In June 2022 Sacred Heart SNS was awarded our Digital Schools of Europe(DSoE) award. We are one of thirteen schools to be awarded the DSoE in Ireland. Our DSoE flag is proudly waving as you enter our school grounds.
This award was preceded by the Digital School of Distinction Award (DSoD), which our school was previously awarded to our school. Our school was the first school in Ireland to receive the DSoD award. The success of the DSoD award has led to the development and implementation of the newly launched DSoE award.
The objective of the award is to acknowledge, recognise, validate and reward excellence in a whole-school's approach to the integration of 21 Century Digital Technologies in teaching and learning. The award steering committee (made up of members of the DE, PDST, IPPN, INTO, CESI and ICS) believe that a new Digital Schools Award, Digital Schools of Europe (DSoE), is particularly appropriate in the current context of The Digital Strategy for Schools 2015-2020, which is at present being reviewed and updated by the ICT Policy Unit /DES.
The new Digital Schools of Europe Award (DSoE) is recognised by the EU commission. Dublin West Education Centre is the lead partner in this project.
In our school the children use the following digital technologies, to name but a few, to enhance their learning experience:
- Virtual Reality headsets such as Redbox and Oculus,
- Individual Microsoft office accounts which are used for a number of educational benefits such as children's research and production of individual and groups project work on TEAMS, reading assignments (and teacher assessment), a digital portfolio,
- Reading Eggs reading programme,
- Mathletics programme,
- Minecraft for Education,
- TTRS (Touch Type Read Spell),
- Speech to text technology using Microsoft TEAMS,
- Class Dojo learning portfolios,
- Nintendo DS system.
- New Touch Panel Screens in each classroom