03-12-2021, 12:04 PM
Dyslexia:
In another life, the cleverest boy I ever taught, David, could hardly string two written words together - but after six months I was only half a page ahead of him of a maths course of three years ahead, he was already deep into the book of 'Advanced Programs in Basic' and could handle HTML as though he'd been born knowing it inside out.
One Monday morning a copy of the just-announced MS Powerpoint dropped into the office. "What's this?" we wondered. "Slides, what slides?". Handing this package over to David, I dispatched him to the computer room to find out. After just 90 minutes of playing with it, he gave me a master class in how to use it. Amusingly, the next week, the staff were summoned to an evening course, "How to use Powerpoint". Unfortunately, the poor chap demonstrating it was not at all comfortable and struggled horribly with the details. Sitting on the front row I was able to whisper a few suggestions that helped him along. "How on earth do you know all this?" asked my boss, sitting next to me.
"I gave it to David last week and he showed me," I replied.
"Good God." replied the boss, "We should have brought him to do the lecture."
Back at work, that's exactly what happened, the eleven-year-old gave a proper and remarkably geek-free and demonstration of how to get to grips with it. We were tempted to have a whip-round for him!
In another life, the cleverest boy I ever taught, David, could hardly string two written words together - but after six months I was only half a page ahead of him of a maths course of three years ahead, he was already deep into the book of 'Advanced Programs in Basic' and could handle HTML as though he'd been born knowing it inside out.
One Monday morning a copy of the just-announced MS Powerpoint dropped into the office. "What's this?" we wondered. "Slides, what slides?". Handing this package over to David, I dispatched him to the computer room to find out. After just 90 minutes of playing with it, he gave me a master class in how to use it. Amusingly, the next week, the staff were summoned to an evening course, "How to use Powerpoint". Unfortunately, the poor chap demonstrating it was not at all comfortable and struggled horribly with the details. Sitting on the front row I was able to whisper a few suggestions that helped him along. "How on earth do you know all this?" asked my boss, sitting next to me.
"I gave it to David last week and he showed me," I replied.
"Good God." replied the boss, "We should have brought him to do the lecture."
Back at work, that's exactly what happened, the eleven-year-old gave a proper and remarkably geek-free and demonstration of how to get to grips with it. We were tempted to have a whip-round for him!