A TECHNO-MINDED rural school in South Lakeland has entered the digital age by casting out the blackboard in favour of the touch sensitive screen.

From the children's paintings on the wall to the tiny coats hanging in the hall, Old Hutton C of E Primary School looks just like any other.

But, perched at the clusters of child-sized desks and chairs, pupils are working on individual PCs and their teacher Richard Bishop is flipping between graphs, grids and sums projected from a computer on to a white screen at the front of class.

The new equipment was brought in following a refurbishment of year five and six classroom and head teacher Graham Frost said pupils had taken to the new set up "like a duck to water".

Mr Frost said the school had chosen an integrated approach to IT, which sees computers incorporated into every lesson, rather than segregated off into a separate suite.

"The danger of doing things that way is that the computers are not being used all the time. This way we get good use from them," he said.

More that £14,000 of new equipment - including digital cameras, a scanner and 11 flat screen PCs - sit side by side with traditional materials, especially books.

"They are real bookworms here. We wanted to ensure books remained prominent in their learning and in the classroom," said Mr Frost.

Funding came through a combination of refocusing school spending priorities and from support from the Home School Association a group of parents who back the school.

Mr Frost, a former school ICT co-ordinator, said budding film-makers at the 91-pupil school now had digital recording and editing devices at their disposal.

Year six pupil Joseph Webster, ten, said pupils liked their new computers.

"Before, we all had to gather round and kneel on desks to see work on a computer but now the computers are all linked up and we have the whiteboard up at the front," said Joseph.

May 1, 2003 13:30