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Below you will find the rationale behind the
Technology- Things We Wear website.
The links below will allow you to jump to the relevant
areas of the overview. At the end of each section, after the suggested
follow up activities, you will find a link that will take you to the corresponding
area of the flash site. If you want to access the html (interactive
text) version of the site then click here.
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Introduction.
The 5-14 guidelines describe technology as a 'distinct form
of creative activity where people interact with their environment to bring about
change in response to needs, wants and opportunities'. The document stresses
the need to engage children with practical tasks that lead to products that
serve a need or solve a problem.
Knowledge and understanding of people's needs, the resources
that can be used and processes that can turn resources into products to meet
these needs, are all seen as essential in developing pupils' overall technological
capability.
Running parallel to this, recent documentation has highlighted
an increased drive towards education for work, enterprise and citizenship. Learning
and Teaching Scotland emphasise that education for citizenship should aim to
develop capability for thoughtful and responsible participation in political,
economic, social and cultural life. As teachers, it is important that we
not only prepare our children to be active in the world of work through being
enterprising enough to have the vision to create and sustain a new idea or project,
but also to become responsible and active citizens of the community, sensitive
towards the needs of people and the environment.
By working through the Around Scotland site, children will have
the opportunity to develop a sharper awareness of how people's needs and wants
may differ and how specific resources and processes may help to meet those needs.
Children will become more familiar with, and more sensitive towards, the role
of the customer, the need for differing design specifications and a range of
materials and equipment to create solutions to practical needs, wants and problems.
The activities concentrate on 'things we wear' and could be
used to support the two BBC 'Around Scotland' television programmes, first televised
in December 2002. They could also link well with an ongoing enterprise education
project focussing on the use of textiles for producing garments for a real audience
and also for developing key aspects of citizenship education through the site's
focus on thoughtful and responsible participation in the creative and decision-making
process.
The children will be able to learn about people's needs and
how they are met, resources and how they are managed and processes and how they
are applied. These are explored through three main menus, all of which are geared
towards national attainment level C and/or D: Which fabric/What colour?
enables the children to select appropriate materials for dressing characters
for particular seasons and sports, and also allow them to explore the use of
colour in the production and marketing of clothing; How We Make Clothes
allows the children to make decisions about the types of tools to use for specific
stages in textile design and also ways in which to minimise waste; and, finally,
Make Your own enables children to use all their knowledge and understanding
to design a T-shirt of their own in order to match a specific specification
for a particular consumer.
As the 5-14 guidelines suggest, the central purpose of knowledge
and understanding in technology is to enable skills to be deployed effectively
and attitudes to be well informed. Throughout the site, there are opportunities
for children to review and evaluate their work and use feedback as the basis
for further discussion to assess the quality of their work against design criteria.
It would be hoped that the knowledge and understanding gained from the tasks
could lend themselves to wider technology projects, whereby the children are
able to prepare for tasks by identifying a set of needs, wants or problem
issues and communicate and plan ways to proceed. It is also hoped that children
will learn the necessary skills to carry out tasks to address these needs
and problems through their awareness of the use of materials, tools and equipment
and the processes through which they may be applied, and also to review and
report on the success of these tasks and suggest ideas for further improvements.
The site's content may also allow teachers to complement their other work in
environmental studies and to develop informed attitudes in the children towards
having respect and care for others and also having greater social and environmental
responsibility. This site will provide children with a great deal of enjoyment
and perhaps an enhanced commitment to learning about technology, responsible
citizenship and sustainable development.
Before you enter the site, you might want to look at the Forward
Plan which identifies the 5-14 strands, attainment targets,
levels and pupil experiences which this site supports.You might also wish to
look at the Technology- Things we wear site (launch November '02) for early
stages 5 - 7 year olds, and which covers some of the themes in this site but
in a simpler way. You will find this in the What?
When? Where? Why? site.
It may also be uselful to read the accompanying
notes to the television programmes, transmitted in autumn '02.
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The basics.
To get the most out of this site choose the green 
tab. This takes you to a version that includes animations and interactive activities.
Some of these activities may take a little time to load- a minute or so, depending
on your internet connection.
You will then arrive at a main menu page which offers you three
areas to explore.
At the bottom of this page there is a message that reads "full
screen version". Clicking here will launch a full screen version of the
site, which basically enlarges everything and removes the browser bar. This
means that you won't be able to move outside the "Technology- Things we
wear" site.
If you should wish to leave the site at any time, click on
the "Technology- Things we wear" icon on the top left hand side of
the screen. This takes you back to the main menu page. Here you can click on
close window on the bottom right hand side, returning you to the homepage.
Alternatively, the "Technology- Things we wear" button
can be used to return you to the main menu page where you can choose to visit
another area of the site.
If you choose the red 
tab instead of flash, then you will enter a version of the site that does not
contain animations. This is a streamlined version of the site which covers the
core learning concepts and offers print outs of some of the activities instead
of computer based tasks.
Throughout the Flash site there are "hidden" 
buttons on the bottom left hand side of the page. Clicking on these will give
you information on what the task in hand is and an assessment of the activity.
Enjoy the website!
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Which Fabric? What Colour?
Activity
In 'Which Fabric?', children will be given the opportunity
to choose suitable clothes to dress up an online doll for a particular season.
By reading information about different types of materials and their properties,
children will be able to make informed decisions about which type of fabric
might be more suitable for winter or summer, and make selections for either
a girl or a boy. Children can then review their selections and decide if they
are the most suitable ones. They can then move onto the next level where they
get to choose a character playing a particular sport. They can then decide which
listed material would be ideal to dress the character in. If the children's
choices are correct, the mask hiding the character disappears but if they are
wrong, then the mask remains and a short message explains why the choice was
not appropriate. When the correct answer is selected and the characters are
seen in full, the children can input reasons for their choices and print out
their notes and the image.
Within 'What Colour?', children learn about the how a
colour wheel works and why it's useful in marketing and producing clothes. They
will then have the opportunity to examine three photographs of people at work
and select a reason why they might wear particular colours . Children are given
feedback about why their answers are right or wrong.
Learning Outcomes
- Children will be able to recognise the properties of different materials
and how these may be suited to particular seasons and sports.
- Children will develop an ability to make informed choices
for consumers and recognise the range of consumer needs that may exist.
- Children will use the self-evaluation process to review and
amend their choices for clothes based on informed decisions.
- Children will develop an understanding of the way in which
colour can be used with textiles for different reasons and purposes.
Suggested Follow-Up activities
- Children could be involved in writing specifications for
real sports players and sketching drawings of sportswear that could serve
the particular needs of that player.
- Children could critically evaluate a range of current clothes
for girls or boys for different seasons, and suggest alternative materials
that could be used to improve their design for the consumer.
- Children could create textile design boards, where they have
to produce new marketing imagery for clothes through the use of colour blends.
Now try Which
Fabric? What Colour?
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How We Make Clothes
In this section, the children are involved in selecting the most
appropriate tools to make a t- shirt. They can read information about each kind
of tool and select the most suitable alternative for joining patterns to materials,
marking around patterns, cutting shapes out and joining shapes together. Children
can then move onto the next level where they can play a jigsaw type game where
they can attempt to arrange shapes onto fabric, with the aim of minimising waste.
At the end of both of these activities short animations make a subtle statement
about safety.
Learning Outcomes
- Children will develop an awareness of the properties and purposes of a range
of construction materials and tools.
- Children will recognise the ways in which different tools may be used to
complete particular stages in the process of textile design.
- Children will be able to engage in efficient practice in designing and making
activities and recognise the importance of reducing waste.
- Children will develop a greater understanding of the hazards and risks involved
in working with tools, equipment and materials.
Suggested Follow-Up activities
- A national or international sporting or musical event could be used as a
context for children to work with patterns, fabrics and tools to create new
textile samples. Children would enjoy designing and making a new sample fantasy
football shirt, or even some new high fashion tops for a favourite pop band.
- Children could create a design simulation, where they have to describe the
way in which they could reduce waste and maximise efficiency within a fictitious
textiles factory.
- Children could make safety posters for use in a textile design workshop,
highlighting the hazards involved in using equipment in the wrong way.
Now try How
We Make Clothes.
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Make Your Own
In this section, the children are able to create a T-shirt design of their choice
by selecting the material, style, collar, motif and other extras such as icons
and logos. The teacher may choose to either use the in-built character requirements
(Matt, Kenan and Holly) or to create specifications of their own (say a school
top for an end of term event) for children to follow. The children can then compare
their finished garment with the original specifications and evaluate how closely
they match. Finally, children can print put their final T-shirt design for classroom
display.
Learning Outcomes
- Children will recognise that design specifications are a vehicle to allow
technology to satisfy specific customer needs and wants.
- Children will develop further experience of the range of materials and resources
that may be used to create different solutions to particular design specifications.
- Children will develop the skill of reviewing the quality of their work by
reference to specific design criteria.
Suggested Follow-Up activities
- Children could work in small teams and produce design criteria for each
other, and then engage in peer review and evaluation of T-shirt designs.
- Children could link this work with ongoing class topics - eg. design a top
for use in the 1960s or 1970s or even earlier; design a new jersey for the
school football team or for a specific pop, film or sports star. Why not design
new fashions for David Beckham or for Kylie Minogue ?
- The work could be linked to a whole-class enterprise project, whereby the
children carry out market research for new school t-shirts. Specifications
and drawings could be made and feedback taken from pupils in the school. Finally,
children could make the T-shirts using appropriate tools and processes, and
perhaps sell them at the school fayre.
- Finally, children could learn a little about the resources and processes
required for mass production, and how these differ from those required for
smaller-scale work.
Now try Make
Your Own.
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Forward Plan
We have provided a Forward
Plan (click to download) which you can print out.
This is designed to break down the activities into their strands, attainment targets
and levels in order to help assessment and evaluation.
We have also provided a forward plan covering ICT skills, which can be found here.
Flash Sitemap
We have provided a sitemap
(click to download) which you can print out. This will give you an idea of the
layout of the site.
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Links
Here are some other Technology related sites worth looking at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/whatwherewhenwhy
(launch November 02)
This is a site for 5 - 7 year olds and which also deals with Technology - things
we wear.
Games include: dress the fire-fighter, where do our clothes come from? and match
the clothes to the seasons.
http://www.baddesigns.com/
http://www.brainpop.com/
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://www.ltscotland.com/
http://www.primarydandt.org/
http://www.technologylinks.org/tlinks/index.htm
http://www.data.org.uk/welcome/welcome.htm
http://www.nutrition.org.uk/
All the sites listed are checked regularly. However,
the constantly changing nature of the Internet means some sites may alter after
we have visited them. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external
websites.
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| Production Team |
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Design Team |
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| Web Assistant |
Carolyn Syme |
Designer |
Robert Hamilton |
| Assistant Producer |
Gerald Strother |
Flash Coder |
Cris Walsh |
| Senior Producer |
Lucy Conan |
HTML Coder |
Anneli Kuukka |
| Editor |
Moira Scott |
Illustrations |
Team Artonomy |
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| Voiceover |
Jacqui Sinclair |
Education Officer |
Janice Rough |
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| Consultants |
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| Peter Edwards |
Acting on behalf of LTScotland |
| Susan MacLaren |
Dept MSTE, Faculty of Education, University
of Strathclyde |
| Ross Deuchar |
Primary Education Department, University of
Strathclyde |
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This website has been developed with regard
to the Primary Technology in Scottish Schools pack by LTScotland.
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