Educational programmes within such an environment, where low achievement is common, have to be carefully designed and adapted. To begin addressing some of the complex issues at stake in the area, the London Docklands Development Corporation joined forces with the National Literacy Association in 1995 to fund an innovative project in a two-year effort to increase standards of literacy and basic skills in over 600 children, aged 7 to 8, in 15 schools of the area. This venture, entitled "The London Docklands Learning Acceleration Project", aims to break the vicious cycle of underachievement by working with families, communities and schools to raise the status of literacy and learning activities through a new, exciting medium of technology: a pocket-size, easily-understandable computer entrusted to each child to carry out individual and collective learning activities. Furthermore, schools are also equipped with larger, multimedia machines to run a more general programme to create a computer-literate and learning environment in schools conducive to creativity and child development.

The schools ensure the provision of daily sessions according to national curricula but use the subjects of English (Spelling, Words, Rhymes, Sentences, Talking Books) and Maths to introduce up-to-date technology and other, more traditional, computer software. This diverse software is directly relevant to the use of English in science, maths, technology and arts areas and seeks to develop an understanding of and interest in different cultural traditions. The Pocket Book Computers go further than the in-school computer hardware and are used to encourage a child/parent partnership in learning activities in the home. School management is trained in the use of these various hardwares and softwares. It is its role to maximise the children's development and be aware of management or curriculum issues arising from implementation of technology into the learning process.

Results from the project are encouraging. Technology has noticeably acted as a great facilitator and leveller in the project, giving children the chance to overcome many of the barriers to learning which have held back their communities. Giving children access to technology - on desktop computers at school and Pocket Books at home - has made them actors in their learning and increased their motivation. The unique drafting potential of writing on computer is boosting the confidence of children, especially those with learning difficulties, and for some special-needs pupils the programme has proved so absorbing that their concentration span has increased from 5 to 30 minutes. The ability of the project to change attitudes towards learning is evident from membership rates in local libraries, which have shown a rapid rise in borrowing.
 

The implementation of this project was no easy task. Teachers and schools showed a considerable amount of reticence. Accustomed to the low achievement of many pupils, teachers were not always convinced that improvements were possible and were wary of using technology in the classroom. Support to change came slowly. The setting up of a carefully-managed system for the distribution of computers did much to help organise a system around the new technologies. The system entails parents coming to pick up their children and the pocket computers after school. Machines are then marked in and checked out with each use every day. The parents sign a contract to show their interest and commitment to borrowing the machines. This has obviously increased the face-to-face meetings between parents and teachers and meant that many family members who were unknown to the school management have entered into regular touch with teachers.

Initially, both parents and teachers were anxious about the children taking computers home. Worries about theft, loss and damage dominated. Children, too, were wary of having full responsibility for their computers as they feared punishment if they were to lose or break them. A system of mutual trust had to develop to overcome such reticences. In many ways, these fears showed the attitudes at play in the area where children are seen to quickly become delinquent and disrespectful of material. A major success of the project has been to disprove this negative outlook on children and adolescents. The children are given direct responsibility for their machines and are proud of having them. They realise that they have a chance to learn differently and with new tools and assume this role with a certain ease.

The Pocket Book is a learning resource in itself. It contains a Thesaurus, a dictionary, a spell checker, a calculator, a database for collecting information and a world map. Very often, children do not have these in book form at home or do not have sufficiently advanced literacy skills to be able to search in a public library. The Pocket Books allow the children to be creative by simply browsing or by typing into the computer. Easy to manipulate, they encourage curiosity, for example, using the world map. At no point are the computers considered as recreational toys: they are serious interactive educational tools. The purpose and the outcomes of work on the computers is also a different and intelligent exercise. What particularly motivates children is the fact that every boy or girl has one and it belongs to them. They are proud to put them to good use and look forward to being able to work at home. They create an individual space for constructive authentic learning.

The operating systems are simpler than more conventional technology but the Pocket Books can be easily linked to desktop systems if need be. Writing on the Pocket Book is designed to focus the mind more upon the content of the work and less on the presentation. It has the advantage of concentrating work on one particular object, on one particular subject. Redrafting and changing language is especially easy and this is most welcome to children who enjoy rewriting or realise that more work is needed on their original texts.

Home computers are not a common feature in the area, so the Pocket Books often bring together family members. Children soon become experts in their manipulation and are able to teach others within their immediate family or community. This raises their self-esteem and the expectations of others in what they can do. Reading, writing and oral work can become communal activities and have a distinct purpose. Literacy can become a focus of the home as well as the school as all are using or working around the technology. By using new language with parents or care givers, the children can prove to those parents who don't have English literacy skills that reading and writing activities are interesting, important and helpful.

Work on the pocket computers normally starts with a piece of writing which is then taken home for the family to help with. Time is spent on a range of homework tasks from writing stories which develop wordprocessing skills to, for example, logging the number of insects in the garden, etc. This would involve talking to the adults about the ideas contained in the piece, developing a grammatical use of language and checking with the spell check and new words in the thesaurus. Parents appreciate the approach because they are able to see the writing process on the screen. Adults, especially those with limited English literacy skills, often misunderstand the idea of children drafting their work in a rough form before finishing with a clean copy. They often think the work is scruffy and not as good as it should be. With the Pocket Books, children have the freedom to take time over their work, changing, rechanging or adding pieces here or there. They can take the work back to school to print it out or download onto the desktop machines in the classroom. If their work is not finished, it can be put back on to the Pocket Book and taken home again. It is a whole process that reflects the learning stages of writing and presenting logical sequences of ideas. The language the children use is particularly rich and creative as they have easy access to a thesaurus and a spell checker. They can find new words, discover their significance, learn them and employ them in a variety of ways. Such liberty and dynamism with language would be difficult to find with books.

Many parents have gone beyond assisting in the child's interest in using the Pocket Book and take part in after-school sessions using all kinds of technology to improve their basic skills. Parents can, in this way, work towards consolidating their own experience, drawing them further into their child's learning process. The workshops have proved vital in motivating parents and increasing their self-esteem. They are able to see concretely what they can do for their children and achieve something real for themselves. A specifically-nominated Assistant Coordinator was appointed to run these workshops and support all teachers, children and families in the project by visiting schools and working with learners. Further work is being carried out with libraries by bringing together technological tools, parents and children. This last activity has proven especially useful to many parents with limited literacy who find libraries threatening.

The project has cost in total US$ 464,000. 75 per cent of this sum comes from the London Docklands Development Corporation set up by government in 1981 to rejuvenate the Docklands area of East London. By rejuvenation they meant not just to invest in new roads, but to encourage the lifelong learning of the people of the area. The money is not regular state funding as such but rather supplied by various government budgets. 25 per cent of the funding comes from the National Literacy Association via grants to various companies (mostly computer companies), educational trusts and charities. The total cost of the computer software has been US$ 232,000. The rest of the funding is used for paying the salaries and office base team of three members, the training of teachers, children and parents as well as the project's evaluation and dissemination. Individual hand-held computers cost about US$ 116. The desktop computers with accompanying software range from US$ 870 to US$ 1160 each. This computer equipment, although relatively expensive, is considered an investment as it has a long life and can be adapted to new software if necessary. The project relies on the fact that the technological infrastructure will last for some time in material terms and that the changes in learning and community attitudes will also last.

Contact information:
Ray Barker, Project Co-ordinator,
London Docklands Accelerated Learning Project, The Urban Learning Foundation,
56 East India Dock Road,
London E14 6JE
Tel: + 44 171 537 1329
Fax: + 44 171 537 1331