Written answers

Tuesday, 25 October 2005

Department of Education and Science

Computerisation Programme

9:00 pm

Photo of Fiona O'MalleyFiona O'Malley (Dún Laoghaire, Progressive Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 553: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the resources which are provided for teachers and the curriculum to maximise the use of broadband in the classroom. [30511/05]

Photo of Mary HanafinMary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The provision of broadband connectivity is one of a number of facets of the Department's ICT initiative, the objective of which is to integrate information and communications technology into teaching and learning in first and second level schools. The key elements to achieving this objective are: access to the technologies; the development of skills in their usage; and the availability of high quality curricular relevant digital content. The Deputy will be aware that significant resources have been invested in ICT infrastructure in schools since 1998, initially in the acquisition of computers and peripherals and more recently in the development of computer networking facilities in schools.

In parallel, a range of teacher training courses have been developed by the National Centre for Technology in Education, NCTE, and made available to teachers via the regional education centres. The courses range from basic computer operation to higher order technical skills of network management, website design, Internet use, digital media and a number of general and subject-specific pedagogical ICT courses. In addition, an ICT advisory service has been developed to provide school authorities and teachers with advice and assistance in the range of technical and pedagogical needs.

High quality digital content is essential to ensuring effective use of ICT in the classroom. In this context, the Scoilnet portal has been developed to provide a focal point of reference and a resource for teachers, students and parents. This portal site provides significant amounts of curriculum-relevant content linking to more than 6,000 websites, the content of which is aligned directly to curricular and subject areas. Work is ongoing, in collaboration with teachers, in building relevant indigenous content on the site, much of it in partnership with other agencies such as RTE, subject teachers' associations and others. Examples of such material are:

www.fis.ie, www.scoilnet.ie/french,

www.scoilnet.ie/geography,

www.scoilnet.ie/lookathistory,

www.scispy.ie,

www.iamanartist.ie,

www.scienceunleashed.ie,

www.scoilnet.ie/hist, www.teachnet.ie.

The NCTE is also working with the European Schoolnet, EUN, to implement a technological infrastructure to allow Irish schools to share access to a wide range of on-line educational databases located around Europe. An important aspect of this process is the development of an application profile for Irish curricular content to facilitate meta-tagging of content to international standards. The NCTE is collaborating with the NCCA in this regard and the acquisition of a range of on-line reference libraries is also being considered.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.