The Mayo News

THE first school television channel to be implemented in Ireland was officially launched in Davitt College in Castlebar last week and it is expected that the channel will be rolled out to up to 500 schools across the country. Television channel launched in Davitt College


Anton McNulty

THE first school television channel to be implemented in Ireland was officially launched in Davitt College in Castlebar last week and it is expected that the channel will be rolled out to up to 500 schools across the country before the end of the year.
The new channel, which is called ‘Life Channel’ and is run by a UK-based production company, will broadcast messages on school activities on two television screens as well as advice on healthy living, anti-bullying and sport reports. Davitt College were chosen by Mayo VEC to undertake the three-year pilot programme, which will cost €8,000, and the screens were installed in the school at the beginning of the year.
The format of the channel was launched by Tony Blair in February 2007 and since then 1,000 schools across the UK have availed of the service. Mr Paul Vitali, Director of the Life Channel, explained at the launch that the channel was about promoting health and wellbeing and they hoped to roll out the channel to other schools around the county. He said new information will be downloaded onto the television screens every month and there will be opportunities for the school to relay information about school activities and the curriculum.
“The channel is not about television, it is about producing content that will promote health and wellbeing amongst the students in the schools. We hope to train the schools to upload their own content about issues in the school such as the curriculum. Davitt College is the first school in southern Ireland to have the Life Channel installed and we hope to have it rolled out to 500 schools in 2009 in Ireland alone. We are ready to install the channel in other schools in the area and we have spoken to VEC CEO [Katie Sweeney] about the long-term situation,” he said.
Mr Vitali explained that the Life Channel has over 1,000 archived material items which Davitt College will be able to download and use whenever they want to promote a certain issue. He said they were keen to embrace distance learning and said they hoped the channel would promote twinnings with other schools and bring schools from different cultures closer together.
Mr Ioseph McGowan, the Principal of Davitt College, said the channel had huge potential and explained that they had started making their own programmes to show on the channel. He explained that the programme was installed at the start of the year and already they had recorded and shown football matches on the screens and a film-maker from England had shown them how to make programmes.
“The channel has huge potential and will become more attractive for the students when we start making our own programmes. At the moment we are mainly using the pre-produced material, which consists of short messages on issues like anti-bullying, obesity and drug use. It is very useful in getting messages across to the students because no matter how often you speak to them on the dangers of smoking, a short professionally-produced programme which shows the damage has a much stronger effect on them,” he said.

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