Tomorrow's world for Longwood students

Forget copybooks, pens and pencils - St Fintina's Post-Primary School in Longwood is leading the way with tomorrow's technology and has become the first school in the country to equip students with tablet PCs. Each of the 60 first year students in the school has a Fizzbook Spin tablet-style laptop, with seven of their textbooks installed, negating the need to carry around heavy schoolbooks. Second year students were equipped with laptops when they commenced at the school and four of their textbooks are also loaded onto their Dell Netbooks. While the Dell laptops were very popular, the school wanted to make their technology more interactive and became the first school in the country to use the Fizzbook Spin. They are only coming on the market in Ireland and the school imported the laptops direct from China. St Fintina's worked with The Educational Company of Ireland and Steljes to deliver this revolutionary learning solution where the software for the textbooks was preloaded onto the laptops. School principal Tom Stack said students were very excited to receive their tablet PCs and that it "makes learning more enjoyable" for them. Parents purchase the laptops on a rental scheme which spreads the cost over five years and there is also a charge for the e-books, but it is less than the cost of textbooks. Among the benefits of the technology, Mr Stack said, was that students don't have to carry heavy schoolbooks anymore and there are no issues of forgetting their books. All their work is saved on the computers and is easily accessible. Some teachers allow their students to do their homework on their laptops, but Mr Stack explained that students still have to be able to write for their exams. The students can do their maths work and homework on the PC and the school uses Microsoft One Note. Because the teachers also have laptops, the students can email them their work. By doing their homework on the tablet, it is all saved and they can go back and look over it at a later stage. The teacher can also email work and model answers to the students. Teachers in the school have undertaken a considerable amount of training to ensure they are also up-to-date with the latest technology and Mr Stack said the school has good back-up and support from Meath VEC. Mr Stack said they are very happy with the system which is the way of the future. He said technology is part of the students lives and this is how they learn. So could students spend their class on Facebook and the internet while pretending to be paying attention? No chance. Software means the teacher has access on their laptop to each of the students' screens and can take control of their screens if needs be. This also means that if a student comes up with an impressive answer to a question, the teacher can also show it to the other students on the whiteboards. Students working on group projects can also link up on their laptops outside school to work together. The Educational Company of Ireland (Edco) is leading the way in providing exciting digital content to schools in the form of e-books which provide students with digital content for the Junior Certificate curriculum covering the full range of subject areas. Steljes, the innovative technology distributor, is offering the Intel-based Fizzbook Spin with a full range of Edco e-books installed. The Fizzbook Spin tablet-style laptop is the first specifically-designed PC for the Irish education system, that comes pre-installed with content for the Junior Certificate curriculum.