Roll No:
Digital Schools Award Evaluation Report
School: St. Joseph’s National School, Clinstown, Co. Kilkenny
18607 O
Date of validation: 05/06/2015
Leadership & Vision
St. Joseph’s is a 3 teacher rural school. ICT is used on a daily basis by all classes and has been successfully integrated into teaching and learning. The
Principal, who is also the ICT co-ordinator, is the driving force behind this success and keeps the use of ICT to the forefront of daily school life. The rationale for the use of ICT is clearly identified in the school’s ICT policy and the importance of the internet as a teaching, learning and research resource is emphasised.
The school’s ICT policy outlines the uses of ICT in the school and how this will progress from class to class. From my visits to the classrooms the development of ICT usage in skills and content was very noticeable. ICT is used in a wide range of curricular areas such as Literacy, Numeracy, History,
Geography, Music, Art etc. The school has 20 iPads and their use is timetabled so that pupils have regular access.
ICT in the Curriculum
The school’s ICT policy outlines how it will be used in each of the class levels –
Junior, Middle and Senior classes. While ICT is mainly used in the Junior classes as a reinforcement in areas of Literacy and Numeracy by using apps appropriate to the pupils ability and skills. As you progress through the school ICT is integrated into more curriculum areas there is more skill and creativity used in applying apps and software to design and create projects in the various subject areas. Junior classes are using apps suitable for maths, letter formation and reading. Powerpoint is used to teach vocabulary, poetry and song. YouTube is used for dance. The pupils made musical instruments as part of the VA
Curriculum and a video was made of them playing their musical instruments and this is displayed on the school website. In the middle classes the children introduced me to the work they were doing in ICT. They produce a monthly newspaper called “Monthly Madness” using a Word template and this gives them an opportunity to showcase their writing skills and the various writing genres they practise. The newsletter is available in print form or can be viewed on the school website. They also use “Book Creator” to write reviews of book they’ve read and they show me some samples that incorporated text, graphics and sound. The teacher was using a website called “education city.com” for maths practice and drills. As a break between classes they were using “Gonoodle” which is an activity website with brain activities and challenges to suit different abilities.

During art they used “Art for kids hub” that demonstrated different art and drawing techniques that they could copy and practise. One interesting project in the middle classes was a video they made for the Junior Classes. They told the story of the “3 Little Pigs” using stick puppets, their own props and backdrops (Art work). They made a video of this and will show it to the Juniors soon. They had also created their own books/scapbooks on various curricular areas where the internet was used for research and the book compiled using text, pictures and graphics.
In the senior classes the pupils showed me the projects they had completed using ICT and went into great detail on the steps involved in creating their work.
As a class they had completed a project “Taking Care of my Body” in SPHE. For this they worked in pairs on different sections such as “Smelly Feet”, “Sleep is the Key” etc. After researching the topics they used BOOK CREATOR to record their findings. They submitted 5 different projectS for the Junior Entrepreneur
Award. Each project group was divided into Sales, Marketing, Design &
Production, Finance and Storytelling. This involved a lot of design, creativity, research and presentation skills and the pupils used a wide range of ICT such as
COMIC LIFE, BOOK CREATOR, GOOGLE IMAGES, GOOGLE DOCS and
POWERPOINT. It was a wonderful way to combine many of the ICT skills they had acquired.
Another group explained how they used the internet for research projects mainly using SCOILNET and BRITANNICA SCHOOL and how they used Google Docs or Book Creator to record and display their projects. In application for the latest
Green Flag they had to submit a project on biodiversity and this had a huge ICT component for research and presentation. They also submitted an article (profile of their school) to the “Primary Planet” magazine using BOOK CREATOR and this was published. The senior classes have also used Khan Academy for maths improvement and have participated in the Mathletes competition. The school were Leinster Champions in the MATHletes competition in their category and one of their pupils reached the All Ireland MATHletes Final where he competed against the top 20 6 th class students in the country.
The senior classes were using a variety of apps for Geography, Maths, Free
Writing, English, Spelling and made great use of YouTube to introduce new lessons and topics.
School ICT Culture
There is a very strong ICT presence in the school. The school website/blog is current and displays the work of the pupils. The school has a twitter account and tweet about all school activities. Parents follow school news on twitter. The

school in involved in projects outside the school such as Mathletes, the Young
Entrepreneur Award, Green Flag and all of these involve ICT. There was a wide range of projects on display in the school and the pupils were proud of their achievements and were very motivated and supported by ICT in their learning.
The teachers share resources using Dropbox. The twitter account keeps the website current but there were many other examples of pupils work such as newsletters, videos etc.
Professional Development
The ICT co-ordinator plays a significant role in providing expertise and sharing best practice with the staff. All staff are confident in their use of ICT and knowledge and expertise is shared informally and formally at staff meetings and
Croke Park time.Teachers avail of in-service provided by Kilkenny Education
Centre and have also used the expertise of a local ICT Advisor from KEC. It’s surprising though that the school’s ICT policy makes no reference to ongoing professional development in ICT. However, the plans for the future include shared fili ng and resources, FÍS and increasing the hardware to 26 iPads to cover the maximum class size.
Resources & Infrastructure
Currently each class has an IWB, data projector, teaching laptop and apple tv. There are 20 ipads on a shared basis, 1 digital camera and it is planned to increase the number of ipads to 26. The resources are deployed in the most appropriate manner for effective teaching and learning. The school uses a variety of software, apps and online resources to enhance teaching and learning. All the software is properly licenced.
General comments and recommendations
It was a pleasure to visit St.
Joseph’s and listen to the pupils explain how they used ICT in their learning. This they did clearly, with ease and confidence, attesting to the fact that ICT is an essential part of their learning experience.
Scoring
The visit more than validated the statements on their Self Evaluation Review.