Minister
for Education Mary Hanafin launches new Technology Subjects
Support Service - t4.
In her address at the launch of t4 in the Clock
Tower in Marlborough Street the Minister announced that schools
will get 25 million in grant aid to purchase new equipment.
She stated that this funding will be hugely significant as
it will allow students to have their own individual computer
and they won't have to be sharing it with the student beside
them. With the additional funding school can get printers,
digital scanners, PC's and whatever is needed.
The Minister continued, "I am equally satisfied that
with new curriculum we are going to get more students wanting
to do these subjects particularly now when they can see the
follow-on from Junior Cert to Leaving Cert, it is going to
create demands from other schools and other from other teachers
which is why the support service is going to be increasingly
important for all of those teachers."
Schools set to
get €25million to purchase new equipment
- A targeted grant will be
provided to schools offering Design and Communication
Graphics, varying from €13,000 to €43,000. The
amount per school will be dependent on the number of students
having taken Technical Drawing in the Leaving Certificate
Examination, (averaged over the three years 2003 to 2006).
- This funding provides for a major ICT initiative across
the subjects. It will allow cutting edge hardware such as
PCs Laptops, printers, scanners, digital cameras and data
projectors to be integrated into daily teaching and learning.
- t4 will develop a selection of models on funding
use. These will illustrate how resources may best be targeted
for the benefit of students and teachers and will be available
on the t4 website which she launched.
- Schools which have been sanctioned to commence the new
subject Technology will receive a grant of €40,000
each.
- The Minister stated that she was especially pleased that
the funding provided includes €13m for Materials Technology
(Wood)/Architectural Technology (Construction Studies).
This money will be used to bring equipment in these rooms
up to the highest standards under Health and Safety requirements.
- The Department will contact the schools before Christmas
with details of their funding allocation. Advice on the
deployment of this funding will be given by a circular letter
which will issue to schools shortly. Subject department
planning within each school is vital for the deployment
of resources purchased with this funding.
- Access to this hardware will facilitate methodologies
previously not dreamed of, for example the introduction
of 3D parametric CAD allows students and teachers to design
and communicate using the tools previously available only
to the space industry, aircraft designers and industrial
engineers.
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