Palmtop computers are proving popular in schools. Here, Phil Wall describes a few early experiences at Earith School.

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 thoughtsduring 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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