Castleisland Community College celebrated the official launch of its facebook and twitter pages just before the mid-term break.
A gathering of teachers and pupils announced the move as they prepared for the bank holiday break.
And this is only the start of the college’s relationship with the world of technology.
“We are delighted to launch our facebook and twitter page.This will allow the public to keep up to date with events and information about the school. We will also have our new website and school brochure available to parents, students and the general public shortly,” said Multimedia teacher, Pia Thornton at the launch.
Seán Lemass Enterprise Award for Christian
In another good news story for the school, student, Christian Steinborn was presented with the ‘Sean Lemass award for excellence in Enterprise’ in Dublin recently by An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, TD.
Christian’s product ‘Easycoil’ came about as part of his endeavours in transition year to start up his own business as part of the Kerry County Enterprise Board’s competition for second level schools.
Last March Christian won the senior category in Kerry and went on to represent his school and county at the All
Ireland Finals in Dublin, where he managed to secure third place in the senior category, no small task when you consider over 17,000 students enter the competition.
His teacher Mrs. O’Hanlon described him as “a student who has an entrepreneurial spirit and the drive and commitment to follow through from the initial manufacturing of a prototype to the final product.”
In addition, Christian has to develop communication skills, engage in market research, develop a business plan, identify the strengths and weaknesses of his product, do a financial analysis and finally being able to sell and promote his product. All this culminated in a 20 page business report which was examined and questioned by a team of judges.
The idea for the product came about as a result of the annual chore of trying to untangle the Christmas tree lights. He invented ‘Easycoil’ a lightweight storage system for storing lights that is simple and yet effective.
Christian also created two other versions of the product, one to hold electric fencing wire and one general purpose use.
His success at winning third in Ireland did not end there. He also entered Junior Dragons Den where he succeeded in qualifying for the National Finals.
From these finals he was one of the lucky few chosen to move into the next stage of the competition which was to appear on Dragons Den and do battle with the famous Dragons.
“Castleisland Community College is proud of this achievement by one of its students and it demonstrates that the future looks bright for our development as an entrepreneurial economy when we have students like Christian as part of our student intake,” said the recently appointed college principal, Carmel Kelly.
