My Background
I taught for twenty-odd years in several socio-economically deprived schools in the West Midlands (of the UK); working across he age range from early years to year 6. Then I moved into local authority support teams, firstly as a Behaviour and Reintegration advisoy teacher, and then supporting Looked After Children. In September 2011 yet another cost-cutting inspired "restructuring" gave me the opportunity to early retire to spend more time with my first grandchild.
I cut my ICT teeth on a Tandy TRS 80 - green screen, 8 KB memory, no mouse, no hard drive, no floppy drive, saving crudely written BASIC programs on audio cassette tape!
When they became available I progressed on to BBC "Model B" and "Master" machines - up to a staggering 64 KB, a 5¼ 5nch floppy drive and a colour monitor - still no mouse.
Getting my hands on a PC with MS Office was a giant leap. What took an hour to program in BASIC could be achieved in a couple of minutes in Excel. I began sharing my files with others by giving away floppy disks then discovered and used Gareth Pitchford's fantastic Primary Resources site.
It soon became apparent that I had too much stuff to share this way, and needed my own site.