Ennis finds the future

`The teachers are so enthusiastic about it," says Margaret Cooney, principal of the Holy Family Senior National School in Ennis, Co Clare. "It's given them a new lease of life to see the excitement among the children." The `it' in question is the fitting out of all the town's schools with central computer laboratories and computers in classrooms. In all, 470 computers have been installed for 5,200 pupils. About 5,500 email addresses have been set up, one for every teacher and pupil. All the computers are multimedia with Internet access.

One computer to 11 pupils - this is a proportion which must be the envy of many other schools. It's all been brought about through the winning by Ennis of Telecom Eireann's Information Age Town competition last autumn.

Telecom set up the competition to answer key questions about the impact of telecommunications - one was `what happens when every child of five years of age and upwards has regular access to a computer?'

The children will also have access to a similar computer at home, if they live in the urban council area. Computers and Internet access are being provided to every household for £260, but this will take a few more months to complete.

The enthusiasm of teachers and children was very much in evidence recently at the launch of the Ennis project by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. The launch began with a tour by the Taoiseach and Alfie O'Kane, Telecom's chief executive, of the brightly decorated computer laboratory in the Holy Family Senior National School. Children, equally bright-faced, sat at their computer terminals eager to demonstrate its workings.

The project takes in all the primary and second-level schools - eight primary including two special schools for children with disabilities and four second-level. Ahern made special reference to how pleased he was with the special attention given to adapting the technology for children with physical problems by the use of larger buttons and other measures.

It's a massive project, on every front. The schools have had to move classes around, find seating and alter timetables. For example, each child in Holy Family has two 40-minute sessions in the lab each week, as well as the more limited access in the classroom.

Well over 200 second-level teachers and over 100 primary teachers are being trained at present. With that number of teachers involved, the skills naturally range from almost non-existent to expert. Some had already received IT training from the Teachers' Centre in Ennis or elsewhere. All have to be brought to a level of competence where they can both teach IT skills to the children, and find new ways of integrating IT into their overall teaching methods.

The University of Limerick has the Telecom contract to train all the Ennis teachers in hardware and software applications, word processing, data-basing, spreadsheet management and the Internet. Training is being done outside school hours, with the teachers acting on a voluntary basis.

"I'm thrilled with the way the teachers have embraced the project and have been so generous with their time," said Cooney. She herself gives generously of her time as a member of the Ennis Task Force which entered the town in the competition and now represents the town's interests on the project.

She would like to see the teachers given more help, in the form of ex-quota teachers for the duration of the project. "If we had even one ex-quota teacher between two schools, who would be based in the school IT laboratory and assist the teacher, it would be of great help," she said.

"We've asked the Department of Education to look on this as a pilot project, which it is. We feel we have a huge responsibility to use the technology wisely and learn from it for the benefit of the country as a whole."