Bobby Reidy and Sinead Ryan have traded in their pens, paper and text books to go digital using a notebook computer and a wireless network at their school, writes Jamie Smyth

The two second-year students at Coláiste Chiaráin secondary school in Croom, Co Limerick, now spend as much time downloading information from the Web as they do writing into their exercise books in class.

"It's not just for typing copy into my laptop, I can make presentations in class using a projector, use CD Rom to study languages and connect to broadband to find information," says Bobby, as he pulls his gleaming Dell notebook from his school bag to show it off to me while wearing a proud grin.

Most students between first and fifth year at Coláiste Chiaráin own a laptop because of an e-learning initiative sponsored by Dell, the computer manufacturer.

Under the initiative, Dell, which employs 3,000 people in the area, provides free laptops to teachers and heavily discounted computers to pupils to encourage the school to become a pioneer in the use of technology in education.

The school has also installed a wireless network to enable students and teachers to connect to broadband in their classrooms.

Dell is also providing personal digital assistants to teachers, enabling them to access the schools intranet to conduct roll calls and to easily access pupil information.

"Using this type of technology makes classes more interesting for pupils," says Ms Moira Maher, who teaches German at the school. "Classes can be very interactive and a lot more colourful than normal."

New research by the British state ICT (information and communication technology) education agency Becta also found that using ICT in the classroom increased students commitment, independence and motivation to study.

Unfortunately, Coláiste Chiaráin is unusual because it has attracted a generous private sector benefactor such as Dell. The majority of the 4,500 primary and secondary schools in the State have only limited access to modern computers.

Schools for the Digital Age: Information and Communication Technology in Irish Schools, a comprehensive report on IT use in the Republic published earlier this year, shows that we still lag many of our European neighbours.

State investment worth €140 million since 1998 has helped the Republic to more than double the number of computers in schools to 85,000, equivalent to one computer for every 10 students. But this is still significantly below Denmark or Finland, which can offer one computer for every three to six students.

The Republic is now ranked 11th out of 15 EU member-states for ICT access.

If you don't have the infrastructure in place, you simply can't teach the necessary ICT skills for the future, according to Mr Jim Friars, chief executive of the Irish Computer Society (ICS), which offers IT advice and training.

"We need to find a way to get more computers in the classroom and begin to use IT more for teaching," Mr Friars says. "Once people get access to the technology they will begin to use it in innovative ways."

But State funding for IT hardware in schools has been cut sharply over the past two years. Lobby groups such as ICT Ireland are critical of the current State policy of allowing primary and secondary schools to purchase their own equipment rather than setting up a well-funded centralised procurement strategy.

Centralising IT procurement for schools would remove the flexibility that schools currently enjoy to buy their own equipment. But it would also offer economies of scale to lower prices and create standard platforms on which to develop pedagogy, according to Mr Joe Macri, general manager of Microsoft Ireland.

It may also go some way to iron out the huge differences that exist between schools in their access to and use of ICT in the classroom.

A draft policy for ICT use in schools has been prepared by the Department of Education but has not received ministerial approval, despite the lapse of a previous strategy in December 2003. But early indications suggest that the State is not planning to change to central procurement anytime soon.

This could have important consequences for schools, many of which could be forced to upgrade their ageing computers shortly as a Government initiative to provide broadband to every Irish school by 2005 begins.

Indeed, privately, many people involved in the broadband project fear that schools will be forced to use obsolete PCs to connect to the new state-of-the-art broadband networks because of a lack of funds and a co-ordinated ICT policy for education.

But procurement is only one piece of the puzzle. Building ICT skills among teachers, setting up networks within schools, connecting to broadband and, perhaps most crucially, content are all big issues, Mr Macri believes.

At the Sacred Heart National School in Killinarden in Dublin - an early technology pioneer that introduced computers in the early 1990s - about 400 students between the ages of eight and 12 now use computers as part of their everyday lessons to improve their learning experiences.

"Kids remember more when they use technology to enhance the learning process," says Mr Robbie O'Leary, principal at Sacred Heart. "But there is a big problem in Ireland that many computers lie under-used because schools think they should only be used to teach computer skills."

Another problem is that there is very little Irish-specific software available to schools for subjects such as history and Irish compared with the excellent e-learning software that is available for general subjects such as Maths and English, according to Mr O'Leary, who has developed his own software titles in these areas.

This is despite the fact that the Republic is home to one of the biggest educational software developer in the world, Riverdeep, which sells mostly in the US but recently expanded in the British schools market.

It is really a matter of a lack of return on investment, according to Mr David Mulville, a Riverdeep director.

The small scale of the Irish market, the lack of a State budget allocation for software and no centralised procurement make it difficult for companies to build high-quality programmes for the local market.

"The Irish market has not yet reached the level of ICT usage and adoption as has happened in the US and the UK, where ICT integration into the curriculum is a key part of education strategy," he says.

However, there are signs that changes to the curriculum are being considered.

Dr Sarah Fitzpatrick, a director of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, says the organisation is working on a framework policy for ICT within the national curriculum and a discussion paper is complete.

"This isn't approved by council yet and is in development mode," she says. "But there is an acknowledgement from our perspective that it is not about the technology in the school but how it is used to improve learning."

Embracing ICT within the curriculum would, undoubtedly, drive the use of computer technologies in schools. Link this with the rollout of broadband networks and a new Government strategy on ICT and education and it is likely that more children will join Sinead and Bobby in the new age of "digital learning".