Mercy Secondary School, Waterford

Our school unfortunately is only starting to incorporate technology into our everyday teaching and learning. This is a pity as the interest is there but it is only this year that teachers are beginning to attend programmes such as those run by the CESI in order to plan ahead for both Junior and Senior cycle coding and computer science. For this to happen the school is badly in need of resources as the computers are quite old and slow. On a positive note we have received a few google chrome books with a staff training day this week regarding the use of these. Technology in the classroom has improved over the last few years with most teachers attempting the use of PowerPoint presentations at some stage throughout their teaching.

Also this year both students and staff will receive an email address which hopefully helps with moving in the right direction. The belief and support is there regarding recognising the major advantages of using technology in the classroom but similar to all schools the lack of funding along with the uphill battle to get all teachers on board regarding new teaching methods is always going to be a struggle. This can be very frustrating for the students who are miles ahead of the majority of staff. Hopefully this situation can be altered through teacher training and continuous professional development in the years to come. We are only starting out on our journey regarding technology but as a staff we feel that we owe it to our students to make this change as we believe that it can only improve and help with student learning. This at the end of the day is our main concern.