“That’s fantastic!” said Mingmei.
“Excellent!” added Chen.
“Wicked!” said Tristan. “Are there any real hotties in our class?”
The group just laughed at him.
As they made their way to their block of seats, they noticed a teacher sitting amongst their group. She was young and Tristan thought looked very fit. As they approached, they counted thirteen students waiting for them. Class 1H had twenty one students, twelve boys and nine girls. Tristan was disappointed with the ratio. Thabo, whom they had met on the first evening was in their class, as was the US Joint Chiefs’ son, Zach. Tom and Lela recognised a few of the others but there were quite a few students they did not know.
“Hi guys, come and sit down. I’m Miss Sullivan and I’m your Class Principal. I will be your first point of contact for any problems you may have in your first year here.”
The eight took their seats.
“If you look at your armrest on the right, you’ll see a control panel. Please touch the ‘Notepad’ button,” instructed Miss Sullivan.
As they pressed the button, small notepads emerged from the armrest and swung in front of each of the students. It had the same screen Tom had seen on their first day.
“Now if you can all just write your name in the box and then touch the enter button with your right forefinger,” she instructed and watched as they all completed the task. “Excellent, that’s it, from now on all you need to do is touch any screen in the school and you will be logged straight into your account.”
A number of different cools, wickeds and excellents could be heard around the class.
Miss Sullivan continued.
“Every single desk has a similar notepad, one touch and you access everything you have ever stored. The school is paperless, if you prefer to use a pen to take notes than using a keyboard just use the electronic pens and write on the screen and it will be automatically be added to your notes for whatever lesson you’re in. The system is intuitive and will correct you if you make mistakes.”
“So education has finally broken into the twenty first century,” whispered Tom to Lela.
“If you touch the timetable tab at the top of your screen, your timetable will come up.”
The students eagerly clicked the symbol, desperate to see their timetables. Weeks of speculation as to what was in store for them was about to end.
Tom eagerly clicked the button and his timetable appeared in front of him.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
8.00 — 9.00
English
Maths
Geography
Chemistry
Maths
9.00–10.00
Maths
Physics
French
English
Biology
10.15 — 11-15
French
Latin
Art/Music
Physics
Spanish
Sports
10.00 — 2.00
11.15–12.15
Chemistry
Spanish
Religious Studies
Biology
Computing
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
1.30 — 2.30
Economics
World History
New Business
Marketing
Law
2.30 — 3.30
World Politics
Accounting
Psychology
Economics
Accounting
3.30 — 4.30
International
Business
Business Admin
Leadership Skills
World Politics
Etiquette
Miss Sullivan allowed them all some time to digest the information before continuing.
“If you could please touch the English lesson at 8.00 a.m. on Monday, you’ll see that the screen jumps to a more detailed page, giving you the location, your teacher’s name, any homework due for that day and as you can
