  Stories
from the Web
— a personal view
When Hampshire was approached to join the Stories from the Web
partners, we jumped at the chance to be involved in such an innovative
and successful project. Andover Library was chosen to run the
first club in the county, due to the availability of public access
internet terminals. Unfortunately the fact that there are only
two terminals meant that we would have to limit the number of
children who could join. We recruited 8 children who came from
three different local schools and ended up with 3 boys and 5 girls.
The club was on a Tuesday afternoon from 4 — 5.30pm.
The first session was a getting to know you session involving
much hilarity with a sponge ball, as well as looking at the website.
For each of the sessions we followed the plans provided centrally
from Stories from the Web. The session the children enjoyed the
most was the very entertaining visit from Ernest Henry, who was
brilliant. The children also sent and received emails, sent in
reviews to the website and wrote short stories. All of the children
had some computer experience (though some was very limited) when
they started, but by the end they were much more confident with
using the internet, although their keyboard skills were rather
slower to improve!
This first Club having finished (it ran for 12 weeks), we were
able to sit back and consider our experience. It was very worthwhile
to be able to work on a weekly basis with the same children. The
children who came were very committed and we had no drop out rate
throughout the 12 weeks. However, working with the same group
of children each week does raise issues of discipline (irritating
behaviour rather than anything serious!) The fact that we only
had two machines to use was also a disadvantage. Four would have
made it easier as we often had to hurry the children up so that
the others could have a turn. We may also look at the time we
run the club as straight from school sometimes seemed to cause
problems when the children were tired or when it was very hot
(the club ran during the summer term).
However, despite our perceptions or misgivings the children made
new friends and really enjoyed coming. So much so that they wanted
to come along to the next one — praise indeed!
Liz Weighell Divisional Children’s Librarian, Hampshire
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FRoG Louise Aldridge, YLR Editor
Sure Start Westminster
Jayne Vertkin
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