kathleen.johnston

Catherine MacMillan my fellow Islay mentor, works in Bowmore Pre5 Unit, which is housed within Bowmore Primary School. Catherine has done some fantastic work using her Promethean board in the unit and I have been keen to get her over to do training in Port Ellen. In light of our success with the Kidspiration training –bringing the training into the classroom and learning the skills in situ, Catherine and I thought it would be interesting to do a ‘skills swap’. Catherine has been to Port Ellen for one and a half days to teach interactive board skills to staff and pupils within the class environment from Pre5 right the way through to P6/7. This was enormously successful and you can read all about the training sessions on Catherine’s blog.

I went to Bowmore for half a day on Monday morning to go over PC tablet skills. Bowmore have 5 tablets and are looking to buy more. To enhance the set of tablets I took over another 7 and our tablet printer so that the children could work in pairs. I worked with P6/7 and then took a group of the P6/7s to work with the children in the Pre5 unit.

 I started off by getting the children to open Windows Journal and to identify 5 things which they could do on the tablets. I then got them to identify three things which they wanted to find out more about. I then put the children into groups and got them to make up a group brainstorm of the skills within the group and what they wanted to find out more about. As each group reported back I pointed out the skills within the class and that the children should use each other’s expertise to learn from one another. The children were actually very good on the tablets and this exercise was able to point out that the class had the ability to support one another to develop their skills. I stressed the value of this with the class teacher and encouraged her not to feel pressurised into knowing everything about the tablets because she can learn about them along with the children. The teacher was fortunate to have a classroom assistant who enjoyed using the tablets and she was very enthusiastic about making more use of them in class. The main message I tried to get across is to relax about using the tablets and to learn from one another – the only way to develop skills is to use them –get them out and have a go! I left the class with the Chinese proverb about ‘I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand’.

 I took a group of seven of the children with tablets in hands to the pre5 unit (Catherine’s territory!). This was purely a ‘hands-on’ session for the wee ones, however it was reinforcing newly acquired tablet skills with the older children. I paired off two wee ones to a big one and set up the printer. The children drew a picture in Journal and then they were able to see it being printed off. Catherine was amazed at how every child was engaged in the activity – even the children who were waiting to draw were absorbed in watching their pal use the tablet. Catherine also remarked on the interesting development in motor skills from using large movements on the Promethean board to smaller movements on the tablets. I think lots of people are surprised at how tablets can be used meaningfully at such an early age.

I had a great morning in Bowmore and I am looking forward to working with the rest of the school on Friday. Certainly the training has been enjoyable and motivating for all involved. However, it will be interesting for both Catherine and I to monitor the long term effect these training sessions have had in each of our schools.