Norwegian teachers visit Wallace High

The visit had been requested by the University of Ulster who were facilitating a tour for the group who, as part of their staff development were visiting Ireland to see how other schools use ICT to support teaching and learning. The teachers were from the Pedagogisk utviklingsleder School in Oslo which, like Wallace, is a leader in the pedagogical use of ICT.

Mr David Cleland (Vice Principal) began by providing an overview of the school’s ICT strategy over the course of the last nine years, charting the development of Wallace’s trail blazing ICT provision to date.

Dr Jane McMath (ICT Coordinator) then outlined the iPad one-to-one initiative which was, at the time, unique in Northern Ireland schools including an amusing account of how the ICT strategy team ended up snow bound in Edinburgh during one of their research expeditions.

The floor was then given to three pupils.

Olivia Aughey (Yr8) showed how she used the basic apps of Numbers, Keynote and how mind mapping apps can be used as an effective revision aid, Zach Benson (Yr10) then demonstrated how he uses the VLE ‘My Big Campus’ to access resources, notes and quizzes and to participate in class discussions and finally Stacey Burns (Yr12) skilfully presented how she uses the Garage Band app for GCSE music and GCSE Pod for her French studies.