Visitors from afar

by Brian Smith

n February a group of foreign visitors watched enthralled as seven children from Hartford Junior School showed their Acorn and Psion palmtop computers.

Using them as notebooks the children read to the visitors. (Click here to read the story Vikki and Jessica read out). Then, mingling with the visitors, whose English ranged from excellent to very rudimentary,the children demonstrated how to use the spell checker. They showed all the English words which end in 'ough'. One visitor commented that all languages have their idiosyncrasies and that in English it is the spelling! The children then showed how you can solve crosswords from just a few letters.

Learning
But the highlight was using the sound recording facility to learn another language. First the children recorded a visitor saying, 'My name is ......' in the visitor's own language. Then they practised saying their own name in that tongue using the palmtop computer to hear their own attempts. Using them in this way illustrated just how versatile they are.
A few examples which were copied from the palmtop computers at the end of the session are:


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