St Gerald’s College, Castlebar, was recently selected as one of only a select number of schools in the country to participate in a new education project, the EUFolio project. A total of 25 schools in Ireland will take part in this project alongside schools in five other European countries, Spain, Austria, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Lithuania.
The project will see the school take part in the design and testing of ePortfolios. The idea behind these ePortfolios is for a electronic repository where students store their work for presentation and correction. It is envisioned that students will be able to edit their work to make improvements noted on them by peer, self-evaluation, and teacher direction, such as a teacher attaching a hyperlink to direct the student towards an area for further research for an essay.
The school was chosen for this project because of the school’s dedication towards technology and communications, with principal Daniel Hyland having a long involvement in information communications technology, while other staff members are at cutting edge of educational advancements, such as CoderDojo and Robotics.
The piloting of the ePortfoilo system in the school will be based around the school’s English department, with it based on the current and incoming first year students. While for the current first year students English classes will continue as normal, the incoming first year class will have a dedicated weekly class in digital media literacy to enhance the skill sets of the students.
