 e
collected our new Acorn Pocketbook II palmtop computers from
the Tesco store in Huntingdon on October 24th last year. We
had already had one Pocketbook in school since June and I
had trained a small group of year five pupils (now year six)
to use some of its facilities. They had then cascaded to
other pupils.
Before we left for the
presentation I asked the group of three pupils if they would
like to use the Pocketbook as a travelling note book so that
they could jot down their thoughts during the morning.They were very keen and the
Pocketbook was soon being passed round the car as we drove
to Huntingdon.
John Major
At the
presentation one of the group was taking notes whilst John
Major was talking. He was most impressed, and focused his
little speech around the group of children and the
Pocketbook computer. Later the children took it round the
store and behind the scenes.
Writing on the move
Back at school
the document was edited slightly so that what you see on the
facing page is almost the original document written on the
move. At the time of writing we have four Pocketbooks
in school with three more on order courtesy of the Friends
of Earith School. They are extremely popular with all the
children.
Crisis
One day, one of
the younger pupils came to me to tell me that her mum and
dad had split up the night before on her little sister's
birthday. She saw me transferring files from a Pocketbook to
the office PC. She had not seen one before. I explained what
it was and showed her how to use it. To my surprise she said
"I want to write about what happened last night!". I let her
have a Pocketbook to use that lunch time. and she came back
again over the next three lunch hours.
Feelings
We are now going
through the document to edit it! This was something that she
asked me to do this because she said her spelling is not to
good on computers. She said she wanted to write about her
experience because she wanted other people to know what she
feels like inside!
Palmtop computers seem to offer a
number of advantages over the full size computer for many
tasks. In particular, even though a child may be writing for
public consumption, the size of the screen makes the
composing process more private. I think this may be one
reason why so many children prefer to write on them. I
wonder if the girl would have been so keen to write about
her traumatic experience on a full size machine with a
public screen?
- Read what the children wrote on
the palmtop during the above visit
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