St. Joseph pupils receive tablets

This academic year approximately 700 Class 3 students from 15 Government Primary Schools will receive tablets. This is again thanks to The Aron & Christina Foundation Tablet Project.

Since 2009, Aron and Christina Truss have been ensuring that primary school students have the opportunity to own technology which will assist them with their studies.

Yesterday, 54 students from St. Joseph Primary, St. Elizabeth Primary and St. Bernard’s Primary were the first to receive devices for the academic year 2017/2018, during a ceremony held at the Library in the Eric Holder Complex in St. Joseph.

Aron Truss explained that Class 3 was selected because they feel that these students are old enough to handle the responsibility of taking care of a tablet and will have it to assist them with preparation for the Common Entrance Examination.

“Please keep very good care of your tablets as it is an opportunity for you to improve in your studies. We know that you will play some games while you are at home and that is fine as it is all part of having a tablet,” he said.

Teachers are encouraged to use the tablets as a teaching tool and incorporate their use into the curriculum, hence The Aron & Christina Foundation provided one extra tablet per Class so that teachers will also have a device in the classroom to assist them with their teaching.

Mr. Truss also shared that once a school is added to the Tablet Project they return at the start of each academic year to present tablets to the new Class 3 students. He therefore took the opportunity to publicly express his appreciation to businessman, Nic Williamson, who has once again donated the funds to pay for the tablets for students of St. Joseph.

Member of Parliament for St. Joseph, Dale Marshall, thanked the husband and wife team as well as Williamson for their continued commitment to the students. He also recalled that St. Joseph was one of the first parishes which the Foundation embraced for the initiative.

“I think that by now we should be able to say whether or not we have been seeing any results from this particular enterprise. Happily, I think we can say that the students have been improving in their common entrance results and I don’t know if you would want to give all the credit to having tablets, but so long as these tablets help one of them to do better in their common entrance results, then I think it is a success,” he said.

The MP also revealed that St Elizabeth Primary School accepted a new student, a boy from Dominica, who will also be a recipient of a tablet.

“He has come to Barbados to carry on his education because of the difficult circumstances in his country as a result of the hurricane. I would like to thank the Principal of St. Elizabeth for making a space available to someone who so desperately needs it,” Marshall stated. (TL)