THE Manx Telecomputer Bus was ONLINE from the very start, with students from Sulby School demonstrating the new technology on the launch day back in September. But in the early part of the year, ISDN lines were not in place at all schools, so work had to be restricted to ‘off-line’ activities as described in this booklet.

From the beginning of the Summer term, the number of schools with suitable ISDN connection was growing fast, and many children had their first taste of ‘surfing the web’. Since the start of the summer term, each day the bus has been used it has been linked up to the internet, using the facilities provided by Manx Telecom. The Youth Club sessions for CodeName SCOOP! are an obvious example of the on-line capability of the bus being used as part of a very high-profile activity (ABOVE).

In this first term on-line, the focus has been on teachers, and after school sessions introducing online services, such as the world wide web and email. It is expected that much of the forthcoming academic year will focus almost exclusively on the internet.