Document Type

Theses, Masters

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.3 EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES

Publication Details

Successfully submitted for the award of Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) to the Technological University Dublin in January, 2012.

Abstract

The Dublin Inner-City Schools Computerization (DISC) Projects initiative was established with the aim of achieving equality of access, opportunity and training in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in thirty-eight inner-city schools and innovative use of ICT in the classroom. This report seeks to evaluate the project to include the ICT projects Initiative and a pilot Managed Learning Environment (MLE) called LearningNI (LNI) currently being run by C2k in Northern Ireland (NI). This report finds that while the DISC project overall has been broadly welcomed by many schools, some schools are not engaging with the programme and the objective of integrating ICT into the curriculum has still not been met. The ICT Projects Initiative has been enthusiastically embraced by some schools but it needs to be more curriculum-relevant in order to achieve ICT integration. The MLE had some success but issues of internet connectivity; bandwidth; and school participation need to be addressed. The DISC initiative has now ceased and been replaced by Computers in Learning Communities (CLiC). Suggestions made for the future of DISC/CLiC (CLiC 2011) include reducing the number of schools involved; developing an MLE to support, train and encourage participating teachers; facilitating increased technical support to schools similar to C2k in NI; increased liaison with the Department of Education and Skills (DES) to develop curriculum-relevant software; and a re-launch of the DISC/CLiC programme. This report uses Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical framework for research design and analysis.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/D7031M

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License

Download


Included in

Education Commons

Share

COinS