St Edmund’s has an excellent IT provision which is regularly reviewed to ensure students can access the resources they require to aid in their learning.
We have two full time IT support staff who are on hand Monday – Friday between 8:30am – 5pm to help staff and students with their IT requirements and maintain the computer network, security systems (CCTV and door access control) and telephone system.
St Edmund’s allows students to bring in their personal smartphones, tablets or laptops and connect them to the College wireless network. Once connected, students can access their College email, filtered internet access and even a College PC due to our virtualisation project. The wireless has 100% coverage across all of the College buildings and is regularly improved to cope with the increasing number of connected devices.
While students are in our care, it is the responsibility of the College to ensure they are protected against adult or harmful online materials. St Edmund’s, therefore, provides email filtering software called Barracuda and internet filtering software called Smoothwall. These systems are regularly updated to ensure they operate to their full potential and are reviewed annually to use the best products available.
St Edmund’s have staff that have undertaken CEOP Introduction training which provides an introduction to the work of CEOP, an insight into how young people are using technology and outlines the associated risks and the preventative measures that can be undertaken. Staff have also undertaken the CEOP Ambassador course, which provides an in-depth look at the issues children and young people may face in their online life and how professionals can educate them about the opportunities and risks.
CEOP’s ThinkuKnow programme provides a range of free educational resources to professionals working with children and young people, including films, lesson plans, presentations, practitioner guidance, games and posters. They also provide an excellent selection of resources for parents, which can be found by clicking here.
St Edmund’s has an extensive and modern ICT provision, including 4 ICT suites in the Senior School and 1 ICT suite in our Prep School. Each of these rooms contains enough computers to support one to one access with an extensive range of software to support learning.
All classrooms contain an interactive whiteboard with a projector and audio setup to allow our teaching staff to provide media-rich and interactive lessons.
Sitewide Wireless network is available to all students and staff via our BYOD policy. It is used to connect staff laptops and our laptop trollies to enable ICT use to take place outside of an ICT suite.
Other specialist areas are also equipped with computers, including our Sixth Form Centre, Library, Music Technology Classrooms and the Media Studies department, to name just a few.
Recently St Edmund’s have heavily invested in our virtualisation project, and all the computers in the College have been replaced with zero clients. This new set-up enables us to push the latest software to all devices keeping everything up to date.
To aid in independent learning, the College has a range of online resources, including College email, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and subscriptions to award-winning educational websites such as Clickview, Mathletics and GCSEPod. Access to these sites is available both inside and outside the College and is possible via our 500MB leased internet line.
St Edmund’s have recently created a new multi-purpose room called the iRise suite. This new room can be used as either a computer room or as a standard classroom. The suite is equipped with state of the art computers housed with in-powered desking, which the teacher controls. Once a button is pressed, the desk centre console raises and reveals the computers. The computers are separated into four banks, and each bank can be controlled independently, allowing some of the room to be used for IT work and the rest for general use, which is great for project work.
The room is also equipped with a large widescreen multi-touch interactive whiteboard and a high-resolution visualiser mounted to the teacher’s desk, allowing items to be enlarged and projected onto the whiteboard.