Mr. Con McMahon:

I will answer members' questions on how the system works, whether schools pay for it and how many schools are involved. The system is cloud based, which means we visit schools and offer them the system. Previously, there was no such system operating in Ireland and we spotted a gap or need in the market and sought to service this need. We visit schools and offer a pilot service free of charge because it is hard to charge for something that no one has heard of and which does not have a track record. The past two years have been a process of bringing schools along by educating and learning from them. We take a pilot group of perhaps five or six teachers who are interested in innovation and bringing more information technology into their classrooms. We then sign up each teacher with his or her own online schoolbag - we do what it says on the tin - and they, in turn, sign up their students with their schoolbags. This creates a connection between the teacher and students and their work can be completed online or offline. Students and teachers can communicate and store and complete work in their individual e-portfolios. It is a requirement of the junior certificate curriculum that continuous assessment work be stored in portfolios. We have tried to develop a vehicle that can take us from the current position where not much information and communications technology, ICT, or portfolio work is being done in schools and the majority of students and teachers are not sufficiently ICT literate to where we need to be in the a few years from now. Schoolbag has been working to achieve this objective.

In terms of the hardware in place, we have never specifically targeted advantaged or disadvantaged schools. Schoolbag has always been offered as another medium in class. Handouts, textbooks, copybooks and online work can be facilitated by our technology. Leaving certificate applied programmes are provided in some disadvantaged schools. Much of the work in these programmes is done online, for example, maintaining curricula vitae and so forth, and can be facilitated and stored in Schoolbag. Many schools are organising events to raise funds for software and asking parents to fork out money to purchase a new device. Some are forsaking the information technology their students already have, namely, smartphones, which provide access to greater amounts of information. Schoolbagseeks to control, monitor and curb this access in order that social networking and so forth can be promoted and used positively by schools, rather than getting out of control, as is sometimes the case.