Greg Dimeck is Depute Head at Gylemuir Primary School. He is writing here in a personal capacity.
Gylemuir Primary School has been involved in Moving Image Eductaion for about 7 or 8 years now and we are well placed to use this pedagogy as a way for our teachers, pupils and parents to engage with Curriculum For Excellence. We have an amazing and skilled team of staff and a fantastic ethos of sharing where people have been really supportive of each other. Teachers who have become experts are more than happy to help others who are new to MIE and to show them the rules, tricks and tips that they have learned.
Video Production Skills
The headteacher Liz Gordon and myself both did a SCOTVEC in Video Production Skills back in the late 1980’s. We worked with cameras that were the size of machine guns and editing suites that required a small classroom to fit them in. Nevertheless when I was at Sciennes Primary in the early 90’s I produced some personal safety videos with my P6 and P7 class.
Editing was mostly in-camera back then, and we had to scrounge a variety of equipment, pupils made movies in the genre of public safety films. Films about the danger of drugs, of abandoned fridges and about learning to say no to strangers!
Digital Video at Gylemuir
Producing and more importantly sustaining work like this in Primary Schools only really became a reality with the advent of digital technology. Since the early days of iMovie I have been making and encouraging my kids to make films. As a manager in schools I have also shared my skills, expertise and enthusiasm with others. At Gylemuir we now have a large team of talented, well resourced and skilled staff, most of whom are comfortable with the use of Moving image Education as a way to promote literacy and achievement.
Curriculum For Excellence
My aim of this article is to document a year in the life of Gylemuir Primary and to explain how we have achieved this level of sustainability, how moving image fits in to the life, rhythm and traditions of our school and how we have use this literacy as a way to engage with the Curriculum For Excellence.