Bus Blog
IT WAS BACK IN 1979 that Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, developed the first commercially available spreadsheet program ‘Visicalc’. It ran on a revolutionary computer - the Apple II. Thirty years later it was the turn of Year 5 Maths at Scoill Ree Gorree to see and use a spreadsheet for the first time - this time Apple’s ‘Numbers’ software running on the sleek Apple iMac computers on board the computer bus.
It was the Manx Telecomputer Bus’s first visit to the £7.5 million complex which replaced Albert Road Junior School, which served the town for 103 years until its closure in July last year. The two-storey Scoill Ree Gorree, which is next to the new Auldyn School and across the road from Ramsey Grammar School, has capacity for 380 pupils.
Later in the day, more Year 5 students and their teachers got to grips with the layout and features of Victorian housing, and in the process created some splendid terraced houses using Google Sketchup. (The trick was to draw one really good house - then Select All/Group/Copy/Paste/Flip along group’s Green Axis...
All in all a splendid day - more tomorrow and into next week...
Scoill Ree Gorree (Day 1 of 5) UPDATED
29/01/2009
The Island’s newest school was the destination for the Manx Telecomputer Bus today. The new school is named after King Orry, who ruled the Island from 1079 to 1095. The school boasts 14 classrooms, group rooms, special needs and nurture facilities, a library, a double court sports hall and changing facilities, an outdoor teaching area, a football pitch for the use of pupils and the Ramsey Youth Football Club and a floodlit training area.
©2009 Isle of Man Department of Education All Rights Reserved
UPDATE: TEACHER Mrs Nelson followed up the work begun on the computerbus during the afternoon, with the Year 5s using the spreadsheet to generate pie charts of their ‘Balanced Diet’ data. Well done Mrs Nelson - well done children!