Colgrain Primary School has a wireless network. As the pupils in Alistair Turnbull’s composite P4/P5 class go into the classroom, they each take an iBook from the cabinet where the computers have been charging overnight.

Today Mr Turnbull is showing them how to import photographs and vary the style of text using AppleWorks so they can each produce an attractive page about their school. They plan to send the pages to a school in Russia that they are linking up with.

Alastair Turnbull has been teaching for 25 years – partly in England, where he was deputy head of a school in Solihull, and partly in Scotland. He is currently teaching a composite P4/P5 class.

Alastair is the unofficial ICT coordinator at Colgrain Primary, having been the area ICT coordinator for a while. He is a member of Masterclass and has attended some formal courses on AppleWorks and Microsoft Word. However, he has acquired most of his ICT skills through ‘trial and error and curiosity’. 

Alastair says that he now ‘swears by’ the wireless network. It’s extremely flexible - he can take out six computers to work with a small group in his class, for example, and can print from anywhere in the school. 

School profile

Colgrain Primary School is in Helensburgh, on the north bank of the River Clyde. Children from the nearby naval base of Faslane attend the school: therefore there is a comparatively high turnover of pupils each year. The roll has reduced from around 500 at the height of the cold war to the current figure of 217, with the result that a quarter of the original school building has now been taken over by the local education authority office. 

20 pupils take free school lunches, 40 have special educational needs and four speak English as a second language. The average length of teacher service is 20 years. 

Thanks to Alastair Turnbull’s interest in computers, Colgrain Primary was involved in the wireless network pilot in Argyll and Bute. The AirPort coverage at the school is now nearly 100 per cent so the 18 iBooks can be used virtually anywhere in the school building. 

To prepare for the class, Mr Turnbull makes sure that all the equipment is working and that each iBook is connected to the server. He also checks that the digital photo of the school that each child has chosen is in his or her own folder ready for use.

Mr Turnbull’s ICT skills are mostly self-taught, though he has been on special courses for AppleWorks and Microsoft Word. He finds that Apple Mac computers are very user-friendly and nothing now fazes him if things go wrong. 

Mr Turnbull has a classroom assistant who supports a pupil with learning difficulties. Since this pupil is very good with computers, the classroom assistant will be free to help other children in the lesson today.

Top tip

If you want to give a computer presentation and you don't have a large projector, there is a simple solution. Using a couple of adaptors, you can plug your computer into the school TV, turning the television screen into a large monitor that all the class can see.

Today’s class is cross-curricular and involves language work.

The class is also an ICT lesson – Mr Turnbull expects the pupils to learn how to change font style, colour and size and put a frame around a piece of text.

He hopes that each pupil will develop presentation skills by producing an attractive piece of work that can go on the wall. He points out that some pupils are self-conscious about their handwriting: by using the computer, all the children can produce something of which they are proud.

As the pupils go into class, they each collect a computer. When they are settled and their iBooks are open, Mr Turnbull explains what they will be doing today. All the children watch on the interactive whiteboard as he reminds them how to access their folders on the school server.

Using the whiteboard, Mr Turnbull shows the children what to do – one step at a time. After each short demonstration, the pupils turn to their iBooks and have a go themselves. Mr Turnbull and the classroom assistant move around the classroom, helping out where necessary. By the end of the lesson, the children have seen how to import a photograph, change the size, colour and font of text, and add a frame around the text.

They save their new documents into their personal folders, close the iBooks and place them carefully back in the cabinet as they leave the classroom.

Mr Turnbull is pleased that there were no hitches with the hardware and that the pupils behaved well and enjoyed the lesson. The only problem was that a few pupils had to share because there were not quite enough iBooks to go round. These pupils will have to do this exercise another time.

He says that if the computers are only used for word processing the batteries will last all day. The huge advantage of a wireless network for a school is its versatility. There is no need for a dedicated computer room: a teacher can, for example, book out six computers to use with a small group, print from anywhere in the school, or take any computer home to write reports (staff have their own folders, which are password protected for security). What’s more, everyone likes using them.

Pupils’ comments

The children say they enjoy using the iBooks because correcting text is easy and their work always looks neat.