”Grade 1a in the computer” is an example of teaching in which the students in their first year of school acquire basic ICT skills.

By Knud Madsen and Lise S. Christiansen, Løgstør School, 1997/98

Here are the 20 of us

Contents

ICT plan

According to the ICT plan of Løgstør School the objective is

"to make all students familiar with ICT so that they can – in a rational and relevant way – seek, sort and disseminate information. These objectives are targeted by means of a teaching plan that must ensure that students acquire basic ICT skills".

To fulfil this objective the action plan suggests that during the first three years of teaching the students work with

1. basic knowledge of the Windows user interface

2. basic word processing

3. graphics software

4. educational software

However, the school is aware of the fact that such a teaching plan must be continuously revised because of the rapid change in this area. As a consequence today electronic communication is already considered an obvious area of attention even in the very early stages of school.

Introduction

1a, in which we have 20 students (10 girls and 10 boys), must be considered in good and bad a completely ordinary and normal grade 1 class in 1997. The only thing that might deviate from the Danish average is that the class holds 25% students with a foreign ethnical background and thus have Danish as their second language.

The classroom is a traditional Danish classroom with, however, two Pentium computers with CD-ROM drive and sound board. Apart form having computer access in the classroom we can, of course, book the school’s computer room like all other classes in the school. The school has a computer room with 22 machines and in addition to this there are 12 computers in the school library.

We are two teachers that form the team behind 1a. We teach all subjects apart from music and physical exercise. During four lessons a week we are both present in the class. Statistically we are very much the average Danish teachers, however, we feel that our ICT background is somewhat above the average.

Planning the work of the first year we have tried to keep ICT in mind so that from the very first day ICT is a tool that comes natural to the children. It was very important to us that the children experienced that they were in control of the computer and not the other way around. The idea was to make them feel safe and comfortable using the computer and that indirectly they should feel that "grade 1a was on the computer".

The plan for the year held a number of cross-curricular themes. In these themes we have integrated ICT so that there is a progression – the children develop new skills in the ICT area in each theme and they experience a growing participation in and influence on the final outcome.

We have consciously chosen that the two computers in the classroom should hold only the software that was being used at the relevant level. This way the choice of software was always easy and it was always noticed when the computer suddenly held a new piece of software.

1a – the first day

Their task was to use the word processor to write a word list that relates to their

own child: names of family members, habits, favourite games, favourite food

etc. These words were printed and cut so that after this session each child had a small box with their own very personal words. These words have been used in various connections all through the first year and the children still use them. The parents found the task very relevant and they were very careful to write the exact right words for their child. During this task the computer was seen as a relevant tool and the children were also aware that the words had been produced this way.
During the first day of school the children had a group photo taken. During the first couple of days these pictures together with a short easy-read text were collected to the first computer multimedia presentation, "1a – the first day".

1a – that is us

The next day each child had his/her own photo taken and they were asked to make a self-portrait with crayons. With the information of name, address and birthday these photos and drawings were soon collected to the computer multimedia presentation "1a – that is us".

The reason for working so hard on getting these two presentations ready in a short time was that they were to be installed on the two computers in the classroom as soon as possible. Already one week after the first day each student could experience the joy of finding himself/herself and her self-portrait on the computer.
To avoid having the "strong" boys take over the computers we introduced a taking-turns method right from the start so that they in turn had their computer-day. In a grade 1 class there will always be difference in the self-assurance with which the students approach the computer. However, knowing that with the proper click with the mouse a picture of yourself, your mother, your father and perhaps even your grandmother will appear made everybody curious and en- thusiastic. They all wanted to browse though the presentations and tell each other about the pictures again and again.
That the presentations had the same effect on the parents became obvious on the first parents’ meeting two weeks after the first day. When the computers were turned on, the parents were glued to the monitors as well. Many said yes please to receive a copy of the presentation to install on the family computer at home.

Educational software

During the first year we have used several "real" educational software titles. We would like to shortly mention the titles that we used during the first couple of months. Apart from using the program itself, the value of introducing the software was that the students learnt how to turn on the computer, launch the program, shut down the program and turn off the computer.

Malebog (Colour book) from Kinderware
a basic program in which the child colours a sketch by clicking with the mouse. The children learnt that in this program they could choose the colours just as when using crayons in a colouring book but that here changing colours and colouring within the lines is very easy and that they could try out several possibilities before finally deciding. Here they also had their first experience in saving a file and opening it later (to admire it again!).

Regn med uglen (Maths with the owl) from Grif
a very good and motivating software that trains the understanding of numbers. The students work at their own pace with numbers and counting.

Maria og Martin og edb (Maria and Martin and the computer) from Munksgaard
a good basic program that trains prefix sound. Again each child can work in its own pace related to its level of understanding. The use of a program like this means that you train considerably more words than you would do using any other method.

Huset (the House) from Malling Beck
a program that trains concepts like over, under, in front of, behind, left and right. The user moves around in a virtual house and must solve various tasks. The children liked the program instantly and the popularity has held on right through the school year.

10finger (tenfinger) from MikroVærkstedet
a program that trains the use of the keyboard as an introduction to word processing. The objective of the program is to combine the motoric skills with the individual letters on the keyboard. The basic idea is that this link can be helpful in special needs education. Our ambition was not to teach the entire class the ten finger system but through repetitious writing exercises to teach the child that each hand had a job of its own at the keyboard. You might think that the repetitious drills might bore the children, but they did not. They understood what we were training and in their language they labelled it "playing office people".

Jubii (Yahoo) from HansenSoft
a number of games for children and childish minds which train time, the alphabet and some small maths problems. In the spelling workshop the task is to spell a word that is shown with the picture. Jubii also adjusts to the level of the particular child among other things by using more or fewer number of letters in the word in question. At the same time the program is motivating so that the children often choose to work with this particular program when they can choose among all the available programs.

Small drill-and-practice titles like the above-mentioned are probably widely used in most schools today. They are easily accessible and the program defines the task itself. To us it is obvious that they are relevant in teaching when they are used consciously and are integrated in a context. But none of these programs

"familiarises the student with ICT to the extend that they can – in a rational and relevant way – seek, sort and disseminate information"

as the school’s ICT plan says. To reach that point we have to introduce the generic tools from the very beginning. As users of these software packages the students will see the computer as a powerful tool. The basic competencies in the use of these kinds of software packages were integrated in the themes we worked with during the first school year. Or to quote the school’s ICT plan

"The demands for ICT integration means that teachers plan their teaching in a way that the students learn something subject specific but also learn some basic concepts of ICT that the issues, tasks and concepts of a subject change when the teacher integrates ICT."

This is the work we will describe below.

Feature week about animals

The first feature week was due three weeks after the first day. We chose the topic "Animals" for 1a. At that time the class knew only very few letters and could only read and spell words with two or three letters. These were the preconditions from which to plan the feature week.

In advance we had prepared a big poster that should serve as a wall-dictionary. On it were the pictures and names of the most common domestic animals and pets. We had also prepared cards with the same words. These cards functioned like the pieces in a picture lottery game. The task of putting the proper cards on the pictures was done several times during the feature week.

The two computers in the classroom served excellent purpose during the feature week. First and foremost the children could find all the animals on the "Children’s Animal Encyclopaedia". Here they could see the animal, hear its sound, hear something about the animal and in some cases hear one or two strange or funny things about it. As none of the children could read at this point it was essential that the information was read aloud by the software. They became familiar enough with the software to be able to access it on their own later on to find information when they had the chance on their computer-day or when they needed information about a particular animal during class hours.

Another program "Billedordbog" (Picture dictionary) from Orfeus was important from a reading perspective. We had the wall-dictionary and the memory cards with words, but in Billedordbog learning is made more dynamic and is adjusted to the level of the individual child. In the simplest task the user must find the animal when its name is said aloud. Or it can be done the other way around. This exercise was very helpful for the children for whom Danish is their second language. Billedordbog was also helpful in other connections when conversation hit on a concept or word these particular children did not know. They could then consult Billedordbog and practice the word. The children who were capab-le of working in a more advanced level could read the word in stead of hearing it. The task here was also to link the word and the picture. To motivate the children we made screen shots from the relevant page for them to practice at home. This also helped show the parents a short glimpse of what was going on in class.

We decided to give each day of the week its special focus. Monday was the day of the cow, Tuesday the day of the cat, Wednesday the day of the horse, Thursday the day of the dog and Friday the day of the pig. None of the days were alike. The two first days of the week we stayed in the school and apart from the tasks mentioned above we "read" books, did animal-maths, looked at pictures, watched a film, made drawings, wrote letters and sang songs.

On the day of the horse we visited the local riding school, which is situated close to the school. Here one of the riders showed us what you could do on the jumping field and the children were allowed to touch the animals and feed them. Afterwards the excursion was described in drawings and the children dictated the texts to go with the illustrations.

On Thursday, the day of the dog we stayed in the school and did small comic strips about dogs that had a dangerous experience. On the last day of the week we visited two farms. We walked on foot from the school across the fields. First we had a look at a very large pig farm and afterwards we went across the road to visit a farmer who raised cows. The trip back was by bus.

As you can see ICT is integrated in a theme like this as a natural tool alongside other materials and approaches.

The experiences from this feature week were collected into the third multimedia presentation. In the presentation you find a lot of pictures of the animals we have worked on along with pictures of the children taken during the week. There are small anecdotes from what happened during the week, all the drawings from the riding school trip are included and the children were very careful making these drawings as they now knew that they were "going into the computer". Other works by the children are included with sound effects added and there are screen shots from some of the software titles we used.

When this presentation was installed on the computers in the classroom, the queue was long. Again the children had the experience of being "on the computer" and this time even more than with the last two presentations they felt very strongly that they had contributed to the presentation because they had known where the drawings were going. The parents showed just as much interest when they came to parent’s night some weeks later.

Noah’s Ark

The next step in the development of the children concerning ICT competencies was a theme on Noah’s Ark. The tale was the version made by Johannes Møllehave from Børnebibelen (Children’s Bible). In connection with this we listened to Møllehave’s song "Noah’s Ark" recorded by Mia and Mikkel Bondo Fagt and Bette Dandanell.

All the children were fascinated with the story, including those with a different cultural background. The first task was to make a big common picture to put on the wall of the classroom. The picture was made with watercolours. Some painted the ark, some the water and the rainbow and the rest chose their favourite animal couple to paint.

The next task was to write about and draw the Ark. Here the choice was free to draw whatever they wanted and make any text they wanted. At this point we already had a folder in the class in which some of the drawings and hand-written texts were placed, but this time we decided to use word processing

We decided to let the children use AmiPro, level A (Lotus), which is a reduced version of the full word processor. This version is less congested. It only comprises a limited set of functions that can all be reached via 16 icons:

These 16 icons give the children the possibility to use the most basic functions in a word processor and you avoid them getting lost. Soon the children learnt to launch the word processor, write text, save it on the hard disk and open it again. They also tried to mark text (which was probably the function they found most difficult) and to change the font size.

After the initial training they began writing the story about Noah. They realised the ease with which you could correct misprints and mistakes, and the enthusiasm was substantial when the story was printed. Later we added a frame to the text using the Xerox machine of the school.

The texts were put in the class folder. The children found that the communicative value of these texts was much higher than that of the texts they had written so far. Reading each other’s texts was much easier and they all felt that their stories look much more professional.

Soon after we had the opportunity to repeat the process in connection with a feature on the potato. Again we made stories that were kept in the folder and the class was interested in listening to these stories read aloud.

This initial training in the use of a word processor took place during the lessons when we were both present and soon most of the children were familiar with the functions accessible through the 16 icons. Surprisingly soon we were able to work with one teacher and 20 small word processing students. No special worksheets or manuals were produced (of course, as the children could barely read). All instructions were verbal and it was obvious that we were benefiting from the work with the program 10Finger, in which the children had trained keyboard familiarity but from which they had also learnt about opening and saving. Generally, you soon see the advantage in using Windows programs with similar user interfaces.

Julle and the other elves in the hayloft

We presented the idea in class; they were all enthusiastic immediately. First we had to agree on the main character of the story. There was absolutely no doubt. The story was to be about elves – small elves. Some of the other decisions caused severe discussion. Where was the home of the elves? What were the names of the elves? There were so many suggestions that we had to take a vote. They all agreed to accept the outcome of the vote – the next step was to use our imagination.

In stead of writing a continued story the children would rather each write small poems about episodes in the life of the elves. Our non-Danish children did not quite understand the elf universe that the Danish students shared as common background. Luckily they could then write about the background information that we had all decided together – this was just as much part of the story as the episodes. When all children had their small part of the total ready, we tried to tell the story aloud and decide the order of the episodes.

Julle and Julli and Elf mother and Elf father had a wonderful Christmas evening. They had rice porridge, and the sang Christmas songs and danced around the Christmas tree. And Julle and Julli got all the presents they had wished for.

Of course we wanted illustrations for our story. The drawings were made with crayons on paper in a fixed format. While some of the children drew, others were writing their stories on the word processor on the class computers. This time they were to save the story on a floppy disk – again another competence to be developed, but as this operation was also done through an icon, it did not cause severe problems. Although most of them (if not all) knew a floppy disk, it gave us the opportunity to talk about different ways of saving information: audiotapes, video tapes etc. The children had a notion of why it was necessary to save on a floppy. They could see that now it was possible to move the text to another computer in the school, namely the computer that was connected to the scanner. Here the texts were collected into one big file and the drawings were scanned. The collective Christmas story were printed on A3 format and folded to 1a’a own personal Christmas reading book.

But text and drawings were also to be processed on the computer and after a few days the collective story was put together in 1a’s fourth multimedia presentation. The story was processed so that it formed an integrated whole with a Christmas tune as background music. The children were very happy with the result. They felt that they had made a great story.

There is no doubt that this time the class experienced that this was THEIR story. Not one gave it a thought that others had worked on it, too. They had made the drawings and the texts themselves and this was what was visible on the monitor – with their names on it.

For a long time the Christmas story was the most popular software on the computers, and still at least once a week no matter which time of the year you will hear Christmas tunes from the computers when Julle and the other elves in the hayloft visit the computer.

Kalaallit Nunaat

The first task was to look at maps and the globe, and by using a compass we found the quarters of the globe and thus the north. The first day was devoted to make the classroom look like Greenland. We made paper cuts to make the windows look like Greenland landscapes and from the ceiling hang Greenlandic and Danish flags.

After this we began to learn about the geography, history and biology of Greenland. Through films and books the children learnt about the Inuit people and everyday life in Greenland. They heard stories about Erik the Red, Leif the Happy and Hans Egede, and they learnt how animals and plants have developed to fit the rough climate. Again the Children’s Animal Encyclopaedia was very useful; in here they could find the animals and have the information read aloud.

In a grade one learning is closely connected to practical/aesthetic activities and the Greenland theme gave ample opportunity to use ICT in a new way.

Some of the activities were done in groups of four. In connection with the animal life of Greenland we made small panoramas in papier mâché and clay. These panoramas showed Greenland landscapes with animals. To these panoramas the children made posters using the word processor; posters to explain what was displayed in each panorama. They also drew typical food chains for the polar climate.

Icebergs were a natural part of a feature on Greenland. In the freezer of the school kitchen we produced icebergs. We filled large transparent vessels with water and in these made experiments with the icebergs. Watching the icebergs in the water the children could understand that the part of the iceberg that is above the water is only very small. The new insight was further processed in maths as they had to produce posters about it. With a lot of equilateral triangles as the only tool they showed that exactly one tenth of the iceberg is above water.

The next point on the agenda was the Greenlandic national costume. Of course we did not have the time to produce an entire bead collar, but to understand the kind of effort that goes into one of these we spent some lessons making bracelets of Greenland beads. The most impatient children chose, however, to make their bracelets of larger glass beads.

The next task was to take a closer look at the gorgeous patterns on the Greenlandic national costume. We would like to make some patterns like it. At first the children tried to make kamik-patterns on narrow borders of paper using crayons. What could actually be called a pattern was much discussed. It was easy to see when something was not a pattern and the closest we came to a definition was that a pattern was when "the same was repeated again and again". Even though the children tried their very best, they made mistakes in the pattern again and again. To correct the mistakes they often had to start all over.

Again we found that this was an opportunity to show the strength of the computer. In the graphics program Paintbrush/Paint we had put templates in advance. They looked exactly like cardboard borders. From Malebog the children knew how to colour something with different colours, and they also knew how to save their work. They soon realised that on the computer the pattern looked much better because of the bright colours and that it was much easier to correct mistakes as you could just click with the mouse and it was corrected.

But kamik-patterns are not just made of squares. At this point the program Flisekunst (Tiles) from Orfeus showed its strength. In this program you can do patterns that are formed by other elements than squares and triangles. The author of the program, Bent Thomsen, describes the program in this way:

"Flisekunst activates both creativity and the systematic capacity. The program is on the borderline of maths and visual arts. In maths we work with elements like systems, combination, symmetry and mirroring. In visual arts and the other practical/aesthetic subjects we work with order, composition and pattern. The program was developed to be a tool and a help in situations when the students work with the above mentioned themes. The program invites the students to experiment with the problems."

Writing fiction was a part of this theme, too. This time each group must make up a story.First the group chose a town in the atlas as the scene of the story. On the blackboard wehad written a list of Greenlandic girls’ and boys’ names. The names were remembered from the books we had read and from the films we had seen. In addition to this we had added a list of Greenlandic words, Ana (mother), Ata (father), Anaana (grandmother), Ataata (grandfather), Nuka (small brother) etc. From this list the children chose characters for their story. After this they selected the storyline, it was recorded on tape and split into four episodes so that each student was responsible for one episode and its illustrations. The illustrations were done in the traditional manner in hand while the text was written on the word processor and printed. It was all put on long border posters from which you could read the story almost like in a picture book or comic strip.

While we were working on the Greenland theme, the school became connected to the Internet. This gave us the opportunity to begin global communication. We gave the class an e-mail account and had the idea that it would be perfect for our class to communicate with a class in Greenland. We imagined that it would be perfect for our first grade to communicate with a grade 3 or 4 in Greenland, as they would be beginners of Danish at that stage, too. We found e-mail addresses of people in Greenland and contacted schools in Nuuk, Nanortalik, Upernavik and Ammassalik. Most of them did not answer at all, a few answered positively but bailed out afterwards. We are still in contact with one school in Nuuk but as the school only has one computer it is difficult to keep in touch. One thing we did learn was that even though you might be present with an official e-mail address, you might not be using it to its full potential. In our hunt for interested classes we even involved the office of the school manager in the city of Nuuk and a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament.

As the grand finale of the project we held a eskimo kaffemik (coffee party) in our class. We baked cakes, made Greenlandic flags and printed them on the colour printer and the thermos contained something that looked like coffee, coca cola.

For the occasion the class had invented another verse for their song "We are 1a". The new verse was of course about Greenland.

Simultaneously with this feature work we collected material to a substantial multimedia presentation of no less than 100 screen pages. It works both as an encyclopaedia of the issues the class worked with and as documentation and database of everything that went on in class during the theme. It shows the drawings, the stories, the patterns, photographs etc. all sparkled up with appropriate sounds, music and funny remarks. So many details are hidden in the presentation that it will take the children considerable time to find them all.

A multimedia presentation like this one is "history writing" to a much larger extent than the traditional scrap book. Here it is all integrated and works as an exciting and dynamic entity. There is so much information in this program that it will work – also in the future – as an encyclopaedia and as entertainment. It is very motivating for 1a that they are "on the computer" with the animals and people from Greenland.

The multimedia presentation and the other works of the children were presented in the school at a small exhibition, which the local newspaper (Løgstør Avis) gave a four-column article. Guests at the opening night were of course the parents of 1a, who were much impressed by the extent of the presentation. Many students from the school formed an interested audience and some classes even spent lessons to come and visit the exhibition.

Butterflies

After having been observing the coming of spring for some time with runner beans and pea flowers in the window sills, it was time to seriously let summer into the classroom. Some of the most summerly thing you can imagine are butterflies. As a consequence we started a cross-curricular theme with maths, nature/technique, visual arts and Danish.

Some lessons were spent studying the biology of the butterfly, the characteristics of insects, complete and non-complete transformation. Then the children made butterflies as paper cuts decorated with crayon. There were hung from the ceiling to flutter over the class.

For the lessons of the next day we had produced a multimedia presentation and put it on the computers in class. Here you could watch pictures of many beautiful and very different butterflies. The presentation was completely non-verbal/non-text, just pictures and background music. The children became very curious and soon they knew the different butterflies by sight and knew when to look the other way because "here comes the scary one".

All these beautiful butterflies became the cue to talk about symmetry. By using the educational software Flisekunst, which the children knew from the Greenland theme, we worked with symmetry and mirroring in many ways.

To conclude this process the children used Flisekunst to create stylised symmetrical butterflies that were printed in colour for everybody to admire.

At this point we felt that time had come to introduce a genuine graphics program in our education. We decided to use Paint/Paintbrush as some of the children knew this from at home. Generally, we were surprised that so many of the children have access to powerful computers at home.

Motorically manoeuvring the mouse on the mouse pad to make a drawing on the computer is a challenge. In this connection we must recognise that the mouse is a pointing tool and not a drawing tool. But as the Danish Folkeskole lacks money, so does Løgstør School – and we must probably wait a while before we get proper drawing tools for our computers – until then we must make due with the "brick" that the mouse can be compared to in this connection.

We felt that the butterfly would be an excellent motive for a simple beginner’s task. The task was to draw a butterfly, no background or anything. We allowed ample time to try. If something went wrong, they could always try again. The children soon discovered that it was a good idea to save the file every time they had made a detail they were happy with. Some of them managed to draw several butterflies during the 3-4 lessons attributed to the task; others spent all the time finishing one butterfly.

It was clear from the beginning that these butterflies were to stay in the computer, we were not going to print them. Everybody understood that it was necessary to save on a floppy because we had to move the butterflies from the computers in the computer room to the computers in the classroom.

While the butterflies were waiting on the floppy, the children were working on writing a story about their butterfly. When a grade 1 is working with creative writing, you soon run into the obstacle that the children cannot write all the words that they want to write. We have several times tried to do it in the way that first we talk about the task ahead. Then we ask the children which words they might need in such a story. All the words they can think of are written on the blackboard, we spell them and read them and the children write the words in a notebook that they use for logging words. Thus prepared the can begin writing. Of course they still need help but they can come a long way with the words they know and the words they have in the notebook.

These stories were written on the word processor on the classroom computer. We saved the texts on a floppy and handed them on for further processing. And then the class waited impatiently. They knew that the output would be another multimedia presentation. When the presentation was installed on the two classroom computers, the "artists" were very satisfied. They found it all very impressive – especially that their own butterflies were now fluttering over "real" bushes.

Even more now than in connection with the Christmas story did the students feel that this was their work. With the Christmas story others had scanned the drawings, this time they had made the drawings directly in the graphics program. The multimedia application was browsed through again and again. The stories were read aloud again and again, even though by know we remembered most of them by heart.

Before saying goodbye to the theme of the butterflies of course we touched upon the concept of "having butterflies in the stomach". Our non-Danish students did not know this concept in advance but most of them could share with us entertaining stories of times when they themselves had felt "butterflies in their stomach".

Basic tools and educational software titles

During the first year we have used several small basic tools and educational software titles when they were relevant. We would like to mention some of them:

Datastøttet Matematik (Computerbased maths) from Krogh’s Publishing House
you can practise many of the disciplines of the subject. 1a has worked with money. Specially our non-Danish students benefited from this work as they lacked fundamental competencies in this area.

Netbolde (Net balls) from Infa
here the students face maths problems of gradual level of difficulty. Using Netbolde you can really see the strength of the computer. In Netbolde you can ask the children quite demanding maths problems. In addition to this you can adjust the level of difficulty so that every student gets problems that are exactly right for his/her stage of development.

Symmetri (Symmetry) from Infa
the idea is to make a symmetrical picture around one or more axes on a square area – a number of small items are places as starting point for the symmetrical picture. As with Netbolde you can put problems at various levels of difficulty to fit everybody – even the teacher who is helping out.

Taljagt (Number hunting) from Malling Beck/Orfeus
through the activities of the program (some of which are supported by the sound board of the computer) you gain familiarity with the numbers from 0 to 99. The concepts of tens and ones are trained as is the use of the number-plate as a mathematical tool. The fact that many of the tasks were accompanied by speak was an excellent supplement for the non-Danish students.

Magiske Mønstre (Magical patterns) from Malling Beck/Orfeus
using mosaic pieces this program gives you open pattern problems or closed problems of making symmetry or mirroring. The children liked the program very much and saw it as an excellent introduction to Flisekunst (mentioned earlier in the description).

Min Prikbog (My Dot Book) from PM-Multimedia
several small programs that train numbers, how they are written and how they are pronounced. Children enjoy these kinds of programs and practise the numbers again and again. The fact that the numbers are read aloud is an excellent help to the non-Danish students.

Børnenes Ordbog (The Children’s Dictionary) from EMP
again an appetising program for new readers. It is an alphabetical collection of words, which the children can look up. Pictures, funny rhymes and limericks accompany each word. In addition to this you can ask for exercises for each word.

Social two-day excursion as the grand finale

Shortly before the summer holiday 1a went on a very successful two-day excursion. The task of motivating the children to write and draw about their experiences afterwards was very easy. Of course this event must be included in our folder of the soon-to-be passed year. This was a fine opportunity to use the word processor one last time before the summer holiday.

This time the job was to make the children work more consciously with the editing process. The students in a grade 1 who are able to write longer passages tend to write in direct speech. This poses a number of problems because how do you tackle the fact that they do not know the punctuation that goes with direct speech? We decided to demand that when using direct speech in their stories, they must mark it by writing on a separate line. This work out satisfactorily.

The last day of school before the summer holiday the drawings were finished and the story added to the class folder, which together with the multimedia presentations give an excellent view of these children’s first year in school.

Thoughts at the closing of the school year

We think that the work that we did during the school year 1997/98 with 1a has been a serious attempt at fulfilling the demands from the Act on the Folkeskole.

0. total ICT integration in all subjects

0. focus on the practical/aesthetic dimension

0. school/home co-operation

0. differentiated teaching

In this description we have focused on the development of basic ICT skills, but alongside the acquisition of these skills the practical/aesthetic activities have had their natural place. The children have been out in nature, they have been close to larger animals, they have done experiments, they have been growing plants, they have painted, drawn and worked with clay. They have baked and cooked, laid the table and served food and through all the work they have been animated to use their imagination and general knowledge in the work.

The school/home co-operation has built on mutual respect and recognition of the fact that you share the responsibility of solving the issues of the children. From the start some of the parents showed reservations regarding the use of computers because their only point of reference were the hours of more or less passively playing computer games they observe children spend. Today all parents are more positive towards the integration of ICT. Already the first day of school they had the experience that they could produce nice-looking and useful educational material for their own child. Later they were extremely surprised to see the multimedia presentations because they experience that the computer does not decide for itself but that the user has complete control of the contents. This means that the parents now follow the ICT development of the children as closely as they follow the subject specific development. At the closing of the year we have offered the parents copies of the multimedia presentations on CD-ROM.

Regarding differentiation of teaching ICT is a powerful took. The various educational software titles can be adjusted to suit the level of each individual student in a way that cannot be reached through traditional ways of teaching. The fact that the programs are inspiring, have nice graphical interfaces is an extra benefit. The command of the basic ICT tools thus means that the individual student can - within the boundaries of the common objectives of the class - take the point of departure from his/her own preconditions and level of development. Basic ICT skills are an advantage to all students as it supports both the process and the product aspects. The process of correcting mistakes is easy, as is the process of improving text or drawing. The communicational value is enlarged, too.

As described in the individual themes the acquisition of basic ICT skills was integrated into the themes in a natural way, as was the progression of acquiring new skills in other areas. We have tried to make it a progressive process with- out forcing it. Towards the end of the first year these 7-8 year-olds can:

0. turn on the computer, launch a program, close it and turn of the computer in the correct manner

0. save a file on the hard disk or on floppy, open a file from hard disk or floppy

0. use a word processor, mark test, change font size and style, move text around, change lines, write in capitals, correct mistakes and print

0. use a graphics program, draw with the mouse, fill spaces with colour, change colours, use the undo function

0. use educational software (for instance Flisekunst), make patterns and work with symmetry and mirroring

0. use CD-ROM and search in databases like Children’s Animal Encyclopaedia and Children’s Dictionary

In addition to this the class has its own e-mail account and has already communicated this way.

A glance at the future

To us there is no doubt that the path we have chosen for this class regarding the acquisition of basic ICT skills will influence our future work in the class. We will continue to integrate the development of new ICT skills into each new theme whenever relevant and possible.

In second grade we will introduce more functions in the word processor and the graphics program and we will integrate more educational software. Spread- sheets with be introduced and graphics processing and recording of sound will be some of the new competencies.

Another area that we expect much from is communication. We have some sporadic contacts to Nuuk in Greenland but we have also established contacts with other classes in Denmark. If we see the need, we will establish a web site for the class. In time each student will have his/her own e-mail account so that they can communicate as individuals and not just as a group. Electronic communication is something that the parents focus on. Partly because they find the concept of international communication exciting and partly because some of them use e-mail at work and have experienced the benefits of doing so.

The children must feel that they have more and more influence on and co-responsibility for the main idea behind "1a on the computer". As it is now they may not have wondered how the multimedia presentations were made. They have made their contribution by delivering text and drawings on paper and on the computer. But how does it all add up to a presentation that you can use? So far this has been out of their reach but gradually this part will be theirs to play, too.

To us it is evident that the multimedia presentations and the other work using computers have generated much positive influence. We have familiarised the children (and their parents) with the use of computers and tempted the more insecure ones to begin. We have shown the sceptical parents the value and potential of the computer and shown that in competent hands the computer is a powerful tool.

Here towards the end of the year we can conclude that we have fulfilled our objective to:

"let the students acquire basic ICT skills during the first year of school"

Knud Madsen, Havremarken 9, 9670 Løgstør, 98 67 23 64

Lise S. Christiansen, Solbakken 54, 9240 Nibe, 98 35 24 57