Students at Dunshaughlin Community College already e-mail their homework and soon technology will replace their blackboards, pens and paper, writes Ali Bracken

Students at Dunshaughlin Community College, Co Meath, will soon benefit from a "virtual learning environment" most other Irish second-level students won't experience for a decade.

Already at the school, students can view their academic results and performance reports online using a personal password; they can e-mail their homework to a teacher and receive corrections by return e-mail; and they can present their class work and projects on-screen to their classmates.

Because of its progressiveness, it is one of 12 schools worldwide to be selected for development by Microsoft as a "school of the future" through new uses of technology.

Through funding, training and research, Microsoft will support the school over a two-year period to further advance its complete digitalisation.

Research emerging from the programme will then be used to develop best practices in other schools worldwide.

Séamus Ryan, principal of Dunshaughlin Community College, said he expects his students' schoolbags to be replaced with "tablet" PCs when the Innovative Schools Programme is rolled out in the coming months.

The tablet is a mini-laptop, multimedia device that operates as a keyboard, electronic pen and pad, audio recorder and camera.

It will replace pens, paper and textbooks for the 930 pupils at the school.

The school's maths staff already use tablets as a teaching tool.

Ryan said this technology has contributed to the fact that just one of his students has failed either a Leaving Cert or Junior Cert maths paper, at either higher or ordinary level, in the past four years.

Time is not wasted writing on and wiping blackboards. Teachers instead have instant recall and access to every stage of a mathematical problem on their tablets.

The school's internal computer network is also to be advanced through the Microsoft initiative. Students and teachers will be able to access assignments and lesson plans while parents will be notified by e-mail if their child was not present for morning roll-call.

Teachers will also be provided with the software to develop "digital books".

"My philosophy is, give the teachers the tools and the basic training and see how they get on. They're already doing things I would never have dreamt of."

A key factor in educating is keeping students interested, Ryan added.

Digital projectors at the school facilitate language teachers to display on a daily basis the front pages of international newspapers, informing students on the current, international affairs of the day as well as developing their language skills.

Second-level schools in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Mexico, Qatar, Sweden and the UK have also been selected to take part in the Innovative Schools Programme.

Three representatives from Dunshaughlin college will travel to Seattle, in the US, in April for training along with staff from the 11 other schools.

Throughout the two-year project, the schools will be able to communicate and swap ideas through video-conferencing. "We expect this cross-fertilisation of ideas between the schools will be hugely mutually beneficial," said Ryan.

Microsoft invited its subsidiaries in 101 countries to nominate a school for the programme and Dunshaughlin was selected from among those put forward.

Dr Kevin Marshall, Microsoft academic manager in Ireland, said the advancement of technology at the school puts the country on the "global stage".

"But it is a mistake to focus on the technology. It is only put in place to advance learning."

He called for an independent taskforce to be established to examine the infrastructure requirements of setting up similar programmes in other schools to expand digital learning across the country's second-level sector.

"Otherwise," he added, "the education environment is in danger of becoming irrelevant."