Laptops For All

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 29, 2008

Jason Mountney

Students are getting online and down to business, writes Jason Mountney.

While their peers throughout NSW start the school year with a list of textbooks to buy, children at St Mark's Catholic College in Sydney's north-west are required to bring one thing -- a laptop.

Every one of the school's 160 students arrives with an Apple iBook laptop, which is used in all classes. College principal Robyn Meddows says by placing a heavy focus on IT, the secondary college is "gearing them to working in business".

Meddows says Apple's fun, interactive applications, such as GarageBand, iMovie and iPhoto, are a big reason iBooks were chosen over Windows-based machines.

"We have embraced technology as a tool that supports learning," says Meddows, who adds that mobile phones, seen as a problem in many schools, aren't taboo. "Students Bluetooth work and homework to each other," she says. "The kids think this is normal and that all schools are like this."

The 15-month-old Stanhope Gardens campus was built with a wireless network, so work can be done on laptops even if students are outside. Classrooms are larger and the furniture can be moved to accommodate different-sized classes and work groups. Meddows says the school's IT focus is not at the expense of subjects such as physical education, music and art.

However, the college's reliance on laptops involves additional security precautions. The St Mark's insignia is left off students' bags to prevent theft outside the school grounds and internet filters and education programs are used to limit the downloading of offensive material.

Two primary schools in the same diocese, Holy Cross and John XXIII, also have access to St Mark's IT facilities. Director of the Parramatta Catholic Education Office, Greg Whitby, says boosting IT facilities in the diocese is "a project to ensure a school remains relevant".

"Our schools weren't meeting the needs of the 21st-century learner, so they had to fundamentally redesigned," he says. "But learning requires good teachers using these tools."

IT-focused learning strategies are also being used to overcome learning barriers encountered by students in rural Catholic schools. Mary Ellen Dempsey, of the Forbes Wilcannia diocese, says its Online Learning Communities program overcomes the problems encountered by 18 schools scattered over 52 per cent of NSW.

"A good way to overcome the isolation was to introduce an IT component, with a laptop, data projector and webcam for every school," she says. "Students can share their learning with other schools via webcam."

Teachers undertook a two-day learning program to get the best from it in the classroom.

Dempsey says the $101,000 project linking rural schools encountered difficulties unlikely to be faced by Sydney schools - such as infrastructure limitations affecting access for schools in far-flung towns like Brewarrina.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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