Elphin Community College

Elphin Community College leads the way in use of IT

Elphin Community College
Open Night

Elphin Community College will host their annual pre-enrolment Open Night on Thursday next November 24th at 7pm. This event provides prospective students and their parents with an opportunity to view the school facilities, meet teachers and meet current students who will show them around the School and give them the student’s perspective on life in Elphin Community College. At 8pm the gathering will be addressed by the Principal Mrs Elma Nerney and by the Head Boy Conor Taylor and the Head Girl Lydia Dwyer. The School welcomes all prospective 5th and 6th Class Students and their parents on the night.

Coding Club begins in Elphin Community College

Elphin Community College as part of it’s programme to develop students digital capabilities has started a Coding Club in the school.

Learning to code teaches you how to solve problems and work together in creative ways. And it helps you build apps that bring your ideas to life.

The students are using their iPads to learn about and create lines of code. They are using a brand new coding app developed by Apple called Swift Playgrounds.

Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary new app for iPad that makes learning Swift interactive and fun. Solve puzzles to master the basics using Swift — a powerful programming language created by Apple and used by the pros to build many of today’s most popular apps. Swift Playgrounds requires no coding knowledge, so it’s perfect for students just starting out. It also provides a unique way for seasoned developers to quickly bring ideas to life. And because it’s built to take full advantage of iPad, it’s a first‑of‑its‑kind learning experience.

Learning to code with Swift Playgrounds is incredibly engaging. The app comes with a complete set of Apple-designed lessons which teachers can use to develop their students coding skills.

Swift Playgrounds takes full advantage of the power, Multi-Touch capabilities and simplicity of iPad. Just tap, drag or type text and numbers, and then interact with what you’ve created.

Elphin Community College

Schoolbag.ie helping to make the digital school a reality

As part of the schools ongoing initiative to increase its ICT and digital development we have started to roll out our electronic student homework journal to the entire school community.
Schoolbag.ie is an online digital homework journal that ensures students are kept up to date on their homework requirements even if they are absent from class and can access all of their class notes and worksheets anywhere, anytime.

Schoolbag also creates a daily link between school and the parent/guardian, thus ensuring that parents know where to support their children on a nightly basis.

Additionally, it cuts down the workload of teachers and reduces photocopying costs in schools by allowing all teachers to share their learning resources electronically.

Any teacher can view some basic overarching homework completion statistics for any student in their class, giving teachers a ‘bigger picture’ of homework completion.

The system integrates with the students Office 365 accounts and also the schools admin software supplied by VSWARE.