If you’re an office worker you sit facing a computer screen, and the software is, in a real sense, your working environment. Turn your head to eat a doughnut and you’ve left the job just as effectively as had the Edwardian clerk who climbed down from his stool to warm his freezing backside at the fire.

Assuming for the moment that schools want to get to that point - which is by no means certain, despite the urgings of the VLE (virtual learning environments) enthusiasts - there are some bridges still to be crossed, particularly in the primary sector.

For example, it’s common to find that the core computer provision in most primary schools consists of a group of networked machines in a dedicated room. This means, inevitably, that using them becomes a special event - “We did ICT today, Mum.”

Now though, better funding, accessible pricing, and technological developments are making it easier to put workstations on classroom desks. One way forward, especially with younger children, is to use Tablet PCs, which is the preferred solution at St Peter’s Primary, a 140-pupil village school in Yoxall, Staffordshire.

Keep taking the tablets
Until last summer, the school had the same sort of ICT provision as most other primaries - and the same sort of limitations. “We had an ICT suite with 11 or 12 workstations and sometimes when I looked in there’d be nobody there,” says head Margaret Jones.  “We also had a bit of pressure on space, and I wanted to generate another room.”

The answer was to get computers out into the classrooms so they could be integrated into everyday classroom work. At first, she considered laptops. Then she talked to a colleague about the RM Tablet PC.

“It seemed to me they were transportable and also more pupil friendly - able to convert writing into text,” says Margaret Jones. “When the authority brought us some equipment to see, the team leader was actually using a tablet himself, and it was encouraging to see that he had the confidence to use it on a day-to-day basis.”

The school bought a half class set of 16, with a dedicated trolley, in the first instance. At the same time the school had a wireless network installed and two access points were mounted on the trolley, which was also equipped to recharge the tablets.

The children became confident with the tablets very quickly, and within a few months Mrs Jones bought a second trolley of 16, so the school now has a class set which, in a four-class school, means that children have lots of opportunities to use them.

Using the tablets across the curriculum
With the support of the head and ICT co-ordinator Ceri Roberts-Thomas, staff quickly began to enjoy the flexibility and portability of the tablets. Year 6 did a data-logging project, for example, measuring sound, temperature and light, over 24 hours, in 20 locations round the school. Years 3 and 4 measured a shadow cast by a stick over the length of a school day.

“They began by finding a website that described the sun’s apparent movement,” says Ceri Roberts-Thomas. “Then when they measured the shadow; they went out every hour with the tablets instead of taking a bit of paper.”

Both groups used the Journal software facility on the tablet to write up their work, making use of the tablet’s handwriting recognition feature. So the whole exercise - web research, outside observation, data entry and write-up - was done on the tablets. Clearly only some of this exercise would have been possible with more conventional primary ICT provision - and even it wouldn’t have been done so easily or conveniently. The children probably wouldn’t have had as much fun either.

The next step, new this term at St Peter’s, is to allow the tablets to go home for homework. The school approached this with care, keeping parents fully up to date through letters and “hands on” meetings, urging that all the family take advantage of having the devices at home.

The rule is that the tablets are collected from and returned to the classroom by parents - something that’s worked without hitch.

“Parents have been keen to use the tablets at home,” says Margaret Jones. “It’s something new for most of them, and they like to know what the children are using at school.”

Yoxall has spent a lot of money on its tablets - some of it from external funding and parent support, but much of it also from budget. Margaret Jones, though, is comfortable with the policy.

“We made the right decision,” she says. “At the beginning we had technical problems, but now everybody is getting used to things. They’re in use from Reception to Year 6, the children are using ICT more in their lessons, they’ve learned a lot more skills, they’re enormously confident.”