Parkhill Junior School

Internet Research Room

As part of a joint project with SimpleICT we have installed a bank of recycled computers, loaned by the Redbridge I.T. Unit, to be used for Internet research purposes. This is an additional resource and is separate from our school ICT network system.

The computers in our Research Room use an operating system called Linux which is different from the normal Microsoft Windows environment. The computers run from a CD created by SimpleICT to meet our personal school needs using Open Source software in the shape of Mozilla Internet browser and AbiWord word processing software.

Click the link below to find out more about Simple ICT and their products.

www.simpleict.com

What is open source software?

Open Source software (or OSS) is:

“Non-proprietary software for which the underlying programming code is provided and may be modified to more closely fit users’ needs. It is usually very low cost or free and does not incur the payment of licensing fees.” (Information taken from BECTA report website).

Please click the link below to read the report from BECTA about the benefits of using Open Source software in schools.

http://www.simpleict.com/becta.pdf

Our Research Room Mentors

We have been working with a group of year 5 children carrying out internet research using this system. These children will be class mentors for their new year group in September and will help and support their class mates to use the computers. We wanted to explore the differences between surfing the web on the school network which uses Microsoft products and Internet Explorer and these pc’s using Mozilla and AbiWord. Working together gave us a good insight into how we could introduce this system to year 6, and ultimately the rest of the school, by comparing the advantages and pitfalls of using alternative software.

As ever, the children were very adaptable to new challenges and quickly picked up how to log on, surf the web, copy and paste information into AbiWord, save documents and hyperlinks to disk and shut down the computer after use. They were quick to identify similarities and notable differences when using the software and after two short training sessions they were able and confident users. The software is extremely user friendly and the children had many of their own ideas on how to use these computers for their research. They are currently putting together a simple user manual that will be available for everyone to use in the Internet Research room.

We are extremely excited to have this new resource available in our school and will report further on its use in the new academic year.

Alison Seagrave, ICT Curriculum Development Manager

July 2005

Please click the next button at the bottom of the page to listen to this presentation.