Digital Opportunities Pilot Projects

The progress of the Generation XP Digital Opportunities Pilot Project is reported for the period January 2002 to December 2003. During this time, eight low decile secondary schools in Auckland and Gisborne piloted running Microsoft Office Specialist and other industry level IT courses with their senior students. The pilot proved to be a successful ‘proof of concept’ with nearly 1000 students studying the MOS courses during the two years. By the end of 2003, the evaluator had been notified of a total of 107 students passing one or more component units. Between them they gained over 200 passes.

The Notebook Valley project provided a range of benefits for the teachers, students, and schools. These benefits included: increases in teacher and student knowledge and confidence using ICT; changes in school “ICT culture”; the acquisition of useful ICT software and peripheral ICT equipment; the development of school and departmental intranet systems; and the beginning of more ICT-based teaching schemes for some junior science and mathematics classes.

The progress of the Digitally Boosted Study Support Centre Pilot, one of the four Digital Opportunities projects, is reported for the period January 2002 to December 2003. The project involved four study support centres located in three low decile schools and one marae in Christchurch and Invercargill. These centres piloted the use of a computer based boost to their after school activities.

FarNet is one of four Digital Opportunities Pilot Projects that aimed to “bridge the digital divide” by introducing information and communications technology (ICT) into various educational settings with the ultimate aim of improving student achievement and increasing participation, particularly in maths, science and technology. The Far North was chosen as an area because the isolated nature of the schools there made it an ideal candidate area for electronic links, yet geographically challenging in terms of bandwidth provision, and because it had been identified as an area requiring support.

This report is a summary of the key findings from evaluations of the Digital Opportunities Pilot Projects (2001-2003)". It includes findings related to students, teachers, project structure, ICT infrastructure and sustainability.

This report describes ICT initiatives and evaluations of them since 1990, focusing on ways of lessening the 'digital divide', in particular by providing students of low socio-economic status and those in isolated areas with increased access to technology. Major initiatives conducted in the USA, Australia, the UK and Canada are described and links to key web sites are included. The report also has extensive annotated bibliographies. The report focuses on studies similar to those called the Digital Opportunities Projects which are part of the government's ICT strategy. Other ICT research documents can be found on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) publication home page.