How to be Terrified
It’s been my pleasure to attend many educational I.T. shows over the years, demonstrating a range of software titles.
Most of these have been concerned with the acquisition of early literacy skills and often created some debate amongst visiting teachers.
Opinions would sometimes become quite heated when discussing the pros and cons of different teaching methods such as synthetic phonics, structured practice, overlearning and multi-sensory approaches.
Being reluctant to argue any point too forcefully (the customer is always right), I would sometimes feel a little besieged.
It was far more entertaining when disputes would break out between members of the audience, reminding me of the infamous Batley Townswomen’s Guild re-enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbour. (Don’t worry if you don’t get the allusion – it’s a Monty Python thing).
However, I always had the counterpunch up my sleeve – or, rather, hiding on the desktop – and would choose just the right moment to introduce a topic guaranteed to bring about a mass intake of breath, some indiscreet elbow-nudging and whispered comments along the lines of, “We could do with this ourselves!”.
Punctuation – the finishing touch to a piece of text, one that can express meaning, style and personality – often seems to expose the worst of teachers’ fears.
The notion of teaching punctuation as a solution was so well received that my colleagues and I produced the ‘Punctuate Plus’ program.
In teaching mode, especially when used in conjunction with an electronic whiteboard, the program provides a colourful touch-driven display, allowing you to demonstrate how sentences may be punctuated.
This mode may also be used for practice, along with two further presentations that provide enjoyable practice against the clock and the development of skim-reading skills. Help is available throughout, in both simple and more detailed formats showing examples, all of which may be read out by the text-speech system – a feature making Punctuate Plus even more useful for dyslexic and ESL students.
Further details may be found at the link below, along with an opportunity to try the program out in your web browser with just a couple of clicks.
Punctuate Plus: http://xavier.bangor.ac.uk/xavier/punctuate.shtml
And finally – a snippet from the TEEM review for Punctuate Plus which says it all, really:
“The strong features of this product are that it makes learning punctuation both fun, and dare I say it, ‘cool’.”
David Lane
Xavier Educational Software Ltd
http://xavier.bangor.ac.uk