Interviewer:
So Mark from the Royal High School in Edinburgh, we missed you out earlier on when we were walking round and I apologise for that.
Teacher:
That’s okay.
Interviewer:
Time was against us, but, tell us what’s going on here.
Teacher:
Well we’ve brought three projects today. One of them is a model building for Standard Grade Graphics. Over here we have plastecine model-making for Higher Product Design, and, at the back of our stand, we have marker-sketching for ideas for Higher Product Design as well. We made a conscious decision to bring projects that people could maybe take away with them and use. And we also made a conscious decision to bring hand skills as well that pupils could work on, you know, sitting at a desk, with their hands, rather than ICT, so that was what we decided to do.
Interviewer:
Now you can almost see that, in all these things - you can see the razors here and at the back the design for the cameras as well - you can see there’s other impacts here. I mean, potentially, you could take this to the market, couldn’t you?
Teacher:
Well, we think so. A lot of our Higher Product Design courses are based in reality. We use a lot of handling collections to show pupils’ real products and they replicate them in their own designs. So, yes, they could quite. and these are standard practices used in industry for model-making and ideas-sketching as well.
Interviewer:
One of the things I’m becoming aware of today is that none of the subjects within Technical Education are in isolation. You know, there’s relations to each of them and they have relations to each other.
Teacher:
Yes, they’re all linked and they all link through ICT as well, which we’ve not brought either. There’s a school round the corner who link Product Design and Computer Graphics as well, as well as computer 3D work. We do that as well, but we haven’t brought it today, so yes you’re right, they’re all linked.
Interviewer:
Right, okay, you were going talk about here, before I rudely interrupted you.
Teacher:
Oh no, not at all, this one here, you were talking about products based in the marketplace. We stole. I mean, I’m not a model railway guy by any stretch of the imagination but I became aware that you could buy foldey-up model buildings for railway layouts and I thought “That’s a great project for tacking onto the end of technical drawing solids” so that’s what we did. And I have to say, our pupils love it. They look forward to it all throughout third year, until they get to it in fourth year.
Interviewer:
So this is what fourth year pupils have been producing, here at the Royal High?
Teacher:
Yes, they do this in fourth year and we have two girls working today, we have Natasha and Megan, busily working away, making us a what are you making today girls, are you making us a?
Pupil1:
We’re making model buildings for a mini, sort of, railway.
Teacher:
What building is it you’re making today?
Pupil 1:
I’m making a church….with a cheese roof.
Interviewer:
And what are you making?
Pupil 2:
I’m making another building with a glass roof and brickwork for the base.
Interviewer:
It looks like a little office tower.
Well, listen, thanks very much for giving us a wee eye-opener into what you’re up to and we’ll be back during the course of the afternoon to see how it’s going.
Teacher:
That’s great, thanks very much for coming to see us.