Our primary programmes have been developed with teachers and pupils to encourage pupils' creativity, learning, acquisition and development of skills in a variety of subject contexts. Many of our primary programmes utilise resources such as websites and CD-Roms which the Nerve Centre has produced.

We can offer professional development training for teachers to deliver any of these programmes. During the training teachers are given all the resources, technical skills, lesson plans and worksheets needed to deliver a programme. Alternatively, Nerve Centre trainers can directly deliver these programmes to pupils either in school or in our centre.

ICT:

All our workshops are flexible and can be tailored to meet the needs of individual schools. They can also concentrate on specific curricular / cross-curricular topics. Our ICT programmes can focus on particular skills associated with CCEA's Using ICT Accreditation Scheme.

- Digital Storytelling

This introductory workshop will show young people how to use software such as Photostory or Movie Maker to create a digital story by combining pictures, video clips, music, narration and text. Digital stories can be used to present information and stories from a variety of subjects and topics. During this training pupils will learn how to plan for a digital story by storyboarding, record narration using a microphone, combine digital media within digital storytelling software and edit the timings of their media elements such as music volume, slide transitions or photo effects. Pupils will also learn how to correctly export their finished digital stories so that they can be viewed on a variety of platforms.

- Moving Image in the Classroom

This workshop will take pupils through the process of planning, shooting and editing a short movie. It sill cover basic moving image language as well as ways of managing film production in a busy classroom environment.

'Slam Dunk' Community Relations Programme 

The Slam Dunk programme is delivered over three 2-hour sessions and has been designed to highlight how sport can be used to bring people together as a positive force for sharing, team-working and co-operation. Pupils explore this topic through a film screening and a series of story writing and creative ICT tasks.

- Session 1: Film screening of ‘Kicking and Screaming'

Film length: 95 Minutes - followed by discussion

This session will stress how overly competitive sports turn people against each other and get obsessed with a sport to the detriment of family and friends. The session will feature a cinema screening of ‘Kicking and Screaming' which shows viewers how a team of underdogs, working effectively together, can defeat a more talented group of individuals. It also shows how others from a different culture have skills that can help us all.

- Session 2: Hands -on ICT workshop

Duration: 1/2 Day

Pupils will learn how to use ‘Comic Life' software. This will involve adding templates, lettering, caption boxes, speech and thought bubbles, changing styles and adding and resizing images. Pupils will have a chance to practice their newly acquired comic production skills on a practice page. n this session pupils will look at layout, design features and styles of comics. Pupils can put this knowledge again into practical use by re-designing their practice page to incorporate some of the standard comic features and styles they have learned.

- Session 3: Hands -on ICT workshop

Duration: 1/2 Day

Pupils will use a Story Planning Sheet to assist in the writing of a story about meeting or having contact with someone new who is an outsider or different from them either by their culture, place of birth or maybe a disability. The story will use sport as its theme. Pupils can look at both the Ulster Weans' A-Z CD-ROM and the provided bank of images to help them think of story ideas for their comic. When the Story Planning Sheet is complete and has been checked by a teacher or trainer, the pupils' story ideas can be transferred to a comic Storyboard .

When the Storyboard has been completed and pupils can move on to producing a comic. These comics will be printed in colour and sent to the school along with a CD with digital versions of the comics