On Wednesday afternoon I took some primary 3 children over to the local nursery. Our mission was to show them how to use their recently acquired portable Promethean board. The primary 3 children were amazing in their interaction with the wee tots. They altered their language to a level that the tots understood. They showed them some of the tools on the board, and how to play with Musical monsters. One wee chap, after a moment or two said “I knew I’d be good at that!” Aged 3…and do you know he was…..confident little individual. Curriculum for excellence not necessarily required there eh? 
Other tots drew on the board, handling the stylus in a way they can’t ordinarily handle a pencil. My wee peeps felt great about themselves and the nursery children took their input readily. Nothing held any fears for them. Ducks to water!!
Its amazing isn’t it. The big challenge for us is when the IT literate children then get to secondary they have a very different experience. We need to find a way to allow staff to get more training but at the same time trying to predict progression in skills.
I agree Ollie. It’s a source of pain to me when a secondary teacher says ‘Don’t worry about that. We start them all on Level C anyway.’ These children were doing this in Primary 3!!!! They came about those skills and many others, from a need to know basis in a cross curricular context, much younger than some people imagine. I see the teacher role as the facilitaor, then let them go with it. It catches children who were disaffected, disillusioned etc and gives them something to move forward with….till they get to secondary.