MAPE Newsletter

Rhona Dick

By now Christmas, the New Year (or Millennium depending upon your point of view) and BETT will be little more than distant memories. After some eighteen months of the Literacy Hour we are all old hands and have more than a passing acquaintance with the Daily Maths Lesson. What of the future? Well there is the prospect of yet another revision to the National Curriculum. But these are momentous and exciting times in which we live. We have had an Industrial Revolution and now we are in the midst of a Technological Revolution. Harold Wilson, when Prime Minister in the 1960s, talked at length about it. What vision he had! I wonder if even he could have dreamt of the extent to which technology has encompassed all our lives. Look at the changes in technology in the classroom in the last two decades since computers first appeared. Programs stored on audio-cassettes that took ages to load; black and white portable TVs doubling as monitors; BBC computers with 16K of memory (or a massive 32K if you bought the BBC B). Today, for not much more, you can get a 32MB RAM, 6.4GB Hard Drive, 17 inch colour monitor, modem, CD-ROM drive etc. When I first signed up with an ISP I paid charges of about £13 a month; now many companies are providing free connection, and already there are ISPs claiming to provide access free of the cost of telephone calls too.

The content of the web grows exponentially. The danger of course is that the quality will not match the quantity, and there is always the possibility of accessing sites which, for one reason or another, leave a lot to be desired. However, access to the Internet has proved to be a great stimulus. Companies, schools, organisations and individuals are developing rich and exciting websites, many with material suitable for teachers and children. A few years ago wordprocessing a piece of writing was as exciting as it might get; now our pupils all have the opportunity and right to have their work published for a wider (and it can't get much wider than the Internet!) audience. What an incentive!

I don't suppose that any one of us can look to the future and imagine what is in store for us as teachers, or for our pupils, in the next decade or two. I believe that, whatever it is, it will be exciting and beneficial. Let's make the most of the opportunities on offer, and spread the word. MAPE, through its publications and regular events tries to do just that, but we need to hear from you, the classroom teachers who make it all happen.

Make 2000 the year you write for MAPE.