Video-conferencing brings history alive

Virtual reality headsets allow pupils to walk with dinosaurs or visit the Moon.

These are features of the Primary Step scheme involving 31 primary schools and 6,200 children.

Gwilym Jones, head of Fazakerley Primary School, said: "It just really has opened up new avenues of learning."

A Spanish teacher from a local secondary school comes into Fazakerley each week - and from the middle of this month will be linked electronically to children in all eight primary schools in the local education action zone.

Shared cost

It allows them to offer a modern foreign language at an age not possible in most areas because of the cost of employing a specialist teacher.

"It's the staffing," Mr Jones said. "The member of staff who's imparting the knowledge can actually be shared between the partner schools.

"Without the video-conferencing it wouldn't be existing."

Music tuition starts next week under a similar arrangement.

The school also uses the internet - carefully filtered - to help pupils research information and answer questions.

There is an enviable pupil-to-computer ratio of 12 to one, and the children clearly enjoy using them.

Playtime

"We use them nearly every day," said final year pupil Stuart Sinclair.

"We're allowed to go on them at dinner time and playtime. We're mostly on the internet, and writing stories and poems and printing them."

Educational games provide a fun element.

"Of course the most important tools here are teachers," Mr Jones said. "But someone might say the computer has got far more patience and will enable children to succeed far, far quicker than in a classroom.

"So technically the money that we've spent both in the infants suite and in the primary suite is well and truly justified."

The school is below the national average in its pupils' test results. Mr Jones's target is to beat the average within three years.

Targets

"I'm fully confident that those targets will be achieved," he said.

ICL is providing a total package including networked PC's, software, the virtual reality and video-conferencing facilities, educational services and technical support.

John Mann, ICL's Primary Step project director, said: "These projects are breaking new ground in both education and community learning.

"Information and communication technology is also being used to highlight the rich cultural heritage of Merseyside and develop skills for the new creative industries by joining forces and linking industry and education."

Among a range of activities involving 25 organisations, pupils can make online visits to Croxteth Hall, former stately home of the Earls of Sefton, e-mail the virtual Victorian characters and listen to stories about their lives.

Virtual visits

They can even submit job applications to be virtual housekeepers, butlers and footmen - supporting their history lessons and develop literacy skills.

Interviews are done using video-conferencing, and successful "applicants" get to spend a day at the hall "in character". The Learning and Technology Minister, Michael Wills, went to Fazakerley Primary School on Monday to see how pupils were using the technology.

It was, he said, putting learning at the heart of the whole community - and making it fun.

Primary Step is part of a wider information and communication technology project by Liverpool City Council, costing �14m altogether, which takes in secondary schools and adult learning centres.