McKinney ICT Microgrant Award

By Ballyclare High School on 28 June, 2019

Jonny Nelson of the Spanish department in Ballyclare High School has been announced as the fifth winner of the McKinney Microgrant Award. This scheme is designed to encourage and promote innovative use of ICT at grassroots classroom level that will have a positive impact on the pupils’ learning. Mr Nelson applied to use the microgrant funding to purchase an MP3 recorder to help facilitate the recording of pupils’ spoken work and oral examinations. Furthermore, the money will be used to purchase online access for pupils and staff to a range of digital resources linked to the GCSE and A Level Spanish courses. The award is sponsored by former Head of RE and ICT Strategy Leader Edgar Mckinney, himself an innovative educator, who led the school through the Specialist School programme for ICT from 2008. Mr G Shaw, the current ICT strategy leader in school, commented that “The McKinney Microgrant Award is a superb initiative that gives all teachers and departments in school a little bit of a financial boost to go about purchasing new hardware or software that will initiate deeper learning in our pupils and ultimately help them achieve in their external examinations”. The next award will take place in November and already is hotly applied for.