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Report on the Year 1999-2000 - Main Projects

Good year - Excellent Year
Main project for '98 - '99 The Lambert International Symposium and the launch of the book "The Lamberts of Athenry" a hard act to follow.

We started with:
1. F.Á.S Gardening Course:

    14 - 15 Oct. 1999 with Lorna Mc Mahon. 
    We Planted a Birch Grove with the F.Á.S Scheme.
2. The Blue Ridge Mountain Project:
    An Irish/American Emigration Project with Glade Creek School, Ennice, North Carolina.
    We set up a Private / confidential Website with Glade Creek School for the initial threaded discussion - "getting to know each other".
    We had a three-day Trip to the Ulster American Folkpark in Omagh to research the project.
    End result: We set up a joint Website on Emigration with Glade Creek 
3. Our Nature Trail:
    We set up a properly defined Nature Trail in the schoolyard with 12 stops. 
    1. New Extended Garden - in the process of going Organic 
    2. Compost Bays - 3 Year System
    3. Back Lawn - 2 Flower Beds
    4. Bird Garden bird nesting boxes
    5. Propagation area - compost bin, cold frame and glasshouse
    6. Old Garden - Where we have a nest of Bees
    7. Front Lawn with - 3 flower beds Peace tree
    8. Wildflower Meadow - Lambert Grove - Rose Bed
    9. Woodland Groves and shrubberies - variety of different species
    10. Wildlife pond - insects and plants
    11. Millennium Trees - Tree per pupil
    12. Wildlife Habitat
    We love to give tours, of our 3 acre site, to our many visitors.
4. Green Schools - Waste Management Project: Combined school and school area project.
    The end result was that we were one of the 23 Irish schools privileged to be awarded "The European Green Flag".
5. The ESB Environmental Awareness Project.  6. IT Projects:
    Carnaun School Websites 1999-2000 - circa 200 pages on the life of a Country School.
    Carnaun National School Website - http://homepage.eircom.net/~foregan 
    The Lamberts website on the Lambert International Symposium 
    weekend. - www.ac.uk/lambert/Diary1/.htm  
    Castle Ellen, Lambert, Website - www.castleellen.com  
    Private Website for the Blue Ridge Mountain Project ....
    Joint website with Glade Creek Elementary School North 
    Carolina - www.alleghany.k12.nc.us/gcs/ireland 
    We have had over 5000 visitors, with 40 regular e-mailing visitors who comment on our sites and give us advice and help.
    To them we say "Hi" and "Thanks".
7. Leaders, in the West of Ireland, in the Integration of Information Technology in the Curriculum we use a wide range of Software to advance our work and display our projects:
    Microsoft Word - for text
    Microsoft PowerPoint - Presentation
    Microsoft Excel - accounting
    Quark Xpress - making pages and typesetting 
    CAD - Computer Aided Design
    Microsoft Publisher - page maker
    Desk Scan II for photos and images
    Adobe Photoshop - Editing photos
    OnimiPage Limited - OCR - Optical Character Recognition 
    Internet Explorer - surfing the web
    Netscape Communicator  surfing our site offline
    Netscape Composer - updating our WebPages
    Cute FTP File Transfer Protocol - for putting up our pages
    Outlook Express  - Email
    Agfa Photowise 
    Zip Drives for transfer
8. Other Days Out included:
    Various field trips to local monuments 
    Research trip to The Ulster - American Folkpark for a 3 day visit. 
    Visits to the Town Hall Theatre 
    To St. Enda Primary School for Chess Matches  
    To Galway: 
    County Library Headquarters for research 
    Merchants Road to make Pottery with Lawrence O'Kelly.
     
Anyone interested in our work?
    Seeking out expertise in the local community is very important to us in our projects as we feel that our work should not be school based alone. Now with the advanced technology we can boast of many people worldwide who are interested in our work and are forthcoming with their advice and encouragement. To them also we say "Hi" and "Thanks".
Funding and sponsorship is always a problem for our small school of 23 pupils but our website and media coverage of our project work give us the necessary publicity to get businesses interested and also ensures that the generosity of the sponsors does not go unnoticed.

This year to date we have been lucky to receive many gifts, from enthusiastic sponsors who recognise the value of our work, a digital camera, three very good computers, three top of the range microscopes, CAD printer and various other "bits and pieces" necessary in order that our pupils get a good start in the field of technology.

 

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