Connect: 2010

Connect Education 2.0 Update on Demos

The Connect Education 2.0 Seminar afternoon session featuring practical demonstrations by teachers for teachers has been finalised.

There are 3 rooms being used with no more than 2 parallel demos at any one time.

All demos are 30 minutes in duration.

Demos begin at 2 and run on til 4 pm.

Here's the running order, times and rooms:

2.00 'til 2.30 - Library - Hot Potatoes and Moodle - John Curran

2.00 'til 2.30 - Boardroom - Moodle and Science Resources - Mark Glynn

2.30 'til 3.00 - Computer Room - Google Apps in the Classroom - Kevin Shortall

2.30 'til 3.00 - Boardroom - Gill & Macmillans eBooks - Tony Hetherington

3.00 'til 3.30 - Computer Room - Adult Literacy and "Write On" - Denise Mc Bride

3.00 'til 3.30 - Boardroom - ICT and Teaching Maths - Ciaran O Sullivan

3.30 'til 4.00 - Library - ICT and Business Studies - Emer Quinn

3.30 'til 4.00 - Computer Room - Web Resources for any Subject - Liza Coyle

The Library is located on the ground floor in the far right corner.

The Boardroom is upstairs on the left.

The Computer Room is upstairs at the end of the landing.

The first 2 Sessions will take place on the ground floor in the Malachy Horan Room, on the right as you enter the building.

There is wifi access throughout the building, ask for the username/password from any of the staff or presenters.

Tea and coffee will be served between sessions, thanks to the NCTE for providing refreshments and to the Dublin West Education Centre for providing the venue.

Thanks especially to all speakers/presenters for agreeing to take part in this Seminar.

To register your interest in taking part in further Connect Education events please send an email to teachers@sdcc.ie

The #Ed2Seminar hashtag has been set up for this event, please use this hashtag in your tweets.

Connect Education Update

At Innovation Dublin's #thelongdebate in the Digital Hub lastnight there was a lot of talk about education. The tweetstream was full of ideas about encouraging innovation. Connect Education has been promoting the idea of teachers coming together to create digital resources for use in the classroom. But it's not just teachers who need to engage in this activity, all of the other digital creatives are needed too.

The Connect Education Community of Practice is encouraging teachers and digital creatives to come together to create and share digital resources for use in the classroom. The basic idea is that if ten maths teachers come together and each create a resource then each of the ten will then have ten resources to use. The platform being used for training and sharing is Moodle, an open source virtual learning environment. By participating you'll get free training and the community benefits by building a bank of reusble resources.

Free training in the use of Moodle and the creation of digital resources is being offered through the Dublin West Education Centre at the moment. To take part just send an email to teachers@sdcc.ie

Connect Education and South Dublin County Council are also organising an Education Seminar next wednesday 17th as part of Innovation Dublin in the Dublin West Education Centre. The Connect Education 2.0 Seminar has 3 main sessions; the first focusing on the Connect School Project and it's implementation and evaluation; the second lookin at the role non-traditional education players; and the third which features half hour demonstrations of ICT use in teaching and learning. See the poster above for details of speakers.

Connect Education 2.0 Seminar

Education 2.0: Education in the Information Age

Dublin West Education Centre

17^th November 2010

Session 1

The Connect School in practice

South Dublin County Council’s Connect School Project at St Aidan’s Community School, Brookfield, Tallaght uses ICT extensively to deliver education. Every student and teacher in St Aidan’s has a laptop and uses one-to-one computing in the classroom.

10.00am What we have learnt from the Connect School project

Conor Galvin PhD, UCD College of Human Sciences

Lecturer in Education / Director MA Education Programme

10.30am How we delivered the Connect School Project

Frank Moran, Principal, St Aidan’s Community School

10.50am Connecting to Communities though ICT in Education

Avril Bailey, an Cosán

Questions & Answer session

Break for tea/coffee

Session 2

Education’s Future: Technology in the Classroom

11.45am Google Apps in Education

Sam Peter – Google Education Specialist

12.15am Microsoft’s vision for Education & Learning

Dr Kevin Marshall, Education Lead, Microsoft Ireland

12.45pm Camara- bringing Technology to Education

Steven Daly, Camara Ireland Education Manager

Session 3

2.00-4.00pm Practical Workshops – list

- Google Apps in the Classroom

- Using Hot Potatoes in Moodle

- Project Maths using ICT

- Connect Community of Practice

- ICT School Roadmap

- ICT and Business Studies

Camara operates as a social enterprise and operates in two distinct business lines: ‘Electronic Waste Reuse’ and ‘Education Delivery’. The connection between these two, seemingly disparate business units is technology.

Connect School Evaluation Report

The Connect School Evaluation Report Launch

The Connect School Evaluation Report will be launched today by Eamon Ryan T.D., Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources in the Big Picture, Tallaght. The Evaluation was carried out by FGS and Dr Conor Galvin, UCD School of Education.

The Connect School Project is now approaching its final year, next September with the roll-out to incoming first years, all students in the school will have laptops. In conjunction with the wireless internet access and the Virtual Learning Environment - St Aidan's is one of the most progressive teaching environments in the country. There are great benefits and challenges inherent in such an ambitious project and these issues are well developed and drawn out by the Evaluation Report. Anyone working in the field of education with an interest in 21st Century teaching and learning will be very interested to read this report.

St. Aidan's Community School, Brookfield, Tallaght is also one of the 78 post-primary schools nationally to benefit from the 100 Mb Broadband for Schools initiative. This was made possible through a partnership between the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, the NCTE, HeaNet and the Higher Education Authority. For more info on this initiative see the NCTE website. Having this type of broadband capacity available to St Aidan's means that rich media content, including audio, video and interactive resources can be used effectively in the Classroom.

The full Evaluation Report will be available online once it is launched.

Watch out for a short film on the Connect School Project which will be available here once the Evaluation Report has been launched.

Launch of Connect School Evaluation

A full Evaluation of the Connect School Project has been carried out by Farrell Grant Sparks over the past two years. The Evaluation Report is now complete and will be launched by Minister Eamonn Ryan at an event in Tallaght next Friday the 28th of May. Further details will be posted as they are confirmed.
The Evaluation Report makes very interesting reading for anyone concerned with the futrure of education practice. It notes some very positive results, both quantative and qualitative, and makes useful recommendations for the implemenation of ICT in Education in general, and for one-to-one computing in particular.
The Connect School Evaluation Report will be made available on the web when launched.

Connect Education Community of Practice

In the 4 years since the beginning of the Connect School Project the greatest challenges we have faced centre on Training and Content. In order to make the best use of laptops in the classroom high-quality content is required. While our Teachers have created a vast amount of material and uploaded this to our Moodle Server, it is not realistic to expect that one school on it's own can create all the material required.
It is for this reason that we are developing a Community of Practice where Teachers can come together to collaborate, create and share resources. The Institute of Technology, Tallaght have put a Moodle Server in place to allow this to happen, and a programme of ongoing events is being organised.

Connect Education Community of Practice
The Connect Education Community of Practice will be launched this Wednesday evening in St. Aidan's Community School, Brookfield, Tallaght, at 7.30 pm.

By taking part in this initiative it is envisaged that Teachers will be afforded the opportunity to improve their ICT skills and to collaborate on the creation of digital resources for use in the classroom.

This initiative aims to provide Information and Communications Technology (ICT) training to teachers throughout the county and to generate digital resources for use in the classroom. Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a passion for something that they know how to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better.

This particular Community of Practice will focus on teaching and learning, using ICT effectively in education and focusing on managed learning systems – in this case an online learning and collaboration environment called Moodle.

A program of events and workshops will be put in place and those Teachers taking part can expect to benefit through having access to Moodle, participating in training sessions, generating classroom-ready digital content and developing networking opportunities with other like-minded professionals.

The launch of the Connect Education Community of Practice will take place on Wednesday 21^st April at 7.30 in St. Aidan’s Community School, Brookfield, Tallaght. Further events will be held throughout the county on an ongoing basis.

BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2010 kicks off

Students from all over Ireland will be descending upon the RDS, Dublin, today with innovative projects encompassing science, technology, engineering and maths for the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2010.

Now in its tenth year, the Young Scientist exhibition received 1,588 projects from a record number of 329 schools with 520 of these to take part in this week’s competition.

Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, more than 80 judges with backgrounds in business and academia will be pouring over the student projects and conducting interviews until the winners are announced at the awards ceremony on Friday night, 15 January. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic