Benbecula Feb 20/21 2007

For two days, thanks to Hamish Budge and Kenny Matheson, I had the pleasure of working with teachers, parents and children on this lovely island in the Western Isles. The subject of the work was to inspire(!) and inform each group about Textease Studio CT for which the whole of the Western Isles has a site and community licence. This means that the software is available to everyone at home or school wherever they want to use it.

The 20th began with a tutorial for the head teacher of Sgoil Lionacleit, Mr John Harrison, who was most keen to learn of the sound input functionality for his teaching commitments. He immediately saw the power of the software as an agent for inclusion and as a recording devise for e-portfolios.

This session was followed by an afternoon with the maths specialists who were very interested in Texease Draw and the automatic way it calculated angle and length of polygons. They also liked the simplicity of the spreadsheet !

The early evening was spent just down the road at Balivanich School , a primary school very close to the beach ( a real stones throw away) introducing the head teacher Mary C Ferguson and her staff to the basics of classroom working with Textease CT. It was clear here that the staff appreciated that the software could work in any language ! This was followed by a small meeting with parents to just show the software that they now can have on their home machines.

The morning of the 21st began with a meeting back at Sgoil Lionacleit with the MFL department who were keen to understand about recording sound into Textease. They were also interested in Podium and immediately saw the potential for their work in MFL.

The English teaching staff of the school were next and they could see that here was a piece of software that did things that were, as they put it, 'differently'. The text wrapping and movement were key here and the ability to add speech.

Early PM was spent with the 'early years' advisors who recognise that software that had its place in the home also had its place in their work and they were keen to see how simple it was to add text, graphics and sound to a page. They were most taken with the ability to animate straight onto the page.

Late afternoon found me at Iochdar School South Uist, one of the schools looked after by Mary T MacInnes who I was to meet later that evening at Stoneybridge School, a tiny school also on South Uist. At Iochdar we explored some of the hidden bits of Textease CT and pondered on the use of Textease Presenter for writing books. The Stoneybridge session into the night was for parents, children and teachers and was wonderful in that there was a complete focus on the creativity possible with Textease CT. We had great fun taking and using videos of our 'Mexican Wave'.

All in all, a tremendous two days with a cross section of enthusiastic and interested people. Although Textease CT came through its paces really well perhaps the star of the show was the Gyration Cordless keyboard and mouse which turned out to be a 'must have' for everyone.

Many thanks to all on the islands who made my stay comfortable and enjoyable.