Dunshaughlin Community College- 21^st Century Learning Conference

On March 19^th, Dunshaughlin Community College (DCC) hosted an Educational Conference on 21^st Century Learning as part of its remit of being a Microsoft (MS) School of the Future. The MS Innovative Schools Programme is a worldwide initiative which currently has 12 global members along with the Philadelphia School of the Future. Their key partner in this conference was the County Meath VEC (Vocational Education Committee) with Peter Kierans, CEO, and Seamus Ryan, Education Officer. Innovative Schools is a Partners in Learning Programme which is led in Ireland by Dr. Kevin Marshall, MS Academic Programme Manager.

Padraig Browne, Principal, and Janice Corrigan, Deputy Principal, and the DCC staff invited a wide range of attendees. The keynote Speaker was Minister for Innovation Policy, Michael Ahern. The invitees also included almost 100 Teachers, 20 representatives of various VECs, 8 staff from the Department of Education and Science, local TD Thomas Byrne, representatives from the office of Mary Wallace TD, Minister of State Department of Agriculture and Food various Co. Meath VEC officials and the Principal of the European School in Brussels.

The conference consisted of a series of workshops giving an overview of the range and extent of 21^st Century ICT enabled projects, interventions and initiatives currently taking place in DCC. There are 20 such ICT initiatives currently taking place.

Being the STIC Manager and working in partnership with DCC, I was asked to present on One-to-One Computing along with Seamus Ryan, former Principal of DCC and Education Officer for Meath VEC. The other workshops included:

Overall, this was an exciting showcase of commitment, passion and forward thinking from everyone involved. A huge thank you to Padraig, Janice, Seamus Ryan, Stephanie Spillane and everyone else involved in the planning for delivering such an informative and exciting event.

(Photos to follow in the coming days)

School News Day

The BBC has reported that today (13^th of March) is News Day

European Innovative Teachers Forum

I'm just back from Zagreb, Croatia after attending the European Innovative Teachers Forum (ITF) and Awards. It was hosted by Darko Jureković and the Microsoft Croatia team and was a stellar event.

The three-day Innovative Teachers Forum (ITF) is an international gathering of teachers who stand out with innovative applications of information and communications technologies in the classroom. There were 187 attendees from 34 countries. Among them, teachers from 28 countries exhibited 62 projects that use innovative technologies in education. Innovative Teachers Forums take place throughout the world as part of Microsoft's global cooperation program with the educational community worldwide under the name "Partners in Learning".

Representatives of the sponsors, Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Croatia attended the European Innovative Teachers Forum. "We who serve the educational system are pleased that we can, together with you, develop access to new technologies, develop innovativeness and, in a distinctive manner, responsibly build a better educational system in the Republic of Croatia. Our desire is for Croatia to be even more competitive in the educational system area", stated Dragan Schwartz, PhD, State Secretary for computer science, technologies, joint programs and projects in the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports

I had the good fortune to host the Ireland (North and South) contingent. We had 2 Irish judges for the competition, Byron Evans from the Northern Ireland Regional Training Unit (RTU) and Dr. Deirdre Butler, from St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin.

The Irish entries in the competition were:

• Online Learning and Teaching for Educators (OLTE) from Fiona Synnott and Geraldine Taggart of RTU
• Flying High – Exploring Aviation from Kate O'Connell of Scoil Mhuire Kilvemnon assisted by Cahal O'Connell from the NCTE

Kate's entry won 1^st prize in the Community division. Kate is an NCTE tutor in Kilkenny Education Centre and a SME for Scoilnet. Her school is an Empowering Minds school and a Digital school as well as being aFIS award recipient.

The Virtual Classroom Tours for each of the projects are located in my SkyDrive site.

I've also taken the liberty of publishing the VCT entered by Clare Satchwell of the City of Lincoln Community College entitled "Learning Live". I felt this is a simple but compelling use of Messenger (chat) for revision of GCSEs. Well done ClareJ