Schools from Scotland, London and the North West were
named winners in the Made IT Happen challenge.
Made IT Happen is aimed at primary school pupils aged nine to
11 years who are using technology to help their school or local
community.
The winners were announced at an awards ceremony with MPs in
Westminster on Monday 15 October.
Joint first prize was awarded to Thomas' Battersea School in
London and Woodhill Primary School in Bishopbriggs in Scotland.
Pupils at Thomas' Battersea used ICT to make a DVD to help them
to raise funds for their local community centre. The DVD, showing
the importance of the centre's work, was shown to potential
sponsors. Christopher Smith, director of technology, e-Learning and
learning resources at Thomas' Battersea, said, "They wrote,
presented and produced the DVD themselves and managed to raise
substantial additional funds for the community centre. The project
also gave the students a chance to develop their technical, writing
and communication skills as well as boosting their
self-confidence."
Students at Woodhill Primary School in Scotland developed
podcasts and blogs for use as creative learning materials. The new
materials were then shared with partner schools in Scotland,
England, France, Trinidad, Tobago and China.
Susan Buchanan, principal teacher at the school, said, "The aim
was to motivate the students and get their work out of the school
context and into the wider world. It is amazing how motivated and
engaged the students are about using these technologies."
The runner-up was St Nicholas CE Primary School in Crosby, North
West England, where a talented technology student developed a
series of computer-based mathematics games to bring the subject to
life.
The three winners were chosen from 12 regional winners. The
competition was organised by the Parliamentary Information
Technology Committee, PITCOM, and
e-skills UK, the Sector Skills Council for IT and telecoms.