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Information Technology
The word 'change' is synonymous with the Information and Communication Technology Industry. Trinity College has undertaken major ICT change in 2002.
The Catholic Education Network
The College has been involved - as a pilot school - in setting up the new Catholic Education Network (CathEdNet). CathEdNet will connect all Western Australian Catholic schools, Catholic Education Offices and the University of Notre Dame on a high speed wide-area-network. The network will be used for collaboration and co-operation in such areas as administration, curriculum delivery, professional development, and library services.
Trinity College has provided personnel and expertise to assist the Catholic Education Commission in developing a technical and procedural model for connection to the CathEdNet. Following this, Trinity became the first school to connect to the CathEdNet in April this year. The future of the CathEdNet is very exciting and it should prove to be a wonderful resource for curriculum, e-learning, data management and communications.
Technical Advancements
The College has continued to implement new technologies and improve existing technologies. Amajor project for the technical staff was to upgrade our network operating system to Windows 2000. This was a complex task that was carried out with great organization and precision by Mr. Roger Blatchford and Mr. Warwick Gaff
Trinity has been identified as a leader in educational ICT and as such has been involved in piloting a number of new technologies including computer 'thin clients', videoconferencing technology, and electronic smart cards.
Another improvement to our existing systems was to extend our wireless network to allow access to the computer facilities by students in the senior science block. Students and teachers can now take notebook computers into this area and connect to the network and the Internet without the need for wires and cables.
Our Internet and Intranet capabilities have been further developed with the addition of an online store, a new Intranet site, and classroom web sites developed by our primary school students. My thanks are extended to Mr. Richard Cackett and Mr. Ray Kosovich for their very professional efforts in this field.
Curriculum
We have added two new courses of study to our curriculum offerings this year: The Internet Year 9 (Theory and Practice) and The Internet Year 10 (Web Site Design). This reflects the growing importance of the Internet to education and how students can communicate using the World Wide Web. These new courses complement our existing courses in Multimedia, Industry Information Technology and Digital Media.
The amount of digital work that students are producing is increasing each year and we need a way of creating, storing and presenting this work. To facilitate this all Year 8 students are given 'web-space' on the Trinity network to use as digital portfolios. The students can then upload school work to their digital portfolio to be viewed by all students and staff. This year, the year eights have produced web sites about Australian culture (Society and Environment), rainforest animals (Science) and electronic spreadsheets (mathematics).
Aspecial thanks to Mr. Richard Cackett, Mr. Ray Kosovich, Mr. Bobby Emmanuel and Mr. Roger Blatchford for the outstanding educational environments they create in their classrooms.
