In collaboration with the Parents' Association of Scoil Chlochair Mhuire Girls' National School in Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork, Dr Barry O'Sullivan of UCC’s Computer Science Department has established this initiative which is both an outreach and recycling project.
Scoil Chlochair Mhuire Girls' National School is the first participant in the project. The official opening took place on Tuesday, June 22nd 2010 in the presence of Professor Patrick Fitzpatrick, Head of the College of Science, Engineering and Food Science (SEFS); Professor James Bowen, Head of Department of Computer Science; Dr Tanya Mulcahy, College Manager (SEFS); Dr O’Sullivan, Department of Computer Science; Ms Nora Moran, Principal of Scoil Chlochair Mhuire; representatives of the school's Board of Management; the school's Parents' Association; parents and pupils of the school; and representatives of other local schools and community groups.
At the school in Carrigtwohill a computer lab comprising 25 PCs has been developed, which also contains 3 refurbished laser printers. In each classroom up to 4 PCs have been installed. Each computer has access to broadband, monitored by a child protection system. Over several weekends each computer was refurbished and installed to a very high standard.
Suitable computers for this initiative need to have flat screen monitors, Pentium IV processors, and a minimum of 512Mb of RAM. The software configuration, which uses only free open-source software, installed on each computer, along with details of the project can be viewed at: http://osullivan.ucc.ie/SchoolLabs
The total cost of this project, which was sponsored by the school's Parents' Association, was less than €1,000 - a tiny fraction of the costs that would have been incurred to build this infrastructure from new equipment. As part of this outreach project short courses on computing and information technology will be delivered to the children and teachers of the school. From September 2010 short courses will be offered to parents.
The current project is to build 12 Wii-hack intelligent whiteboards that will use laptop computers and projects in each classroom, costing less than €30 each inspired by an excellent open-source solution by Johnny Lee from CMU.
Dr O'Sullivan and UCC hope to ramp-up the project through the Department of Computer Science's ACM Student Chapter - http://acm.ucc.ie - and deliver PCs to other schools, local family resource centres, and to individuals who would not otherwise have access to a good quality PC.
Picture: Professor Patrick Fitzpatrick, Head of College of Science, Engineering and Food Science UCC; Ms Nora Moran, Principal, Scoil Chlochair Mhuire, Carrigtwohill; Professor James Bowen, Head of Department of Computer Science, UCC; Dr Barry O’Sullivan, Dept of Computer Science and Associate Director, 4C, UCC
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