Imagine standing in front of a class of students and being able to have immediate access to a range of state of the art technology. In your hand is a touch screen wireless remote control device that enables you to interact with the latest multi media equipment. You turn on the ceiling mounted multi media projector, dim the lights and then decide which piece of equipment is the most appropriate for your teaching today. You may wish to use a computer to show a PowerPoint presentation or download a web page relevant to your discipline.

Most likely you will use the visual presenter as your virtual chalkboard and overhead projector and maybe play an educational videotape or DVD at the touch of a finger. If you are really ambitious you will arrange to have a videoconference with students at any location in the world that has similar equipment. You can choose to conduct your lesson in a single or double classroom or a seminar room if you want a more intimate setting.

If you want your students to have access to individual computers to conduct research or take an online or web based course, you will take them to a custom-built computer laboratory where they can undertake independent study. If you want them to produce multi media materials or work on their digital audio or video editing projects you will take them to a multi-media studio to conduct their work. Or you can stand before two hundred students in a multi purpose auditorium and have access to even more sophisticated multi media facilities and a professional sound system.

This auditorium is in such demand as a performance venue that you will spend many evenings sitting in the audience enjoying a theatre, dance or music production.

Imagine no more, the new School of Education building at UWI St Augustine has all of these facilities and has therefore greatly increased the numbers of students having access to quality education supported by technology which facilitates innovation in the classroom. It has extensive multi media facilities in six of the twelve classrooms and has similar equipment in the science laboratory, the computer laboratory, the multi media studio and the auditorium. Multi media carts will service the other classrooms and the four seminar rooms, while the whole building has Internet wireless access. The lecturers are being trained to make the most effective use of such facilities and already there has been a dramatic increase in the use of technology by the staff. Almost every lecturer now incorporates some form of educational technology in his or her teaching while the students make full use of the computers in the new library. Already the auditorium has been the venue for interactive dance collaboration between UWI St Augustine and Northwestern University, Chicago while the video conferencing equipment has also been used to facilitate pedagogic exchanges with UWI Mona campus.

This is only the beginning, as the School of Education is looking at ways to extend these facilities to every teaching room and install a state of the art lighting system in the auditorium. The building has now become a model for all teaching facilities throughout the rest of the campus. Internationally education has come a long way from the old-fashioned chalk and talk delivery and the School of Education is determined to be at the cutting edge of the latest developments in educational technology.