Schools Integration Project ICT and the teaching of modern Foreign Languages.

On behalf of eircom, the sponsors of this SIP project, I would like to congratulate the team, the individual schools and everybody involved with this initiative on the completion of an extremely valuable piece of work.  eircom is particularly pleased that the project evaluation proves yet again, how many benefits there are to integrating technology into education today. 

 The results of this SIP project link very well with eircom’s £15million Information Age Schools Project.  With this project, we firstly wanted to ensure that schools were equipped with the tools of the Information Age.  We did this by providing all 4,100 state supported schools (both primary and post primary) in the country with one free multi-media PC; a free telephone line for connection to the Internet; free Internet account with an ISP of their choice and free internet usage for one hour of every school date for two years. 

Secondly, we wanted to ensure that a facilitation process was put in place to enable children and teachers to make best use of the technology available to them.  It is through sponsoring projects such as SIP, that this objective has been met. 

 eircom   also sees as another added benefit of the SIP initiative the development of closer working relationships with schools as they combine efforts and work collaboratively in reaching common goals.   This benefit can be clearly seen by the team’s determination to share their findings and products with the wider community by producing an attractive and comprehensive web site, where the great work of the project team will continue to inform and inspire others.

Congratulations again to all concerned.

Cormac O’Sullivan, eircom Information Age Schools Project Manager

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