keeping track of the children’s learning. It was keeping active and was also used for the children interviewing each other about what they were doing.

Some of the boys and girls have been practicing their keyboard skills while learning their letters and sounds.

 

The children then helped Mrs Murray do the blog post to share their learning.

Anytime Anywhere Learning, Digital Learning Week 2017, Primary 3, Technical Troopers, Technologies, Uncategorized

P3’s Digital Learning Week!

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This week P3 have been thinking about Digital Literacy and how it is used in our classroom to support and enhance learning. P3 think that Digital Literacy:

  • Gives children a different way to present information and demonstrate their learning.
  • Allows children to explore Numeracy, Literacy and other curriculum areas in a fun way through games and apps such as Sumdog and Purple Mash.
  • Allows children to share and discuss our learning through Sway and Yammer.
  • Helps children to concentrate because it is a fun way to learn.
  • Lets children explore new things that they have not seen before.
  • Helps to prepare children for CEM testing.

We also had a visit from the Technical Troopers this week who delivered a fantastic lesson showing the children how to create a questionnaire using Forms. The children loved this and were able to create questionnaires based on our context of Healthy Bodies and Healthy Minds.

Miss Clark: The Technical Troopers did a great job of showing the children how to create their questionnaires step by step.

Eilidh: I enjoyed learning how to make a questionnaire with pictures and videos!

Lewis Adams: I liked being able to pick a picture to add to my questionnaire.

Marc: I think the Technical Troopers were helpful and they showed me how to add a video and picture to my questionnaire.

Ben: The Technical Troopers were very kind and let us take our time using the netbooks.

Alex: I enjoyed the Technical Troopers teaching us more about using the Glow page to learn new things!