Nursery World - Nursery Equipment: Dispositions and attitudes

Camcorders, whiteboards, digital microscopes and metal detectors are helping to build positive attitudes to learning at a Fife nursery school. Nicole Weinstein reports.

A projector beams out images of Space to a group of children who sit in front of an interactive whiteboard. The children, of St Andrews Nursery School in Fife, Scotland, have just completed a project on Space and the planets. They have researched it in books, built model rockets and made solar systems out of papier-mache. Now, they are watching video clips about space exploration that they downloaded from the internet. They are as close to Space as they are ever likely to get: they are transfixed.

ICT is a controversial topic in early years learning (see box below), but early years officer Elaine Cunningham, who oversees ICT at the 120-place council-run nursery in Fife, is convinced of its benefits in developing young children's confidence and positive attitudes for learning.

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