Well, while the BBC-B or Master 128 are now showing their age they still have many uses in the primary school.

I teach the reception class of 30+, 4-5 year olds. The main difficulty I have in using the BBC-B is the problems the children have with the QWERTY keyboard and their lack of reading and spelling skills. While many of the children can find the keyboard letters they have problems typing in information as they donÕt know how to spell.

It was because of this difficulty that we bought an A3 size Concept Keyboard. The Concept Keyboard is a touch sensitive board with 128 touch panels which you can program to suit your needs.
You can easily program single panels or blocks of panels so that when a child presses the panel a word, phrase or sentence appears on the screen.

You can then write the words on an A3 page with an accompanying picture which overlays the Concept Keyboard and when the child presses the word or picture the word is written on thecomputer screen.I have recently been us-ing the Concept Keyboard for word-processing using the Stylus word-processor. Stylus is a simple word-processor designed for infants and special needs children.

Stylus allows you to type In text from the QWERTY key-board and/or from the Concept Keyboard, edit the text until it is as you want it, speak the text back to you in a robotic voice and make overlays for the Concept Keyboard I have been us-ing the Spring board reading scheme with my class and to re
inforce learning I have made several overlays using words and pictures from the scheme.

The children, usually in groups of 2 or 3, but sometimes a single child, take it in turns to write at the computer. By pressing the pictures on the Concept Keyboard they can write simple stories and practice reading at the same time. Stylus will speak their story back to them and the children enjoy hearing it read in a mechanical voice.

Best of all Stylus allows the children to print out their story in three different letter sizes, three levels of print density and four different fonts, a computer font, a plain font, an italicfont which has the correct a and g for infants and a border font which gives you access to simple graphic characters.

The children can write stories by pressing the pictures and words in sequence. Simple stories such as the following can be written, printed out and illustrated by the children

Huggy Bear wears a
j u m p e r.

Patsy Panda plays in the garden..

Huggy Bear wears shoes.

Patsy Panda lives in
a house.

As well as giving the children practice with reading the words from the reading scheme the children

¥ Have an opportunity to express themselves in both oral and written language.

¥ Co-operate together in choosing what story to write, which picture to press etc.

¥ Get a great feeling of satisfaction from
bringing home a story with which to impress Mammy and Daddy.

¥ See at an early age that the computer is used for more than playing games or for drill and practice programs.

But the Concept keyboard is not limited to words.

You probably will have read the article by March issue of Primary Computing.
Michael described the work he did with his second and third class on the theme of Owls. The Owls pack, from MAPE, comes with Concept Keyboard overlays and I have used Owls with my class of 4/5 year olds.
The children have to search for three missing baby owls which are hidden in various locations. In Part 1 of the adventure there are 5 locations and in Part 2 there are 9 different locations.

To move to a different location the children have to press is one of the four direction arrows which are on 0 the Concept 3 Keyboard overlay. When a baby owl is found the children can send it home to Mammy Owl by pressing the picture of Mammy Owl. No reading skills or keyboard skills are necessary.

Children, even those with no computer keyboard skills can, using the Concept Keyboard, successfully operate a computer.Owls is one of the first programs I use with the children as they find it so
easy to use because of the Concept Keyboard.

There are many programs available which make use of the Concept Keyboard. That old favourite Podd
now comes with Concept Keyboard overlays as does Dragon World. The Folio word-processor also has an option for text input from the Concept Keyboard.

The Concept Keyboard can
also be connected to the following range of computers but additional hardware may be necessary:
Acorn Master Compact!
A3000/A5000/ 400 series
Amiga/CD TV
Apple 11/MAC computers
IBM PC/PC Compatibles
RM/Nimbus series

The Concept Keyboard is made by:

The Concept
Keyboard Company,
Winnall Industrial
Estate, Winchester,
Hampshire, S023 7RX.

MAPE, c/o Gloria Jones, The Old Vicarage, Skeghy
Road, Normanton-on
Trent, Notts NG23 6BR