WELCOME SchoolSat is an initiative that aims to improve Irish schools' access to the Internet by using an innovative two-way 'Internet via satellite' network. SchoolSat was supported by the European Space Agency as a project from December 2001 until February 2003. During the project, 9 secondary schools in Donegal and the Donegal Education Centre were equipped with a small satellite dish which gave fast access to the Internet throughout the school day. If you would like to find out more about the outcomes of the project, the Final Report to ESA about SchoolSat is available here.

Since February 2003 and for the 2003/2004 academic school year, the initiative is continuing and the schools taking part can still avail of the SchoolSat service. There has been one change where Coláiste Cholmcille Community School in Ballyshannon has replaced Loreto Letterkenny as a participating school since September 2003. This continuation of the initiative is thanks to the support received from NCTE (National Centre for Technology in Education) and Údarás na Gaeltachta. The SchoolSat consortium is still active and continues to explore how advances in satellite technology can improve and facilitate access and use of the Internet in the school population in Ireland and elsewhere.

Meanwhile the teachers and pupils in the Donegal schools taking part are continuing to use this improved access to research the World Wide Web for various school subjects and for carrying out projects on lots of different topics. For many of the schools, this was the first time that they were able to really use the Internet for educational purposes and it really made a difference as to how the Internet is perceived in secondary schools.

The idea behind this site was to show some of the work took place in the schools during the 2002/2003 academic year because of this improved access. The way this worked was that within the schools taking part we formed small teams to work on different projects which you are welcome to visit. In some of these projects we trawled the WWW for good sites and resources that can be used for different subjects like Maths in the classroom which you can use as well.

We also worked together to create new resources on subjects like Local History which you might also find useful. We also created a magazine space for students in our schools for film and music reviews, an online flea market and a swap-shop.

We would love to hear from you, contact us with all comments and suggestions.

The partners in the SchoolSat consortium are NCTE, DEC, ATIT, ESA and Web-Sat.

SchoolSat partners can continue to check their speed on this page.