With tourism the focus of Education Month, one principal has invited Bermuda's visitors to join in his school's celebrations in hopes of making a greater impact on the students.

The brianchild of Mervyn Moorehead, principal of St. George's Preparatory School, it also offers visitors what for them, is a rare sight -- a glimpse into Bermuda's halls of academia.

"We are tourism,'' he said, "and I thought it would be nice to do something directly related to tourists. I don't know if schools are open to visitors much, if at all. I used to speak at the Elderhostel programme run each year at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research and I happen to know that this year it has got quite a lot of retired teachers in the group.

"They probably would be fascinated to see inside one of our schools and so I thought it would be nice to invite them, as well as guests from the St.

George's Club to come and see a small programme put on by our students.'' According to Mr. Moorehead, the guests are in for a real treat as the school intends to highlight the many different cultures which, together form its student body.

"We have many different backgrounds which are very representative of a lot of parts of the world,'' he explained. "So in addition to our Bermuda songs and poetry by the kids, we will have a multiculturalism chat done by the kids about where they come from. And then after the entertainment, we're planning to serve them some Bermudian food, maybe things such as banana bread, fish chowder and codfish balls.'' Especially worth making the trip to St. George's for, is a chance to see a special part of the school's Education Month display. According to Mr.

Moorehead, the school's award-winning computer programme is to be exhibited as well. Having taken first place in the International Schools Cyberfair, the East end facility bested more than 360 others in 30 countries worldwide -- some as far away as Japan and Australia -- in "Local Specialties'' one of the competition's seven categories.

All of the school's 147 students were involved in producing different aspects of the project which covered topics ranging from history to international business in Bermuda as well as a special section on the "Curiosities of Bermuda'' -- the Bermuda Triangle, Bermuda Shorts, Bermuda onions, transport and speed limit.

The competition, organised by the Global School Net Foundation, invited schools to produce and publish pages on the WorldWide Web using local resources. The school's technological skills were also in the news after it was featured in the School Spotlight section of Discovery Channel online, a site designed to promote Discovery and The Learning Channel programmes in the classroom.

Judge Bob Anderman told the school in an e-mail: "We recently looked at your site and were very impressed. Your site provides a valuable service to the educational community.'' According to the judges, the site's winning features included a place for student projects nput and teacher arent Internet links; attractive, easy to download graphics and easy to navigate and that the school is actively involved with using the Internet in their curriculum.

And at the time, the school made Bermuda history when for the first time ever, the House of Assembly sent a letter of congratulations on the Internet.

Speaker of the House Ernest DeCouto sent the message online to the students congratulating them on a winning the top international prize for their page on the Internet. The Speaker was assisted in sending the message by Minister of Technology & Information John Barritt who had sent his congratulations to the school in the traditional manner.

"Basically, we just wanted to let the tourists come,'' he added.

KEEN ABOUT COMPUTERS -- Proud of their win in the International Schools Cyberfair, from left, Alex Swift, Janita DeBraga, Nikki Stuart, Stacey Paynter, Natasha Pedro-Petty, Dylan Ward, Jacal Washington, Danielle Burrows, Adrian Black, Rolisa Furbert, Amber Simpson, Lacey Jennings and Giorgio Fox.

ON LINE -- St. George's Prep School pupils Michelle Lindo, Tiffany Paynter and Jerome Overbey surf the 'net.

EDUCATION MONTH ED