In my relatively long career as a computer teacher I have gone through different periods. At first the only skill I had was Word processing and that was what I taught my first pupils. Fortunately they had a positive attitude and didn’t complain, but for me it wasn’t a challenging form of education, so soon I began teaching them elementary programming because that was considered to be a proper computer teaching in those days. Luckily there was a textbook with the program and we somehow did this together with a positve result. At first the outlook was not very good but when we began having some results, classes became fun. But all the same I didn’t consider that I was good enough in this subject so I kept on looking for new teaching methods. In addition to the traditional Word processing I have been using many teaching programs for my pupils to train themselves in subjects they are studying with other teachers. The teaching programs are of various kinds but I have always had some favorite programs during the years. Today the old ones are outdated and can´t be used in the new MX environment, but instead we have got many new and excellent programs, some of which are published by The National Centre for Educational Materials.

Many years ago I began considering new possibilities for pupils to utilize computers for a new and/or a different kind of studying especially in language teaching which has produced some good results. In the beginning it was KidLink. It was a very pleasant period. In that project the pupils started with answering five questions after which innumerable possibilities opened up. My pupils took part in many kinds of projects, acquired pen-pals, and learned about new traditions and countries through their peers. The next thing that followed was the irc. Unfortunately the irc has almost disappeared because it has been feared that there was a possibilty that by using irc some misguided persons might be able to abuse children. Nevertheless closed channels are a solution to that problem. By using closed channels classes can communicate and this is an opportunity that has been greatly overlooked in recent years. The youths learn the languages of their peers, and that is something they do not learn in our classes.

In recent years I have been very occupied with learning on the Web or E-learning as it is usually called. The opportunities that are available through the Web are unbelievably exciting. I myself has has been working on various websites. I started with a website on French learning when my daughter took part in a French teaching project for children which was sponsored by the University of Iceland. This website was for beginners only. In it we put some general information that was supposed to arouse the children’s interest on France and the French language (unfortunately some links are not working any more). I then began working on a Danish teaching website in collaboration with my school’s Danish teacher. That website is aimed at youths that have some knowledge in Danish and therefore it is almost entirely in Danish. It has grown big and powerful with many diverse tasks and assignments.

In my opinion it is convenient to work in pairs in developing and constructing that kind of a website. Our collaboration has been good and fruitful; my partner works on the projects and I provide the technical work. We have short, regular meeting where we exchange ideas and proposals. Rome was not built in one day and the same applies to this website, it requires many months of hard labour and it is in fact a never-ending story.