Connect School

Moodle 2 Administration - Book Review

2011-11-22T10:24:00.000Z

This Thursday November 24th marks the first anniversary of the release of Moodle 2. This is a major milestone in the development of the world's favourite Virtual Learning Environment. Not many production sites have yet moved to Moodle 2, at the moment it's probably best to use on new installations only.
I've been running a Moodle 2 installation since September of this year and while it took me some time to get used to I'm now quite comfortable with it. The first major change that one notices are in the areas of site navigation, administration and file handling. I'll go through these in a later post. The changes are improvements by and large and I particularly like the built in content licensing options and the ability to integrate fully with Google Apps.

I dont yet feel quite competent enough to embark on a full Moodle 2 review, but I've been asked to review Pakt Publishing's soon to be released "Moodle 2 Administration" Book. Pakt Publishing have been publishing excellent books for a number of years, often focusing on Open Source Software - I'd particularly recommend "Moodle 2 for Business" by Gavin Henrick, Joanne & Jason Cole. I've just recieved my copy of "Moodle 2 Administration" and will be reviewing it within the next fortnight. This will be a great opportunity for me to really "get my hands dirty" with Moodle 2. To date I've been using a vanilla 2.0.2 installation with very few tweaks. I'm looking forward to learning enough to get stuck in and make Moodle 2 really work for me. Looking forward to a challenging fortnight, here goes...

2011-08-24T14:44:00.001+01:00

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

2011-06-22T12:46:00.000+01:00

Free Moodle Training from the Connect Education Community of Practice

2011-02-04T17:03:00.006Z

Free Beginners Moodle Training available through the Connect Education Community of Practice.

In partnership with Dublin West Education Centre, IT Tallaght, the National Centre for Technology in Education, Camara, South Dublin County Council and St Aidan’s Community School, training in “Creating and Sharing Digital Resources using Moodle” will be provided to teachers by the Connect School eChampion - Ronan Herron.

Ronan has been administering Moodle in St Aidan’s Community School, Brookfield Tallaght for the past 4 years.

The Training takes place over 6 x 2.5 hr weekly sessions culminating in each participant confidently using Moodle in their day to day teaching.

The Community of Practice provides:

Moodle platform for use by teachers and students
Try-out area where you can build your course
Resources area where curriculum material is uploaded for all to use and share.

Booking fee of €20 is required to reserve your place and is refundable on attendance of +50% of classes.

To take part in “Creating and Sharing Digital Resources using Moodle” send an email to teachers@sdcc.ie with CSDRUM in the subject line.

The 6 Modules of the Training Programme cover:

Introduction to Moodle.
Uploading and managing your digital resources.
Adding Activities and interactivity to your Course.
Multimedia and other content.
Quizzes and online testing.
Moodle in class and from home.

Course Prerequisites.

This Course - Creating and Sharing Digital Resources is intended as a beginner’s course - it is suitable for someone who has never used Moodle before.

After engaging thoroughly with the 6 Modules you should be in a position to create and share engaging interactive eLearning Courseware.

Although the Course is intended for beginners it does make a number of assumptions about the basic ICT skills of participants.

Listed below are a number of competencies in which prospective participants should be adept.

Creating and editing text files.
Creating folders and managing files.
Cutting and pasting.
Using Keyboard shortcuts.
Switching between open applications.
Using email.
Downloading and installing applications.
Searching and navigating the Web.
Turning on and off a computer cleanly.

There may be one or two competencies listed above in which you are not yet adept, this will not present a problem, just let the Tutor know.

These are the very basic pre-requisites. By participating in this course you should expect to gain further ICT Skills and not just in the area of developing Courseware. You will also gain skills in manipulating audio, video and interactive media. Most of all you will gain a greater understanding of what it is to create engaging elearning material.

Venue: Course will take place in the Dublin West Education Centre startin Monday 28th February at 6.30 pm.

Hosting: The Community of Practice Moodle server is provided by the Institute of Technology Tallaght and is available to teachers to use not just for training but for use in class and as a sharing repository of resources.

To reserve your place send an email to teachers at sdcc dot ie with CSDRuM in the subject line.

Connect Education 2.0 Update on Demos

2010-11-17T00:07:00.001Z

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

2010-11-12T10:23:00.000Z

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

2010-11-05T11:15:00.000Z

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

2010-05-28T14:10:00.000+01:00

Connect School Evaulation Report

2010-05-28T09:58:00.008+01:00

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

2010-05-20T22:35:00.000+01:00

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

2010-05-12T16:39:00.000+01:00

Workshops in St Aidan's Community School are ongoin on Wednesday afternoons from 3.45 - 5.30.

These workshops are focusing on using Moodle and we'll have a workshop on capturing, editing and uploading video in the coming weeks!

Connect Education Community of Practice

2010-04-19T11:52:00.000+01:00

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

2010-01-15T12:36:00.000Z

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

Govt outlines 2010 investment in broadband and ICT for schools

2009-12-11T11:30:00.000Z

Communications Minister Eamon Ryan TD said last night that €45 million will be spent on modernising Ireland’s telecoms infrastructure and that 100Mbps of high-speed broadband will be delivered to 78 secondary schools across the country.

The €45-million investment revealed under yesterday’s Budget for 2010 includes the National Broadband Scheme to bring broadband coverage to target areas in rural Ireland where broadband coverage is deemed insufficient.

The National Broadband Scheme is supporting 250 jobs directly.

Ryan said work will be advanced on positioning Ireland as a testbed for energy-efficient fibre-optic networks.

In terms of Education & Science, €715 million will be provided but total funding in 2010 will amount to €794 million, according to Education Minister Batt O’Keefe. Some €579 million of this, including €74 million carried over from 2009, will fund the important school building programme.

This will be complemented by an investment of €50 million, including €7 million carried over from 2009, in ICT for the classroom.

A further €141 million will fund infrastructural investment in higher education, including €46 million for the promotion of science and innovation.

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

Rebellion manuscripts go digital

2009-11-11T11:14:00.000Z

AT TRINITY College Dublin, 1641 is coming face to face with 2009, to the benefit of scholars but also the public.

A set of priceless manuscripts – aged, coffee-coloured and covered in the looping, spidery scrawl of many different 17th-century hands – is to emerge as a cutting-edge semantic web and documentation project accessible by all online.

The manuscripts are the famous – or, depending on your view, infamous – 1641 Depositions, eight volumes of 1,559 personal accounts of one of the most violent moments in Irish history, the 1641 Rebellion.
The depositions – witness statements taken mostly from Protestants – describe incidents of murder, rape and pillage but also many aspects of everyday life in the 1600s.
This rich material is valued by social, religious, historical and political researchers but is also the source of hundreds of years of bitter dispute over the truthfulness of the events described. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

More bang for your buck with latest consoles

2009-11-05T19:34:00.000Z

THE ALLIANCE of Microsoft with Sky this week has signalled a clear intent by the Xbox maker to target those paying for the presents this Christmas.

Xbox Live users can from this week subscribe to the full range of channels available through Sky Digital. The service does not require the user to own a Sky box, as content can be accessed directly through an Xbox 360 console. This alliance is the most significant part of a series of non-gaming efforts by Microsoft to make Christmas shoppers think about the console as more than just a gaming device.

On top of Sky Digital, there are downloadable movies, music on demand and upcoming Facebook and Twitter services. All of this is part of a push to spread the appeal of the Xbox 360. Hardcore gamers will always prioritise gaming, but this latest effort aims to target a different market segment. Read More

Courtesy: Irish Times

57,500 receive Leaving Cert results

2009-08-12T16:32:00.000+01:00

Around 57,500 students have been receiving the results of their Leaving Certificate exams today. This year's results follow previously seen patterns of low achievement in maths and science subjects.
The number sitting higher level maths fell, with only 16% of students sitting the paper.
Once again there was a low uptake of physics and chemistry at higher level and high failure rates in all science subjects. After the emergency rescheduling of the second English paper, students' results in that subject are broadly in line with those of previous years.

While there are minor fluctuations, the State Examinations Commission said the rescheduling of the paper did not adversely affect the quality of this year's scripts. Read More

Courtesy: RTE News

The Challenges of Implementing ICT in Secondary Education

2009-07-13T10:13:00.000+01:00

There is no doubting the power and importance of technology in today’s world which has no place for technophobes or those who shun this marvelous invention. Technology has revolutionized the way we teach and learn by making inroads in the field of education and assisting teachers and students alike. But there are a number of problems that arise when we integrate technology into the classroom and harness its power to assist the process of learning, especially when it comes to secondary education and K12 students.

The thing with technology is that it keeps changing in the blink of an eye; what’s relevant today is outdated tomorrow; and by the time we get up to speed and learn to understand one, we are bombarded with ten more programs or gadgets that are more sophisticated and advanced than the ones we are used to. Using technology in education is a task that needs to be researched and tested for viability before it is implemented. And once put into practice, it cannot be discontinued in order to accommodate a newer version or better program.

For one, it takes time for both teachers and students to get used to the new system and way of doing things. And for another, it takes money and other valuable resources to invest in technology and implement the same. But when you don’t stay up to date, the students are at a disadvantage because they are not getting the most out of the technology that is available.

Another problem that we face in using technology in education is that many teachers are not in favor of changing their tried and tested methods to accommodate the new technology. Either they are reluctant to learn new things or they are scared to try the technology because they feel they may be inadequate at it. Children are remarkably sharp when it comes to learning how to use technology, so many teachers feel their authority slipping away from them when they are not used to the technology but the children are.

The only ways that technology can be efficiently used in a classroom are when the teachers are given enough training, when the technology is used effectively to enhance learning specific to a subject and improve general education skills, and when it is easily upgradable without the investment of too much time or money.

This guest-article was written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of best online engineering degree at her blog - The Engineering A Better World Blog. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com.

2009-07-10T11:53:00.000+01:00

The Next Great Disruptive Technology?

We are now just over half way through the Connect School Project and in the process of procuring the hardware for Yr 4. This time round it will be 10" Netbooks running Edubuntu Linux. In yr 1 it was 15" Laptops running Windows - would anyone like to do quick figures on the price difference?

St Aidan's has been named as one of the 78 post-primary Schools to be included in a new broadband for Schools program that will see our pipe grow from 4Mbps to 100 Mbps in the coming year! The significance of this cannot be underestimated - our Teachers have been getting to grips with creating and uploading multi-media content to the Schools Virtual Learning Environment, the new pipe will mean access to this content in-class will be seamless.

Google announced this week that they're working on an open-source operating system that will initially be available for Netbooks by mid 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8139711.stm It will integrate with their browser, Chrome, which is increasingly becoming the platform of choice for developing web applications.

And there is now a test version of Moodle available that incorporates single-sign-on for Moodle and Google Apps. Since we use both here in St Aidan's this is good news for our administrators - no more need to create 2 spreadsheets of usernames/passwords for each system.

Things have changed so dramatically in the past few years in the world of ICT in Education it is difficult to see where we'll end up. In yr 1 we rolled out 15" Laptops, will be be rolling out phone/netbook hybrids in yr 5? At one point in this project we were seriously considering linux thin-clients but these looked like they'd only really prove useful in dedicated classrooms on wired connections. It just didn't seem like a throw-switch solution.

It seems that progress in this sphere will continue to a large extent to be driven by "disruptive" technologies such as the iphone or the netbook. What will the next great disruptive technology look like? Why did the Netbook, which looks like such a market staple now, take so long to appear? I suggest that the development of the Netbook was not really in the interest of the industry, it said Moores law has gone far enough and I dont need massive storage since storage can now be online.

Cobble a few of the above ideas together and what do you get? Ideally Students needs seriously inexpensive devices to access the internet. With gigabit wireless, 100 Mbps broadband and online applications how much processing power need reside in the local device? Wouldn't a shell with screen, keyboard, graphics card and network card accomplish most of what's required in the modern school? As Sun said a long time ago - "The Network is the Computer". But what manufacturer would dream of selling such low-end access devices? Granted these devices would be practically useless without an internet connection (unless of course you included a firmware-installed skinny linux) , but then again the device I'm typing this on, a Dell XPS M1710 would never be turned on either were it not connected to the internet.

2009-05-11T16:43:00.000+01:00

Managing School Computers

There are now over 350 Laptops in use in the Connect School. Maintenance was always going to become an issue so we have a policy of "rebuild & return"
We use Google Apps as well as Moodle so documents should already be stored online - this allows us to rebuild without fear of loosing data.
Each time a new consignment of Laptops is rolled out a master disc is created by the suppliers which we use for rebuilding. This solution can only work for so long because of Windows Updates, new software requirements, antivirus updates etc.

What's really needed is an Operating System Build Server. This Computer would store Operating System images for each hardware iteration in use. Then systems which fail can be rebuilt from these images. But the problem of adding updates and new software remains.

We've made some progress lately in resolving this. Using an Open Source program called Clonezilla, a base system was copied to a 16 Gigabyte USB and then used to rebuild another system which was blue-screening - it failed to boot and stalled at the notorious BSOD or Blue Screen Of Death.

Clonezilla can also be used to "massively clone", that is to build 50 to 100 systems simultaneously over a network. Now that we have the Clonezilla Live working - one-to-one system cloning - we will next be looking at Clonezilla Server to build multiple cloned systems at once.

Clonezilla Live for one-to-one cloning works like this:

You will need: 1 up-to-date system, 1 damaged system, 2 usb keys.

To copy a "good" system:

You create a Clonezilla Live Bootable USB Drive.
You enable the Base System (Good) to boot off USB in the bios by hitting the relevant Function Key , usually F10 or F12, during startup.
Boot Base System from USB and follow onscreen instructions.
Insert another high capacity USB Drive (I used a 16 Gb USB stick)
Good system will be copied onto High Capacity USB and checked.
Power down system and remove USBs

To rebuild a "bad" system:

You enable the Damaged System (bad) to boot off USB in the bios by hitting the relevant Function Key , usually F10 or F12, during startup.
Boot Damaged System from USB and follow onscreen instructions.
Insert high capacity USB Drive containing good build when required.
Good system will be copied onto Bad System hard drive and checked
Power down system and remove USBs
Boot "bad" system and hey presto, system is restored!!

The procedure above took a total of 20 minutes, 15 to copy the good system and 5 to rebuild the bad system. It used to take 2 and a half hours to rebuild laptops and someone had to be present to ok the various options presented. Clonezilla is an excellent tool for unattended cloning.

Over the next few days one iteration of each Laptop Hardware type will be completely updated and an image created and stored in the manner described above. Then we plan to deploy a Clonezilla Server and test build multiple Laptops over a network.

I'll post on progress as it happens. In the meantime I highly recommend Clonezilla for managing Computers especially in a School Environment where resources are tight.

2009-04-23T16:22:00.000+01:00

Connect School Project launches eBooks Pilot in Partnership with Gill & Macmillan Educational Publishers, South Dublin County Council, South Dublin County Library, and St Aidan's Community School, Brookfield, Tallaght.

The eBooks Pilot will see a class of 2nd year Students having their History and Geography Books downloaded in digital format onto their Laptops. No further need to carry print versions of their textbooks!!

The eBooks will integrate with Gill & Macmillan's innovative eTest.ie testing and revision website. It will also be integrated with St Aidan's own Virtual Learning

Friday 24th April 2009 marks another very significant date in the development of the Connect School Project. The Launch of the eBooks Pilot Project took place in the Big Picture (South Dublin County Council's Interactive Exhibition Centre, opposite the last stop of the Luas in Tallaght) and was followed with a demonstration of the County Library's Digital Download Service in County Library.

It is hoped that this innovative initiative will lead to more books becoming available electronically for the Students and Teachers of St Aidan's!!!

Over 2,000 students to participate in SciFest 2009

2009-03-10T16:11:00.000Z

The organisers of SciFest have said they expect over 2,000 students expected to enter this year's SciFest event.
SciFest is a one-day festival of science which is held in Institutes of Technology all over the country as a regional equivalent of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, with local second level students demonstrating their projects and participating in a competition.
SciFest has been created to cater for the excess demand and provides an additional forum for students who wish to exhibit their work and experience the excitement of sharing their findings with other like-minded students. Read More

Courtesy: RTE

St Aidan's Website, Moodle and Google Apps.

2009-02-09T15:02:00.000Z

The School Website here at St Aidan's has been redeveloped. One of our Teachers redeveloped the site using iWeb on a Mac Powerbook. The site now looks cleaner and is easier to navigate.

We have also given St. Aidan's Moodle a bit of a facelift, replacing the old theme we'd been using with one that ties in better with the look and feel of our Website. Our Moodle front-end shares some of the Website's features such as the Google Map identifying the location of the school and the Google Calendar.

Prominent links have been placed on Moodle to allow Students and Teachers to easily access the School Website and the School's gmail.
We hope all our users find the new Website and Moodle theme user-friendly. We see this as a first step in more fully integrating Moodle, the School Website and the School's Google Apps.

New business game for students launched

2009-01-07T13:31:00.000Z

A new online game supported by Microsoft and the County and City Enterprise Boards, aimed at teaching students business skills, has been launched. The Small Business Game, which involves students running a virtual sports shop, teaches key skills such as marketing, finance and stock management.
The Business Game gives students the opportunity to develop enterprise skills in a virtual world.
It will also be closely linked to the Junior Cert curriculum. This means that teachers can utilise the game to give students the opportunity to have their students examine business concepts in a more realistic way.
To play the game, schools needs to register at www.businessgame.ie. Read More

Courtesy: RTE

Schoolbots challenge students to improve IT skills

2008-11-27T16:41:00.000Z

Student participation in computer games programming can help boost interest in mathematics and should be used to help reinvigorate the subject at second level, an information communication technology programme specialist has stated.
Announcing a major computer games competition, Schoolbots, for transition year students, Dr Liam Noonan from Tipperary Institute's ICT department explained how computer game programming can illustrate the implementation of key mathematical concepts in a host of real-life applications. Taking theory from the text book and translating it into a tangible project not only makes the subject more interesting, it is also proven to improve results in the subject.
Sponsored by IT giants Google and Lenovo, the Tipperary Institute competition, Schoolbots - the only one of its kind in Ireland - takes place on 13 January next and aims to encourage students to develop new IT skills while improving their understanding of important maths principles. Read More

Courtesy: RTE

Social Inclusion Competition for 2nd Level Schools

2008-10-20T15:57:00.000+01:00

This competition is open to all students in Leaving Certificate Applied, Transition Year and 3rd Year Civic, Social and Political Education who are attending schools in the South Dublin County Council administrative area. For further information Click Here

Courtesy: SDCC

RTÉ Special Series

2008-07-30T14:24:00.000+01:00

RTÉ.ie, in association with the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund, present a special series about technology in the developing world.
We go to India, Rwanda and Kenya where three programmes, including the Irish charity Camara, are using three very different approaches to achieve the same goal: educating the world's youngest citizens.Read More

Courtesy:RTE

Ubuntu Ireland goes for open source success

2008-07-22T09:43:00.000+01:00

Microsoft Windows remains the standard operating system (OS) for most personal computers throughout the world but advocates for the open source Linux-based OS Ubuntu are pushing its benefits for personal, educational and organisational uses, not least because it is free and community developed. Read More

Courtesy: Silicon Republic

O2 Ireland launches mobile safety website

2008-02-12T14:23:00.000Z

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single10254

Community Links

2007-12-13T10:53:00.001Z

Moodle Training Day

2007-10-24T18:35:00.000+01:00

Our first In-Service of the 07/08 Academic Year takes place here in St. Aidan's on Thursday 25th of October in conjunction with project partners the Dublin West Education Centre. We're continuing with our Peer-to-Peer learning approach and the Core Group are conducting ten Workshops throughout the day covering areas such as a Moodle Crash Course for new staff, Moodle Revision, PC Maintenance, Hot Potatoes Quizzes, Smartboards and School Administration.
We arrived at a concensus on what Training to deliver by starting a Forum on Moodle and asking for the Teachers' input on the Training they require. The School Administration Workshop promises to be very interesting as we will be working with the School's Principal, Deputy Principal and Admin staff to examine how we can best use the Virtual Learning Environment to enhance and streamline the admin function of the School. It is often the most obvious and simple things that can have a big impact, for example loading up all Student photos onto the user profiles in Moodle. This makes it easy for everyone to identify new students at this time of year.
We just got word today from the National Centre for Technology in Education that our broadband connection has just been upgraded to 4Mbps, as I type up this blog I can see the difference already, we are very grateful to the NCTE for this. This upgrade is timely and should make a marked difference when all Staff are busy developing and uploading their Curriculum Content onto Moodle.

Peer to Peer Learning ,.......and Logistics

2007-10-03T16:42:00.000+01:00

We had our first Core Group Meeting of the year last week and tackled such issues as the Review Report of Yr 1, Training Program, Moodle Administration, Developing an Action Plan and recruiting 2 new members.
We decided to open a Forum on Moodle to find out what Training our Teachers would like. The response has been decent and a pattern is beginning to emerge. Armed with this information we will develop a Training Program over the next few days.

Two new Teachers have been recruited to the Core Group bringing the members to 10. With 58 Teachers in the School this leaves us with 2 Trainers to every 10 Teachers on Training Day. We intend to build on the success of the Peer Learning Approach of last year.

The Roll-Out Logistics Team had their inaugural meeting last week too. This Team numbers 8 and will oversee the distribution and collection of Laptops from now on. They took the Roll-Out Procedure document as their starting point and refined it to ensure the smooth running of the Roll-Out. The system will be further tweaked as we go along. It was recognised that the most important aspect, to begin with, is for all Teachers to have a full understanding of the Roll-Out and a place to discuss how it could be improved. A course has been set up on Moodle for this purpose. The Procedure will be posted there, emailed to all staff and a Forum set up for discussion on how the Roll-Out can be improved.

Logistics on the ground

2007-09-25T17:31:00.000+01:00

This week sees two important meetings take place among the Team in the School. Tomorrow the Roll-Out Logistics Meeting takes place and we will decide at this meeting how exactly the Roll-Out, i.e. the ongoing distribution, recharging and collection of Laptops will take place in the School. On Thursday the Core Group meet for the first time this academic year. At this meeting we will be organising the Training Programme and Schedule for the year, discussing Moodle administration and developing an Action Plan for the year.

We expect to take delivery of the sample Laptops this week also. Once delivered we will configure & load software; then do our best to crash the Laptop before returning to the vendor for imaging of the batch.

As soon as they're delivered I'll post a few images and do a run-down of specs and software suite, so check back soon!!

Connect School Review Report 06/07

2007-09-13T13:29:00.000+01:00

The Connect School Review Report 06/07 was signed off by all Partners in the project in the past week. The Report has been circulated and includes an Outline Implementation Plan for the 07/08 School Year. A number of issues were identified as possible blockages to the success of the project and these are being progressed by the various partners before we roll out to this years incoming first years. Our broadband connectivity needs to be upgraded to cater for the numbers of simultaneous connections anticipated once full roll-out is achieved. And there are a few Classrooms without data points that need to be networked. Further electrical points in the recharging facility are also required and the logistics of the roll-out need to be ironed out. We expect to solve these issues in the coming days.
The Report is a comprehensive document that serves to inform the process of integrating ICT into Education.

Accessing the VLE from anywhere.....

2007-09-12T18:12:00.000+01:00

There are 4 main cornerstones to the true integration of ICT in Education. Access to information/the internet is one. To this end the St. Aidan's has a broadband connection provided by the National Centre for Technology in Education and a wireless network throughout the school. A means of manipulating that information is another; all teachers and 1st yr students have laptops. Thirdly, a shared area for the hosting of lessons, collaboration and discussions is required ; we have developed a Virtual Learning Environment using Moodle. And lastly a way to present in class; data projectors and smartboards fulfil this function.

But what about outside of the School? In order to fully integrate ICT into learning the students laptops should be used at home as well as at school. But not all of our Students have an internet connection at home. There are other ways to connect to the internet, perhaps it's time to look at GSM.......http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2007/press07_38.shtml

Back to School...

2007-09-11T16:39:00.000+01:00

We're well and truly back to school now. And as we embark on year 2 of the St. Aidan's Connect School Project the emphasis turns to creating Interactive Curriculum content for uploading onto our Virtual Learning Environment. I've been looking at a few applications for this. Hot Potatoes is used for creating Crosswords, Quizzes, Cloze Tests, and Matching Tests etc. It is very well integrated with Moodle which our Virtual Learning Environment runs on, so that grades achieved in the various tests can be saved. It's available from http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ and is free for use in Education. I've also been using Adobe Captivate 3 which is used for Screencasting, Podcasting and creating quizzes and other interactive material. It's available as a 30 day trial from https://www.adobe.com/ and is both user-friendly and highly configurable.

What is the Connect School?

2007-09-04T17:48:00.000+01:00

St. Aidan's Connect School is one of a number of exciting initiatives by South Dublin County Council under the Connect banner.

Connect envisions a future where everyone in South Dublin County uses the Internet as an everyday tool to improve their quality of life, to develop opportunities for life long learning, leisure, personal and social development

For more on Connect see http://connect.southdublin.ie/connect/

Connect St. Aidan’s Community School is developing student centered technology through an innovative learning culture in order to improve school attendance, participation in class and educational outcomes for the students. To achieve this vision the project is working to three main goals:

Goal 1 To develop Student Centred Technology that supports an innovative learning culture in the school
Goal 2 To deliver a high standard and range of technologies available to the school that enables the development of a Virtual Learning Environment for the Students and Teachers
Goal 3 To develop awareness and ownership of the project within the local community, the Education Sector and other stakeholders, creating leverage of and disseminating project achievements

The Connect St Aidan's Moodle Virtual Learning Environment is located at http://connect.learnonline.ie/

The initiative involves School Management, Teachers, Students (1st Years and ACE 6th Year Students of 2006/07 School Year), their Parents and the local community. The School has committed to develop Student Centred Technology through the leadership of the Management and development of the Teachers. The focus within the school is on developing an interactive learning culture across the whole curriculum and on developing the active participation of the Students, Parents and local community.
The partners in making this project happen are the Department of Education & Science (D/ES), the Dublin West Education Centre (DWEC), the Institute of Technology, Tallaght (ITT), the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE), and South Dublin County Council (SDCC).

The Home of Moodle

2007-09-04T16:56:00.002+01:00

Check this out: http://www.moodle.org/
Moodle is Open Source Course Managment Software and is used by over 450,000 students worldwide. We use Moodle in St. Aidan's for our Virtual Learning Environment.

Welcome to the Connect School Blog

2007-09-04T16:56:00.001+01:00

This Blog is intended for those with an interest in ICT in Education. Throughout the School Year it will give a sense of what it takes to achieve the true integration of ICT in Education. Remember folks, we're not teaching computers here, we're teaching Core Curriculum Subjects with the help of Information and Communications Technology