March 1998
The first computers resulting from the Information Age competition prize for Castlebar were delivered to Castlebar schools this week (12 March 1998). An initial delivery of state of the art PCs was made to schools in Castlebar Parish. These will shortly be connected to the Internet via ISDN lines and a certain amount of free Internet access time will be provided to schools in order to offset the online telecom charges.

Feb 1998
As part of the prize for the Telecom Information Age Town Competition Castlebar Schools were visited last week (Late Feb 98) by Ednet (the company contracted by Telecom Eireann to put in place Telecom's investment in schools throughout the country) in order to assess the needs and potential of Castlebar's schools. Later this year Castlebar Schools will go online with a number of hours free Internet access provided by Telecom. Castlebar feels that it played at least a small part in encouraging Telecom and perhaps indirectly even prompting the Department of Education to provide the magnificent new investment aimed at meeting the information technology needs of all Irish schools which was announced in late 1997. The visit of the Telecom Competition judges to Castlebar's St. Patricks National school impressed them enormously as they saw what had been achieved with limited resources provided by the Parents' Association fundraising - fashion shows, cake sale, etc. - a full computer curriculum for all the pupils of St. Patricks. A sum of £10M is now promised from Telecom Eireann to put all Irish schools online - Imagine: e-mail addresses for all Irish children from the age of five up! The Government then announced a £250M programme aimed at beefing up IT capabilities of schools, both primary and secondary, and higher education institutions.

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