ICT at school: Carmen Sylva High School

Country	Romania
School	Carmen Sylva High School
Type of school	Secondary school
Address	Negru Voda 102
Post code	8714
City	Eforie Sud
Tel	+40 41 748566
Fax	+40 41 748566
URL	http://www.edu.eforie.ro/carmensylva/carmensylva.html http://www.lefo.ro
email	[email protected]

Carmen Sylva High School is located in Eforie Sud, Constanta County, Romania. We are located at 44°01.219’ North and 28°39.181’ East. (http://edu.eforie.ro/carmensylva/)

Eforie Sud is a small town of 10000 inhabitants located 18 km from the important port city of Constanta, the second largest city in Romania. The school is situated on the edge of very small resort town along the Black Sea Coast.

Our school is the only school in town. For this reason, we have students from primary school to high school. In total, we have 1034 students in Primary, Secondary and High school.

Our town is a small one. The town’s economy revolves around the summer tourist season. Every summer the population of the town doubles from the summer influx of tourists.

A short history of ICT in the school

We started in 1987 with a HC 85 computer (with is Sinclar Spectrum compatible). In 3 years the first info lab with 10 HC computers (memory on tape record and 3 with 5 ¼ floppy disk). In 1990 we made a huge step J we bought our first PC an XT, 20 Mb HDD, with CGI graphic display. Until 1994 we developed a new Info Lab with 20 PC (some of them Old Compaq model without HDD in a Novell network).

April 1994 was a very important date for the school’s history. The Soros Foundation in Romania organised the first national camp for Unix systems and ICT for secondary schools in Romania in our school. Since then our school has had a Linux communication server and Internet access. First, we had an off line connection (UUCP) but starting in 1996 we installed an on line connection (dedicated line and cable connection). In 2002 January we distributed 50 computers to 3 info labs, a library resource centre, astronomy lab, offices (secretary, administration, principal). In 2001 we introduce for the first time computers in classrooms. We started with the smallest students (primary school second grade). We have our domain lefo.ro and a C address classes 194.102.193.XXX. 40% of our teachers and 20 % of our students have an e-mail account on the school server and for the best students we provide PPP account for home use. Two of the computer labs are used for the computer science classes (22 computers). One computer lab and the computer from the Resources centre and classes are used for all others topics.

Computer Room 1		The computer room is used for computer science classes. We have 10 computers that are used by students and one computer that is used by the computer teacher. The computer lab provides the teacher the ability to project an image of his/her computer screen onto a LCD panel so students may more easily follow the lesson. The computer lab is used by students for both classes in computer theory and in computer application classes. The computer room is also used by content area teachers who wish to incorporate computer technology into their lessons. All computers are connected to a local network and possess internet capabilities.
Computer Room 2	This computer room is used in a similar way as the info 1 classroom. However, this classroom is primarily used for less technically demanding projects.
Astronomie – Meteorology Lab	We have one computer that is dedicated to astronomy projects. It is equipped with CCD camera, image processing software. This computer is connected to Davis Instrument HealthEnviro Monitor automatic meteorological station. The station downloads atmospheric information every thirty minutes. This information is used for educational environmental projects, both national and international (i.e. Globe, and MetLink). All the weather station data is available online at: http://www.lefo.ro/weather/
Primary Class Room	We have five computers placed in our primary classroom that is used by our primary aged students. These computers are used a great deal by our primary teachers in preparing our young students for the information age. Among these programs are: sof-uri math program, web page design, power point presentations, computer paint program, illustrated stories using PAINT and WORD, dictionary software, testing software such as HOTPOTATOS and music programs. The computers are placed within the classroom and are located in a very accessible against the wall of the classroom.
Principal office	The principal’s office contains two computers. The desktop computer contains one of the school’s web pages http://director2.lefo.ro, which is maintained by the school director. This computer also contains the school databases, powerpoint presentation and other important school documents. The laptop computer is used like a portable classroom. It used for powerpoint presentations and other multimedia applications throughout the school in conjunction with a video projector.
Administration	Our secretary and administration office has 3 computers that are used by our school secretaries to carry out the daily administrative details of operating our school.
Resource center	We have three computers situated in the resource section of our school library. These computers are used for a variety of purposes ranging from internet research to production of our school magazine. We have begun the work of adapting our current virtual catalogue program to the world wide web. All students have free access to these computers. Our library also contains a collection of multimedia products including a variety of CDROM software and peripherals.
Computer Room 3	We have eight computers in our info 2 lab where students and teachers have free access to computers and the internet from 8 am to 8 pm daily. Small groups and students working on individual projects also share access to this lab. This lab is equipped with a variety of accessories including a scanner, printers, two digital cameras and a video conferencing system (however the audio doesn’t match the video perfectly) Students are required to sign in a log sheet for the times in which they use the computer.
Servers' room + Web editing room	We have three computers that are used by teacher and the computer technical personal. The first computer has the LINUX operating system. (REDHOT 6.0) This is the server used for electronic communication (e-mail, www, ftp) http://www.lefo.ro. The other two computers have web pages and database images of the school and are used by the web master and web editor of the school. One of these computers is equipped with a video editing device and a movie machine II. Also located in this room is a copy machine, printer and other lesson preparation tools used by our staff.
The "dream room"	Computer lounge for faculty Our school dreams of building a computer lounge such as this one which is located in Le Likes, Quimper, France. Le Likes is our Comenius 1 partner in Coastal Cities Project. We took this picture in our first project visit to this school.