The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

It was a case of planes, trains and automobiles last week as I made my way to Plymouth for the Pelecon conference.  I’ve followed the conference via twitter over the past few years, and decided that this was the year I would make the trip to Plymouth, to see for myself what everyone seemed to enjoy so much.  I was lucky to have Catherine Cronin, Mary Loftus and Helen Crump as travelling companions for the trip.  If you ever get a chance to take a trip with these ladies grab it – you’ll have a ball  The intangible that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts at Pelecon, is the friendliness of the attendees.   There’s a real sense of community about the event and what a warm and welcoming community to be a part of

Unfortunately I missed the Wednesday sessions, which was a pity, as from from what I heard, they were a great start to the event.  The student session and Steve Bunce’s knitworking among others seem to have been highlights.

I arrived at 9 on Wednesday evening and one of the first people I met was Grainne Conole. We’ve connected on Twitter and Flickr but had never met in person which was hard to believe as we immediately fell into an easy chat.  This seemed to be the case for many at the event.  Proof again of the power of social media to connect people in so many powerful ways.

First up on Thursday morning were Grainne Conole and Doug Belshaw. Grainne took us on a tour of the digital landscape, pedagogical approaches, digital identity and learning design before talking about the challenges ahead.  She introduced the thread of digital literacies which was picked up by many over the couple of days.

Doug made animated gif’s a feature in his presentation about Mozilla Open Badges.  Risky strategy with so much going on on screen but he pulled it off perfectly!  He almost lost me on the Hypno Cat slide but moved on just in time I was very interested in Open Badges as I think they would work very well both for CoderDojo and for the short courses proposed for the Junior Cert reform here in Ireland.  After hearing Doug speak about them I’m even more convinced!

Next for me came a session on Digital Literacies.  Nadja Guggi kicked off the session telling us about the importance of students on work placement developing their digital identity.  Catherine Cronin was up next reflecting on the blurring of the lines between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’, sharing her experiences of working with students as they enact their digital identities and discussing practices and resources.  Clare Spiret concluded the session by sharing the challenges faced in the glocal (global local) online learning environments.

In the first of the afternoon sessions I chose to hear about VLE’s from Matt Lingard, tablets and PLE’s from Brian Whalley and Engaging Legal Minds from Emily Allbon.  Matt shared the University of London project to enhance the students and staff experience of VLS use through usability testing.  As a Moodle user it was interesting to see that some relatively simple changes could significantly improve the user experience.

Brian’s session provoked a lot of discussion on the backchannel with his contention that tablets would replace laptops and netbooks.  As a user of both I would be of the view that there is a place for both but I wouldn’t see them replacing each other.  The session concluded with Emily sharing the lawbore website, a rich and varied resource for law students.

Next up was a session on Problem based learning with Palitha Edrisigha and Arunangsu Chatterjee and Programming and trainee teachers with Miles Berry.  Miles Berry’s session was thought provoking as we don’t have computer Science as a subject in Primary in Ireland and we are just introducing it at Secondary School.  The aspirations on the learning outcomes seem quite challenging in the UK system.  One example given was that 11 year olds would understand how Google Search works!

The closing session on Wednesday was from Steve Warburton . He spoke about the jobs of the future, big data and learning analytics.  He also picked up the Digital Literacies thread which was woven throughout the day.  His look to the future was a good reminder of the changing nature of education.

The conference dinner was held at the National Marine Aquarium but there was still lots to learn from an educational point of view.  Both of our guides were brilliant but I think it’s fair to say that Leona stole the show.  Her enthusiasm and passion for her job were inspirational.  It’s lovely to see that joy shine through.

Friday morning’s first session for me was all about the Steve’s – Bunce, Wheeler and Margetts.  Steve Bunce spoke about the importance of books electronic and otherwise.  We also made our own books from a sheet of paper but it didn’t work out so well for Zak Mensah and I!! Steve Wheeler and Steve Margetts again brought up the issue of tablets.   Next up was a session on Open Badges with Doug Belshaw.  This was a very hands on session and I really enjoyed it.  We broke into groups and worked on developing various badges based on our own interests.  I chose the conference badge group.  It was interesting to hear people’s views on badges for conference attendance etc.  Teasing out the issues gave a real insight into what is involved in designing badges.  As with everything what you get out is very much influenced by what you put in.

The final session gave us keynotes from Joyce Seitzinger and Donald Taylor and again they didn’t disappoint.  It was very much a case of ending on a high with your brain fizzing with ideas.

Joyce contended that it’s about filter failure and not information overlaod

and urged us to develop our own filters

Donald then delivered the closing keynote by looking to the future and the changing nature of education.  He began by quoting Yeats

and then asked

Fitting end to a great event, an event where I got to chat with people who challenged my ideas on various topics, who backed up my thoughts on other topics and who were generally very good fun to be around.

Some of the many people I met and chatted with at #pelc13

Thank you Joyce Seitzinger for this lovely reminder of a great couple of days

They came …they kicked ass

… and boy did they kick ass!! The Coder Dojo Conference 2013 took place in Drogheda and Slane Castle last weekend and what a whirlwind it was. Friday night in the Brú Bistro in Drogheda was a great kickstarter for the conference.  People shared their experiences and highlights from Coderdojos across the world with MC for the night Stephen Howell keeping it all moving smoothly.  It was great to get a chance to meet people and start the sharing of ideas in such a relaxed environment.

Saturday morning saw the conference move to Slane Castle and I have to say, from the minute I drove into the castle I was blown away! 

Slane Castle

I think I spent most of the day looking up

Above my head!

The juxtaposition of old and new was commented on by many on the day

They say the devil is in the detail and at DojoCon this was so true.  I loved the details like the polystyrene hashtags …

the lanyards which incorporated the conference programme …

and so much more.   Hats off to all in CoderDojo Drogheda and anyone else who was involved in putting together such a great event

Úna Fox was an inspired choice as MC for the day, her relaxed and witty style was perfect.  Rumour has it she has her eye on the Late Late so watch this space!

The conference kicked off with James Whelton, CoderDojo co-founder, followed by entrepreneur, Jerry Kennelly from tweak.com.  It was great to hear James speak about how CoderDojo has developed and the plans for the future.  Jerry gave a thought provoking presentation reminding us of the many strengths us Irish possess, something we seem to have forgotten along the way!

Before lunch Bill Liao, CoderDojo co-founder, was interviewed by Úna.  During the interview Bill spoke about social inclusion and put forward the idea of a handshake rather than a hand out or a hand up.  With a handshake all parties in the transaction benefit which is so much more powerful.

Running throughout the day there were sessions in the Education, Technology and Running a Dojo streams.  In the first session I went to the ‘Girls Initiative’ session with Rebecca Garcia and Karen O’Connell. It’s good to hear about these initiatives to connect with teenage girls, and encourage them into the STEM areas.  Slides on the session can be found here.  In the second session I went to the ‘Just Code’ panel with Catherine Cronin, Jake Enget and Bernard Kirk.

Next up was Mags Amond’s ‘Putting the children first’ session and as always Mags reminded us of the simple things like clarity of message and that there is much to learn in failing.

In the next session I attended David Cuartielles’ session on ‘Hacking Secondary School. The Hardware Way’.  David is a co-founder of the Arduino platform.  We have some Arduino kits in Limerick and my lot are really enjoying working with them so I was interested to hear some more and David didn’t disappoint.  My son would have been delighted with this

… so maybe it’s best he wasn’t there

I sat on a panel with John Looney and Carina Girvan on ‘Re-Inventing Education’ in the final breakout session of the day.  It was an interesting session and one which has really got me thinking so watch this space for a blog post on some of my thoughts.

I really enjoyed the sessions I went to and from what I heard the other sessions were equally enjoyable.

And so we come to the closing keynote and for this I’ll finish as I started.  Kimberley Bryant delivered the closing keynote.  She came … she kicked ass … and boy did she kick ass!!  It’s not easy to take the floor at 6pm after a long and hectic day.  It’s not easy to take the floor after Lord Henry Mountcharles has regaled your audience with tales of his ancestors. It’s not easy to take the floor after Julie Feeney sang ‘Impossibly Beautiful’ in honour of Úna Fox’s birthday.  But that’s exactly what Kimberley did and in her understated, powerful way she blew us all away!  I connected with Kimberley as she spoke about her motivation to  start Black Girls code, she’s a mother who wanted to give her daughter an opportunity to connect with technology in a meaningful way.

My children were the catalyst for my initial interaction with CoderDojo.  We heard Kimberly talk about the ethos of Black Girls Code

This mirrors so much of what is good about CoderDojo.  I’ll leave you with Kimberley’s closing thoughts and hope they provide as much food for thought for you as they did for me.

Breaking Traditions

The Breaking Traditions Online conference took place on Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd March.  It was an online conference sponsored by Albemarle County Public Schools and the William Glasser Institute – US.  This is the third year of the Breaking Traditions conference.  The aims of the conference are to

1. help create community between the Glasser Quality Schools;
2. share the ideas of Glasser Quality Schools with progressive educators around the globe; and
3. learn from the best practices of educators everywhere.
   

For more background on the conference check out ‘The Story of the Conference’ by the Conference Co-Ordinator Charlotte Wellen.

I love the idea of the conference as it allows people to connect as they can from the comfort of their own homes.  Through Pam Moran I heard of the conference last year and joined some of the sessions.  Pam asked me if I would submit a proposal this year so I agreed and Saturday 23rd March saw me presenting on ‘What can we learn from CoderDojo?’.

The conference kicked off on Friday 22nd March with a keynote presentation from Pam Moran.  What I loved about the keynote presentation was that Pam convened a panel of teachers and students to address the theme of “Emerging Democracy of Voice for Educators and Young People​”.   The ease with which Pam facilitates theses sessions was very evident at the ICT in Education Conference in Thurles last year, and it was lovely to feel that sense of warmth and support come through so clearly at the Breaking Traditions conference this year.   Unfortunately I couldn’t  participate in any of the sessions on the Saturday because of the CoderDojo Divas session in Limerick.  There were many I would have loved to participate in including

• A Creativity Crisis?
  How Do We Make Space
  for the Hackers and the Makers? by Mary Loftus
• Teen Tech Girls Inspiring the Next Generation of Women in Tech by Kim Wilkens
• Building on Solid Foundations of the Past in Meeting the Needs of Young People in the Future by Caitriona Cullen
• Break the Walls Down by Michael Thornton

These are just some of the many sessions that caught my eye on the rich conference programme.

I decided to try out using Prezi Online for my session as I was concerned that playing the interviews remotely would not work well.  It went really well and is definitely worth looking into if you are presenting remotely.  For the content I went with what Eugene McDonough and I used at the ESAI Conference.    Letting the children and one of the Mum’s from the Dojo tell their story seemed like the best way to go.  Hearing the children talk about

• learning from each other or by figuring it out for themselves;
• not being forced to learn;
• animating their favourite books and
• learning by working through complicated things

was so much more powerful than anything I could possibly say.

There were a couple of points in the Mum’s interview that really struck a chord with me and others on the night including the beauty of children using their creativity and learning to make things; 

• how children work with others regardless of age; the sense of community within Coderdojo and the fact that it’s valued that the child knows something which may not always be the case in school.

My Prezi from the session can be found here and a Storify of the session created by Catherine Cronin can be found here.

ESAI conference

About 2 months ago Aisling Leavy, a mentor at CoderDojo Limerick, asked me if I’d be interested in submitting a proposal for a symposium at the Educational Studies Association of Ireland Conference with her and some others.   The theme of the symposium was “Teaching children to code”.  Aisling lectures in Mary Immaculate College, a college which offers a wide range of programmes in Education and the Liberal Arts.  She has been involved in a Project where some of her pre service teachers were teaching Scratch to children in a number of local primary schools.  Aisling’s plan was that she would present with her colleague Rory McGann, who was also involved in the project,  Clare McInerney from Lero, the Irish software engineering research centre, would present on their initiatives to get children coding and Eugene McDonough and I would present on our experiences as mentors in the Limerick CoderDojo.  Before I gave myself a chance to think about it I decided to agree.

Eugene and I chatted about how we might structure our presentation and we decided that letting the children tell their owm story was the best way forward so that’s what we did.  We did some interviews with the ninja’s and with one of the mum’s and built our presentation around that.  I really enjoyed presenting with Aisling, Rory, Clare and Eugene.  It was heartening to see so many crossovers in our presentations, which was unplanned, but suggests the beginnings of a synchronicity around coding in Irish education.  We all told of the joy that children find in coding.  My favourite quote from the session was from Rory and Aisling’s presentation where one of the children in their project said something like “the teacher could have been asleep at the top of the class and we wouldn’t have noticed”.

I had never presented in a symposium before but I really liked it.  A symposium is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject”.  As a presenter I liked the fact that there was safety in numbers  As a result of this positive experience I’m thinking of convening some symposia at the ICT in Education conference this year.  I think it might encourage some teachers who might be hesitant to share what they do in their classrooms.

As well as our session, I also attended a number of other sessions at the conference.  I really enjoyed the format.  The sessions were generally one and a half hours in duration with a number of themed parallel sessions in each.  Within each session there were 3 or 4 presentations.  The two sessions that I attended on Friday were both very thought provoking.  The ‘Initial Teacher Education’ session examined topics such as the ‘Entry requirements for Initial Teacher Education’ and the challenges for Initial Teacher Education as we adjust to Project Maths.  As a Maths educator I was particularly interested in the session on Project Maths.  Hearing Miriam Liston and Olivia Fitzmaurice, talking about the difficulties that their pre service teachers had, with explaining the foundation knowledge that they would ultimately be teaching, outlined the significant chasm that exists between understanding advanced Maths concepts and being able to teach Maths.  The University of Limerick have introduced a ‘Mathematical thinking’ module which allows their pre service student teachers to focus on key concepts such as logs and indices, fractions, integers, equations and inequalities, formulae, trigonometry and statistics.  One of the students comments “It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just that we’ve never been asked to think before” is very telling in my opinion.  You can read my thoughts on this tension between mathematical ability and the ability to teach Maths in my previous post on this topic.

I also attended the ‘Science and Mathematics Education’ session.  There was a couple of common threads running through many of the presentations – the ideas of communities of practice and inquiry based learning.  These threads were woven through Joanne, Aoibhinn and Maeve’s presentations. With the focus changing at second level to a more application and real world context for subjects like Maths and Science there will be an increased reliance on teachers both within one’s own school and also in the broader educational community.

I also found Úna’s presentation on increasing the percentage of students achieving at the highest levels of Maths very interesting.  Her PhD research involves looking at the correlation between standard test results at Primary School and the progress of those students in their future studies in Maths as they continued through secondary school.  She has found a consistency between the achievement of students at Junior Cert with reference to their Primary school standard test results but this does not carry through to Leaving Cert.  I’m looking forward to hearing more from the ongoing research from those who presented at theses sessions.

ICT in Education Conference 2013

As many of you know, the 9th ICT in Education conference will take place in Thurles on Saturday May 11th this year.  As in previous years, the conference will be preceded by a CESI Meet on the previous night, Friday 10th May.  This conference is for educators across all levels to meet and share.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Student Voices” and the keynote speakers will be Grainne Conole and Catherine Cronin. We’re very excited about the theme for this year’s conference, as too often, the student voice is lost in the melee, as the many stakeholders in our education system clamour to have their voices heard. Having said that, it’s heartening to see teachers sharing what works in their classrooms, on social media and elsewhere, as they strive to provide their students with a platform from which their voice can be heard.

On the #edchatie hashtag every week there are many examples of teachers providing such a platform through

• blogging
• google hangouts with other classes in Ireland and further afield
• social media in classrooms
• gamification of education
• art projects
• audio projects

These are just some of the examples I’ve seen but there are so many more.  If you’re a teacher who is willing to share what you’re doing in your classroom please consider submitting a proposal to present at the conference.  More details on the conference and the call for proposals can be found at www.lit.ie/ictedu.

Why Maths Matters

On Friday 8th of March I attended the ‘Why Maths Matters‘ conference in University of Limerick.  The day was about ‘taking stock, examining practice and developing policy’. At the start of the conference Sean Sherlock TD reminded us of the Thomas Davis quote “educate that you may be free”.  There were a few threads which were begun by Sean and picked up by many speakers throughout the day.  My take away messages from the conference were the importance of having a population who recognise the importance of Maths in the world around them and the need for a coordinated conversation about Maths.

Professor Bill Barton from Auckland University spoke at length about the ‘Maths problem’.  The main thrust of his presentation was that there is no easy fix to the problem but that an emphasis on problem solving, abstraction, generalisation and logical reasoning is a step in the right direction.  He also spoke about the importance of students confidence around Maths and suggested that at certain times this might be more important than Maths competence.  Bill emphasised how it is ‘no longer acceptable for people to say I can’t do Maths’ and the  importance of ‘a population who understands the power and recognises the opportunities provided by mathematical analysis’.  As a mathematician and educator I also see these two areas as of critical importance.  The social acceptability that people are ‘not good’ at Maths, and the disconnection that people feel from the Maths they learn and the Maths they use in the world around them, prompted me to write a blog post over a year ago, one of my most popular posts and the post that prompted the most discussion.

During the day we heard from many speakers about the importance of starting early to engage students in Mathematical thinking, the gender divide in Irish education, the importance of empowering teachers,  recent developments in Maths Education in Ireland and the Mallow community initiative to research and pilot initiatives and developments in the teaching of mathematics and science.

Bill Lynch from the NCCA spoke about the rollout of the new Project Maths sylabus.  The early indications are good notwithstanding some issues that need to be ironed out.  Evidence from the pilot schools suggests an increase in student engagement with Maths and a changing role for the teacher in the classroom.  Challenges include the time needed to cover the syllabus and difficulties around solving unfamiliar problems.  There has been a lot of discussion around the introduction of Project Maths over the past few years.  As with any significant change like this there will be issues but I personally think that it is a step in the right direction.  I know that’s easy for me to say because I’m not dealing directly with the impact of the curriculum but I think that with some adjustment Project Maths can deliver what was intended.

The conference concluded with a very entertaining and engaging presentation by Elizabeth Oldham from Trinity followed by a panel discussion.  Elizabeth took us through curricula changes over the past 50 years both in Ireland and elsewhere.  She distinguished between the intended, implemented and attained curricula and urged caution when comparing the intentions of one curriculum with the implementation of a previous one.  Again the issue of lack of sufficient time to cover the syllabus came up in relation to Project Maths.  On a related topic Elizabeth drew our attention to the fact that as a nation our recommended minimum time for Maths in schools is less than most other European countries.  As with all things we must live with the consequences of our actions in this regard.

Both Bill Barton and Elizabeth Oldham spoke about cross national studies like PISA and TIMSS.  I’ll leave you with Elizabeth’s views ‘these studies not only compare the incomparable, they rationalise the irrational!’.

Moving out of your comfort zone

I started this blog by outlining the things I wanted to change as I started the new 2011/2012 academic year.  In that post I resolved to do things differently and I have begun that process. I may not have followed those resolutions to the letter but I believe I have followed them in essence.   I’m re-committing to doing things differently as I start 2013. Doing things differently often involves moving out of your comfort zone.  This is something I’ve been experiencing to varying degrees over the past few years, as I’ve joined Twitter and started this blog and begun to share my thoughts, both professional and personal.  I’ve gotten more comfortable with seeing my thoughts in black and white but I’ve always been uncomfortable with using audio to share what I have to say.  I’m not used to hearing my voice in recordings, I sound very different to what I think I sound like but I suppose everyone feels like that.  I see my children recording themselves and their friends using a plethora of technologies that make it so easy and I envy how comfortable they are with it.

Over the month I’ve been taking some tentative steps out of my audio comfort zone and I have to say I’ve enjoyed it.  Bernie Goldbach has been nudging me down the audio route for the past few years but I’ve resisted until recently.  Bernie has begun an educasting Audioboo channel.  He asked me to join himself and Fred Boss in a chat on Wednesday 5th December.  The plan was to discuss the previous Monday’s #edchatie topic ‘Teaching creatively’ among other things.  Without thinking too much about it I decided to just get on with it and get involved.  I have to say I really enjoyed chatting with Fred and Bernie and this led to further chats with Bernie, Eugene O’Loughlin and Mike Kiely over the following weeks to discuss ‘Student voices’, the theme for the ICT in Education conference in May.  I’m still not really comfortable listening back to the conversations but I’m getting there   Have a listen to our conversations in episodes 16, 18, 19 and 20 on the Audioboo channel.

My advice this New Year is to take a step out of your comfort zone.  You never know you might even enjoy it

Coder Dojo Conference

Saturday 13th October saw the first Coder Dojo Conference organised by Eugene from the Limerick Dojo.  This was an opportunity for mentors across Ireland and beyond to get together to share what people are doing across the multitude of Coder Dojos that have exploded across Ireland and the world over the past year.  With so much doom and gloom and recession talk about, it was a breath of fresh air to be in the same room as 150 people who voluntarily give up their free time to ensure that the next generation get an opportunity to learn how to code in a fun way.  The atmosphere at the conference was very relaxed, due in no small way to the comfy couches for the panel to relax on.  It really is amazing how something small like that can have such an impact on how an event works.

The early part of the day was taken up with various discussions about helping with the set up of new Dojos, the running of existing Dojos and looking at how we assess kids across the Dojos.   It was interesting that in the assessment discussion the overwhelming sense seemed to be that we should be careful about rushing headlong into assessing because of the negative connotations around assessment.

What followed after lunch was for me what Coder Dojo is all about – the children and teenagers from some of the Dojos gave demonstrations of what they have been working on.  The variety of the projects and the confidence of the presenters was great to see.  I was certainly very proud of Daragh from the Limerick Dojo as he presented his Scratch project which came second in his category in the National Scratch competition earlier this year.

The day ended with Eugene being presented with his black belt so I’m not sure if we now have to bow to him at the Limerick Dojo!!

What resonated most with me on the day was that it’s OK for Dojos to be different.  It’s great for us to learn from each other but the real strength of the Coderdojo movement is the diversity that you’ll find in the 100+ CoderDojo’s that you’ll find in far flung places across the globe.

I’ll leave you with my favourite picture from the day

For more information on CoderDojo check out coderdojo.com.

Accelerating Science

“Accelerating Science” is CERN’s flagship travelling exhibition. For those curious about the origins of our universe, the nature of the particles we are all made from, and the power of fundamental science. Experience the ‘Big Bang’, investigate the building blocks of life, grapple with the mysteries of the universe, explore the world’s largest scientific experiment, and discover how fundamental science has changed the world as we know it.  This Exhibition is most suitable for secondary school and university level students but there will be something interesting for all ages.  ref: http://www.eventelephant.com/galwayscience

We decided to make the trip yesterday and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  We got there just in time for the lecture  and were then taken on a tour of a number of interconnected pods which dealt with topics such as the Big Bang, matter, the Hadron Collider and uses of science.  To say that the exhibition was a revelation is the understatement of the century for me.  I’m going to show my age here but when I was learning about science back in the 80′s we were taught that the basic building blocks  for atoms were protons, neutrons and electrons.  Things have moved on dramatically since those days and now quarks, leptons and force carriers are regarded as the building blocks but then you probably knew that and I’m the only one for whom this fact has escaped them!

Of course now that I know about up and down quarks the proton joke in the ‘A Neutron walks into a Bar’ book makes a whole lot more sense

I have to say the tour was really enjoyable – the Hadron Collider is such a fascinating subject.  Like many others I had heard about it and watched the news coverage of the Higgs Boson but if truth be told I didn’t really give it much more thought.  Having it explained both during the lecture and the tour brought it to life in a way that a news clip can’t.  Hearing about the 27km circumference of the Collider and hearing about the different detectors and how they are working on different aspects of particle physics some of which overlaps and some of which doesn’t has certainly piqued my interest in this area.

ALICE (a large ion collider experiment) explores quark-gluon plasma by looking at collisions of lead ions.   LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) studies matter and anti matter by investigating the bottom quark and its anti-particle.  ATLAS (a toroidal LHC aparatus) is the largest detector and investigates why particles have mass and what 96% of the universe is made of (only 4% of the universe consists of visible matter – very little is known about the remaining 96%).  CMS (compact muon solenoid) is the heaviest detector ever constructed and explores the same area as ATLAS but using different techniques.

I have to commend all involved in this amazing exhibition.  The quality of the exhibits and the enthusiasm of the people involved was second to none.  Having someone with a passion for a subject explain it to you brings the subject to life in a way that is hard to equal.

I’ll leave you with one or 2 final thoughts taken from the exhibition

CESI Meet SW

Last Friday evening saw me make my way to Mary Immaculate College in Limerick for a CESI Meet, an informal evening of chat and sharing of ideas between educators.  With my great sense of direction I was a banker to get lost as I tried to find where I needed to be but thankfully I made it to the right place in time (helped by directions from Conor Power )

At the CESI Meet all those who agreed to present had their names entered in a fruit machine so it’s completely random when you get to present.  I had agreed to present at the Meet – I came across a great app in the last few weeks called Pixengo which I’ve previously written about here  so I decided to present on this.  I’ve used the app a bit in the last few weeks and really liked the simplicity which belied the very real potential of this app in Education.  I had used the app with two first class groups during the week – with one group we used it to get children to make up their own maths stories for Maths week and with the other group we used it to get a class to recite a Halloween poem and display some of their Halloween artwork.   I had thought I’d have a chance to settle but my name was one of the first ones out of the fruit machine!  You can check out my Prezi here. What followed was two and a half hours of chat and great ideas being shared.  Presentations included RSS feeds, Weebly, Glogster, Interactive Whiteboard resources, Junior Cert Reform, Puppet Pals app, Internet safety, Textease all finished with a flourish with presentations on Raspberry Pi, Apple products/accessories, Pinterest and Learnist.  We also had a Skype call with Ira Socol in the US  and a pre recorded video from Linda Paddon in Melbourne.

For my part what I took away from CESI Meet SW

1. I need to look into RSS feeds – I probably shouldn’t admit I haven’t subscribed to lots of feeds.  It’s something I’ve skirted around for a while so I think the time has come to just get on with it!
2. I’ve found a great use for Pixengo in my own house – we’ve been struggling a bit with English and Irish spellings. On the English side we’re using the Spelling Hero app which is working well but it’s not really working for Irish spellings.  Starting tomorrow I’m getting my daughter to write our her spellings and use Pixengo to photgraph them (with a picture she’s drawn of the object where possible) and record herself both saying the word and spelling it.
3. I need to relook at Pinterest

Thank you to Hellie, John and Nigel for putting together a great evening of sharing.   If you’re an educator in Ireland and haven’t had a chance to go to a CESI Meet yet you really should try to get to one.  Even better go along and share what you’re doing in your classroom. The next CESI Meet is on in Dundalk on the 9th of November.