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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