The Gayaza High School computer center, that was as a joint project between the school and the old girls, was named after Ms Sheelagh Warren, former headmistress of this great school (1972-1990) in honor of her great work as a teacher and later headmistress of the school. The use of computer in the school was pioneered by Dr. and Mrs. Kiyingi when they donated the first computer in this school in early 1996 (at the time, very few institutions in the country owned a computer.)
The center was opened at a colorful ceremony, on 24th August 1997 by the then minister of education Hon. N. Amanya Mushega. More computers were later acquired via the donations by Old girls, the World Bank under the world links for development program of which Gayaza High School was one of the three pioneer schools that participated in the program.
Services offered
Warren computer center is a resource center where students do acquire computer skills and obtain availed from a variety of IT sources. The center used to run an outreach program to Gayaza junior school by providing resources and introductory lessons to them until they were able to set up their own infrastructure.
Currently, the center is one of the most popular places in the school where students come to access the IT resources it provides; most popular of which is the Internet. Each class is time tabled to access the facility at least one hour per week.
The center offers computer studies lessons to the O-level section of the school, and ICT for HSC students.
The center is also a registered CISCO academy.
The mission of the center: “To acquire knowledge through relevant technology”
OBJECTIVES
- To provide computer skills to the members of the school community
- To improve the teaching and learning by use of computers and related technology.
- To make learning interesting through technology.
CHALLENGES
- High computer to student ratio due to relatively few computer workstations as compared to the high number of the student population,
- Poor internet connectivity, and
- Erratic power supply.
FUTURE PLANS
- We hope to increase the number of computers in the center to ensure that all students can comfortably access the computers.
- To build more computer rooms to ease time tabling of the computer room activities.
- To expand the Internet capacity into a more reliable and faster connectivity.
- To have at least a computer and projector in most classrooms to ease integration of computers in the teaching and learning process.
- Redesigning the local area network into a modern network infrastructure.
- Expanding the local area network to cover the whole school campus.
- Establishing a reliable school Intranet.