Essential tools for primary IT capability

Many schools are acquiring a range of computers from a variety of sources, for example supermarket token collections, donations from local businesses, laptop projects such as the BECTa scheme, etc. Some of these machines are arriving without educational software and are mainly used with a selection of CD-ROMs. However, where is the word processor, paint package or information handling software that would make the machine a really useful educational resource?

What Logotron has done is to assemble a set of five educational programs that can be considered useful, when used in a generic way, for teaching about 90% of the curriculum. What is relatively new, conceptually, is the notion of a company providing the user with a complete set of software that will run on any computer platform such as Acorn, Apple or PC. It is true that the RM Window Box has always been provided as a complete package and that some companies have tried to follow this example but here we have a company providing a good software base irrespective of the platform.

Each of the items of software has been reviewed and acclaimed before, and will be familiar to many Acorn users, and so little more needs to be said of the individual programs, except perhaps to give a brief description for teachers more used to the PC platform.

The five programs are:

My World is the famous 'click-to-stick' program. This has been around for some time on the RM Window Box but not as generally available for the general PC market. Teachers can use ready-made screens to 'Dress Teddy', make a weather map, construct sentences, etc. By using the 'Basis' screen they can also construct electronic worksheets for literacy, working at the letter, word, sentence or text level.
My World is My World! but the text entry on the PC version is a little more complex and not WYSIWYG as on the Acorn. However, the creation of simple text screens by the teacher is at about the same level of simplicity. Text screens are obviously useful when creating screens for literacy but for numeracy work I prefer to use, or have access to, objects for ordering, counting or sorting. The Acorn platform is the best when it comes to teachers who wish to put their own graphical objects into their homemade Basis screens. PC users may have to purchase a Draw program such as Oak Draw to do this. Paint cannot be used as it is not an object-oriented program.
The Acorn machine arrives pre-loaded with a !Draw program which allows the user to load the 'Basis' screen and add clip art images, scanned images or digital photos.

Textease is an initial dtp program which combines text, graphics and will speak the text that has been typed on screen. Textease for the PC is virtually identical to the Acorn version.

Dazzle is a really good art package similar to other art programs such as Colour Magic but with slightly different features.

Junior Pinpoint is a standard information-handling program. Unlike Information Workshop, Junior Pinpoint starts by making the user construct a questionnaire that can then be printed and used for data collection. At any point, while entering data, the user can recall the questionnaire sheet and add or delete questions, which are then updated on all filled in sheets. The appearance of the icons is identical across platforms, it is only the positioning that differs.

Superlogo is a version of Logo with lots of whistles and bells! Superlogo will probably be mostly used for turtle graphics work, which is a shame since this version of Logo has many dynamic features which can enthuse pupils once they have seen some of the possibilities. Examples are available which show web pages and interactive games that have been created by school children.

A real delight is the ease of installation. Once the CD-ROM is in the drive, clicking the install button is about as hard as it gets. The user is presented with five boxes containing the names of the programs with the invitation to click on each to install them. Once installed they can be easily loaded from a button bar or by clicking on 'Start', 'Programs', selecting the program and clicking.
The school with the mixed economy of computer hardware will now be able to run the same software on all machines with very few differences in feel and performance.

In my job I have to prepare students to teach in schools where a variety of machines and software exist. I also have to use a PC network for Internet and email access and college-provided and licensed software. To make the teaching coherent I purchased the site license version of this software so that now I can use all the machines in the room at the same time and can guarantee the experiences the students are getting, as well as ensuring that they go into school ready to use the software they might find.

The software is available from: