Computers have been experimented with at the college many years back for students in commercial studies but had not been incorporated into the regular course offerings until a 1st phase experiment in 1997 by the Principal and a visiting Peace Corp Volunteer, Beth Cook.
In 1998, the school threw open the doors to the computer class room and offered computer studies as a regular class for Forms 4, 5, Level 5, and Form 6. Form 4 and Level 5 students sat a curriculum/prescription developed by staff and the Free Wesleyan Education Office while Form 5 sat the external Tonga School Certificate, and Form 6 sat the external Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate.
Students use PCs connected on a network to access shared information and complete their assignments. There is no Internet access on campus, costs are very high, but we hope to provide e-mail access in 1999 with assistance from patrons.
Computer Studies 1998 - End of Year Report
We started this year from the impossible but thank God for enabling us to make it possible at the end of this wonderful year of studies. The Computer room was fully equipped, students wasted no time to rush and enrol in computer classes, but who would be going to teach them? A qualified person needed to do it! No long-term planning! But lucky that Mr. Samiuela Taufa the FWC Computer coordinating officer gave his time to help out training teachers to do this task.
Samiuela Taufa together with Miss Leisia Koloamatangi, Penisimani Koloamatangi and ‘Etuate Manuofetoa are the teaching staff for this year but we (three of us) mostly relied on Sam who was our Coordinator, lecturer … he is the Master of this department.
Computer studies were optional for F4 to F6 with a total enrolment of approximately 120 students who are accessed to only 12 computers. Form 6 was given the first priority for the room in order to complete the requirements for their Internal Assessment projects. Other classes fought for the other available times including lunch time, recess, and after school hours to have a turn on the computer to do their exercises and assignments.
Peni left at the end of the second term for other commitments and left us with so many classes to control, but lucky that we managed to do it to the end of this year.
Here is how we controlled our classes:
Thanks are due to you Sam for all your support and advise that you always gave freely for the benefit of this department, may we still work together for the coming years (don’t run away). Thanks also to you Peni and Leisia for all the help that you gave during this year, may we continue to support each other and become good computer teachers in the future. To all of you students who were under our direction this year thank you for your loyalty and your support to our department. Lastly I would like to ttake this time to say fakamalo ki he puleako, ongo tokoni pule, tiuta lahi, faifekau, kau faiako mo kimoutolu kotoa pe ne mou tokoni mai ki he lesoni komipiuta ‘i he 1998 fakatauange ke tokoni’i kimoutolu ’e he ‘Otua ‘i he ngaue koto ape te tau fai, ’tuku ke ne kei langilangi’ia ai pe ‘o ta’engata.
Malo ‘Aupito
‘Etuate Manuofetoa
Form 4 - Computer Studies Report 1998 This year was the first time for Form 4A and 4M to work with computers. Firstly we were too scared to turn the disk drive and screen on and off. We all practically were shaking. The girls were all so eager to learn more about the computers, but we didn’t know how to use the equipment The computers were new to us, so we were unfamaliar what to do. It was hard to use the mouse, to click right and left, drag and double click. The majority of us took typing lessons, which helped our computer classes. The others took accounting and geography, which was a problem to those who didn’t know how to type. Slowly we began to learn more about the mouse and keyboard. Time came when we became confident and more knowledgeable about the computer. Nowadays, we are proud to know more about the different parts and functions of the computer. The computer was useful for gathering information for class projects (specifically English - environmental and a famous leader.) Our specialty is that we LOVE to play different games, especially QUAKE. We enjoy selecting pictures to make cards and decorating them (ki he ngaahi me’a maumautaimi.) Another time wasting thing is looking and laughing at photos and printing them, e.g. photos of boys. Mostly we wasted the teacher’s foolscap printing Kolisi ko Tupou mo e Kolisi Kuini Salote.
We hereby claim that Form 4 of 1998 loves computer lessons, and think it’s OK! The reason why we took computer lessons was to help us in the future.
LM Tuku’aho & M. Tupou
Facilities - Technical Brief Computers: 11 workstations, 1 Server Local Area Network: NT Domain, Ethernet running UTP cabling. Workstations: AMD P133 and P166 PC Clones sourced from New Zealand Windows NT 4.0 p3 Server running MSDNS, IIS 3.0. Workstations running Microsoft Windows 95 OR2, upgraded during the Christmas break to Microsoft Windows 98. Microsoft Office Professional ‘97.
[ref: Maamaloa, Queen Salote College Magazine, 1998]