We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the quality of what they’re doing and

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the quality of what they’re doing, and they spend far more time now on tasks.”As well as the technology room, each classroom also has a computer linked not only to every other one in the school but to all the other schools taking part in the project. The biggest change has been in the children’s attitude and willingness to work. Children who were once hesitant learners now arrive an hour early for school and have to be encouraged to go home at 5pm.Anthony Austin, the school’s headteacher, says: “The impact of the project here has been huge. They can use e-mail or a video-conferencing link, which puts them in visual touch with anyone they want to interview. The information technology room contains 23 of the most advanced computer systems in the world.
The school is part of the Beon project, which means that children can access the world via the Internet. But walk up a short flight of stairs, and you enter a completely different world.

You drive into a car park surrounded by a high, mesh fence and you are warned not to leave anything valuable in the car. Whitehouse Primary School serves one of the poorest housing estates in Bristol. The run-up to the school is depressing, with endless vistas of concrete and graffiti-scrawled walls. “But at the moment we’ll go with it as long as we can afford to on our own We owe it to the kids on estates like these to do it”n.

The Government, local authorities, and the European Community need to structure the funding so that all schools can afford it.”With a social security budget of pounds 90bn and an education budget of just pounds 18bn, surely we should, as a nation, spend more money on these children now,” he says.Brian Hall at Hareclive Primary will have to find around an extra pounds 50,000 to keep the Beon computers at his school “I don’t know how I’m going to afford it,” he says. Alan Teece says: “Of course it is a commercial investment for us, and I know the schools will have to make painful decisions to start with to afford the technology. But with Beon I think we’ve proved we can’t afford not to do it. will benefit,” he says.BT and ICL say it will be some time before they recoup their pounds 4m investment in the Beon project. He believes we’ve reached the stage in information technology now where there’s no turning back – and that if schools don’t embrace all the possibilities of IT some pupils will be seriously deprived.”It’s worrying that we might face a situation of `information rich and information poor’, [in which] only children attending schools in the leafy suburbs …

“Half the fun of a school trip is getting out of school – but if it’s somewhere a long way away or which would be really expensive to get to I think it would be a good idea to go using the computer. I don’t think it would be so exciting though.”Chris Hutchison says everyone – local education authorities, the Government and schools – must all think long and hard about how the information revolution is going to be funded so that everyone benefits. Visit the virtual Paris with the French kids, walk down the virtual Champs-Elysees, enjoy a virtual croissant. Then you could invite them back on the computer for a virtual trip to London.”Hayley Collins, a pupil at Whitehouse Primary in Bristol, has her reservations, however “It would depend where you’re going,” she says. Now you can have a virtual trip to Paris, perhaps working collaboratively with a French school. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase `school trip’ and it greatly enhances the learning experience.”There are always pupils whose parents can’t afford for them to go on school trips to say, France. At the click of a mouse the class can then walk together into the museum or art gallery …

You can then create a virtual classroom with all your pupils,” he explains.”The teacher can say, OK, let’s go and visit a farm today, or a museum. Chris Hutchison, a lecturer at Kingston University, is currently writing a book about the use of virtual reality in education.”The technology is now available for pupils to create virtual reality 3-D models of themselves on screen They choose their hair colour, clothes, eye colour. But he’s also really interested in what we’re doing, and he makes us think about what’s influenced us to paint or sculpt the way we have.”And the technology doesn’t end at video-conferencing. Nick is really enthusiastic and he can show us all sorts of things we can’t see in school. It’s great to think we’re being taught by someone as talented as Nick – he shows us lots of his own paintings as well. “We have access to thousands of slides here from galleries and museums and the technology means I can illustrate quite a complicated idea quite simply,” he says.Stuart Ames, 14, one of the pupils involved, says: “It’s made a huge difference. At Withywood, the only secondary school taking part, children are now learning to draw and paint via a video-conferencing link with Nick Eastwood, a lecturer in art at Exeter University.As a group of pupils gather around the screen, Nick takes them through various stages in creating a painting – and can also show them slides as demonstrations of what he means.