In Portugal

Institution:               EBI Vasco da Gama, Lisbon, Portugal

Education level:        Primary and Lower Secondary                    

Description:                         

The school, which is named after a great Portuguese navigator of the 15th century, is situated near the Expo exhibition area in Lisbon. The school comprises about 75 teachers and 4 pedagogical support staff members, including a psychologist, in addition to non-teaching members of staff. The school has about 702 students. 

Institution:    Escola Secundária Santa Maria Maior, Viana do Castelo, Portugal

Education level:             Upper Secondary

Description:

The Multidisciplinary secondary school Santa Maria Maior is located in the town of Viana do Castelo, in the northern part of Portugal. The Lima River crosses the town and it is very close to the Atlantic coast. The surroundings of the school are characterized by a high rate of demographic growth and a tendency to become more urbanized. The school is composed of 25 classrooms, 3 ICT laboratories, 1 theatre room, and laboratory for mathematics, 4 Art rooms, 1language laboratory for English/German, 1 gym, 3 sport fields and 1 library.

The pupils of this school are between 15 and 18 years old and study different subjects: Science and Technology, Languages and Literature, Social and Human Sciences and Computer Science.

Institution:               EB 2 3 Dr. José dos Santos Bessa, Carapinheira, Portugal

Education level:        Primary (5-9)

Description:

The school Dr. José dos Santos Bessa is situated in the centre of Portugal, half way between the beach of Figueira da Foz and the city of Coimbra, in Carapinheira which is a rural village.

The school belongs to a School Group (2 kindergartens, 8 primary schools and the Middle School) and has 19 classes which represent 383 students.
The ill-favoured social, economical and cultural background of the students has always influenced the decisions of the school in terms of ICT equipment, availability and use.

ICT has first been used in extra-curricular activities (clubs: Computer Club; Internet Club; Journalism Club; Meteorology Club), but is now part of the curriculum of the 9th grade (official curriculum) and of the 6th grade (school offer) besides being used in non-curricular subjects like  Project Area in which students do a regular use of ICT, not only in doing some of the research in the net for a specific topic they are developing, but also by processing the selected information, doing Powerpoint presentations or other types of computer work.
Since the 2003-04 school year, students from the 4th grade, come once a week to the school, where they have contact not only with the school which they are going to attend, but also to enrich their curriculum with other subjects, including Computing.

In a general way the school is considered by the Regional Services of Education as one of the schools with the best ratio computer – student (one pc for 13 students), in the centre of Portugal. The school has also been referred as being one of the schools in the district, with the most regular access to the Internet.