WHEN the computer bus made its first visit to St.Thomas’ Church of England School over 20-years-ago, the boys and girls (many of whom will now be in their 30s) were using the Apple G3 minitowers and LCD Apple Studio Displays to run the programming application FLOWOL.
Setting the bus up in Finch Road was tricky to say the least, requiring a parking permit and threading wires across to the upstairs school hall with the help of then head teacher John Riley.
Recently the school moved to a new home on the other side of Douglas and became part of what is now know as the ‘Meadow Campus’ which it shares with Scoill Vallajeelt.
Setting the bus up is now straightforward not least thanks to the site manager who prepares the ground with cones etc in advance - thank you.
Today - on what may turn out to be the final series of visits of the bus to St.Thomas’ School, Year 4, 5 and 6 were introduced to html coding, putting together a web page around their current topic ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’. They used <body>, <h1>, <p>, <img>, <style> and more to generate the web pages shown here.
I html stands for HyperText Markup Language. As well as learning about the creation of web pages using the language invented 30 years ago by Tim Berners-Lee, there are many side benefits to this activity - including proper use of a keyboard.
The language demands the use of many non-standard characters such as < and > not to mention :, :, {,,}, (, ). !, and many more.
The ability to go back and EDIT the text to add additional features is also a transferable skill. As is filing items in specific formats, forcing the computer to open files in a browser or text editor, picture formats and much more.
The bus will be back at the school next week where the class will continue this work, before Year 2 and 3 come on board.
Thanks are particularly due to ICT coordinator Miss Stubbs for requesting and arranging the visit.