This spring a fourth class teacher within our school decided to teach her pupils about the Life Cycle of a Hen. Blackrock Educational Centre were so impressed by the project that they assisted her in creating an information video for other teachers on how to undertake the project within their own classrooms. Check out the video, Chicks Hatching Project video, at one of our school blogs, St Clare’s Radio.
We used an iMac (a laptop or a computer could also be used) and Apple’s Quicktime Pro to record the chicks after they were hatched. The QuickTime Pro allowed us to record continuously for about ten hours onto the iMac hard disk. We attempted to record the hatching of the chicks live, but we were unable to get a device that would record over the weekend. I did attempt to login remotely to the iMac and restart the QuickTime Pro using TightVNC remote access, but the school firewall blocked all attempts! Despite this we did get good recordings of the chicks. Check them out at chicks hours after hatching.
As well as covering English, science, geography and SPHE, pupils used a wide range of ICT tools to record and communicate what they learned. These tools included digital cameras, a microphone, video recorders and a school Discover Primary Science blog. This year the school decided to report pupils’ science activities via a school blog using the Project Blogger service. Our blog is St Clare’s DPS blog and you can check out the fourth class pupils blog posts on the chicks by going to the category LifeCycles->animals. As well as the fourth class pupils enjoying the project, all of the other pupils in the school were able to check out the videos, photos and blog posts about the chicks via the blog on each class Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) and also at home.