SIP PROJECT IN FULL FLIGHT

Currently our school are involved in a SIP Project.   SIP stands for Schools Integration Project and there are in the region of 40 such projects being carried out around the country, all sponsored by the NCTE (National Centre for Technology in Education).  Most of these projects have co-sponsors locally and we are no different.  Our project is co-funded by our own Castlebar Information Age Task Force.  We thank them and the NCTE for allowing us to explore the potential of Information Technology and to continue our policy of integration across the curriculum.

Our project is called simply "The History of Castlebar".  It involves many classes throughout the school from Junior Infants to Sixth Classes taking on aspects of local history and exploring the themes in the light of the revised curriculum.  The technology aspect is introduced in the form of a multimedia authoring program called Hyperstudio.  This allows children to produce cards which could contain text, graphics, sound or video and link these cards together with buttons to create stacks.  These stacks can then be linked to make a full project.  This type of software is called content-free software as it is up to the user as to what the content will be.  We are committed to producing a CD by the end of the year of local history stacks which will hopefully give other schools an idea of how to best use the software

Fourth Class Researching in the Church of the Holy Rosary with Fr. Francis Mitchell

LIBRARY                                                                                                                             top

Many groups have visited the library as part of the local history project and found a wealth of local history resources.  They also found a very, very patient and tolerant librarian in the person of Ivor Hamrock.   Ivor compiled a folder of useful resources for the children and answered all their queries whether they came as part of the normal school day or on their own after school hours.  We really appreciate his patience and tolerance that made our visits so memorable and hassle-free.

Boys quickly learned that it's not easy to find information about the Famine or other event of local importance as the papers of the time were more orientated towards reporting English news for their English readers.   The average Irish person we deducted, eventually, couldn't read, spoke Irish not English and couldn't afford a paper so had little interest in the Connaught Telegraph or other newspapers!                                                                                                                          top