Technology @ Saint Stephen's College
Saint Stephen’s College strives to offer the latest in technology to the classrooms regardless of year level or subject discipline.
In 2009, the College is running over 500 desktop and notebook computers that are a combination of Acer and Lenovo. We operate on a strict three year rotation policy on our lab computers and servers to ensure that we are able to offer the best available hardware in the computer labs. Our servers are all IBM and this year we embarked on a server virtualisation project that will in time see high availability computing. With the support of the federal government's Digital Education Revolution, the College implemented an additional secondary computer lab.
We offer computers in each classroom from the Prep year up, and students from Year One have scheduled time in the dedicated Junior School Computer Lab. Additionally, there are four main stream computer labs in the Senior School as well as a 24 seat lab in the Resource Centre. There are specialist labs in the Film & Television, and Music departments, including professional recording studio facilities. Our Connections Program (Years 7 & 8) have four breakout rooms, each containing 14 computers.
The College relies on the quality and performance of Cisco network switches and routers offering a gigabit fibre backbone to all buildings on campus and 100 megabit or better performance to each workstation. With our teachers now all using notebook computers, there is also a campus wide wireless network offering connectivity in almost every corner of the College.
Saint Stephen’s College is working towards ‘anywhere, anytime’ connectivity for staff and students alike. Already offered is web based email, and additionally there are portal products to give access to other informational services from anywhere with an internet connection. Staff access Teacher’s Kiosk to give live access to class lists, timetables etc to help them better prepare for class. Students use Student Café; from here they access their timetable, can email their teachers, and receive assessment items, etc. Parent Lounge enables parents to keep in touch with what their children are doing in school. It is the delivery mechanism for receiving progress reports, as well as being a way of obtaining other informational releases such as the weekly newsletter. Other online offerings are the school library catalog and Mathletics, a mathematics program currently in use by several junior and senior classes. One particular focus within the College is a learning management system named eduKate,
All classes from Years One through Six have Interactive Whiteboards installed; bringing technology into the focus of every day. The interactive whiteboards make learning fun. They help draw out the more reserved personalities and are generally a remarkable teaching resource that has not only made our staff rethink the way that they teach, but has also opened the door to many new in-class opportunities.
It is no secret that computers are a major contributor to damaging the environment. At Saint Stephen's College we are taking a first step in lowering our carbon footprint by introducing a thin client technology called nComputing. In a nutshell, we are able to harness the surplus computing power that a computer contains and use it to power multiple computers. Essentially we are able to turn one computer into as many as seven computers. Each still uses its own keyboard, mouse and monitor however there is only one physical computer to switch on. Not only are the environmental benefits attractive, but it also offers lower cost computing while maintaining educational advantages, allowing the College to redirect the money into more facilities.
