Future IT Competition Offers Children Trip to the Past.

April 13, 2001

Liberty IT today launched a primary schools competition 'Classroom in 2020' which will encourage primary three pupils to create a picture of how technology will change their classroom by the year 2020.

In an unusual twist the winning class will be taken backwards in time to find out how the classroom operated without the aid of modern technology.

Liberty IT, one of Northern Ireland’s most successful software developing companies is running the competition for all primary three pupils in schools throughout Belfast. Each student will have to draw or design a picture of how they perceive the classroom to look in the year 2020.

The school at which the winning pupil attends will receive a high quality, high specification multimedia PC, along with scanner, colour printer and digital camera. In addition, the class of the winning pupil will also get treated to a day of fun and games at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh where the children will experience how class was taught in the last century.

Senior Project Manager with Liberty IT, Brendan Smyth, said of the competition “Liberty IT hope to achieve through the ‘Classroom in 2020’ competition a greater awareness in children of how technology will affect the way the classroom will look in the year 2020.

However we don’t want children to forget the past and the close links we share with America, thus in the prize we will be asking the children to relive how school was taught last century without the help of contemporary aids such as technology and electricity.

Through the competition Liberty IT wish to in some way contribute to and acknowledge Northern Ireland’s excellent education system which has contributed greatly to the company’s success. ”