What started off in 2011 as a tentative pilot project involving 80 students from three Year 5 classes at Stella Maris College has now entered its fourth year and today it involves 350 students from Year 5 to Form 2.
This initiative was undertaken by Smart Technologies as part of the School of the Future programme. Through this programme, Smart Technologies is supporting a network of netbooks to play an active role in the propagation of more application of IT resources in education.
A group of 40 device specialists from Microsoft recently visited Stella Maris College to see how the project has been implemented. The specialists also with the students to ask them what improvements they would like to see in the software they use in the classroom so as to understand better how future technology will have to be shaped to meet the needs of future students.
“The first three years of this project have been very rewarding”, said Christopher Demicoli, business development manager of Smart Technologies who conceived the project and oversees it.
“The main concept of this project seeks to explore ways how technology can be used in the classroom to enhance the education experience. Locally, there had been a number of similar pilot projects which had been sponsored or co-financed by different entities but since they were not self-sustaining, had found themselves being shelved or downsized in order to reduce the recurrent costs. We are very supportive of local education and when the opportunity arose to assist in this innovative project, we were delighted to collaborate” added Mr Demicoli.
The project found support from all teachers and parents. All students have their own netbook specifically identified by the school to meet the needs of all the students. Different technologies are being used to help with the interaction between student and teacher via netbooks and Microsoft’s educational software.
“One interesting aspect is the possibility to apply Microsoft’s effective parental controls. Applying parental controls in Windows helps parents, guardians and teachers manage how children access the web, which games and programmes they have access to, and how much time they’re allowed to use the computer. In fact the system have been configured to let the students operate the netbooks between Monday and Friday between 6am and 9pm but no restrictions in the weekends. We have also put restrictions on their user credentials so that they cannot tamper with the system settings or install programmes that are not approved by the parents or the school,” said Mr Demicoli.