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Projects
Update
Integrating the use of innovative
technology in education
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November 2009 * |
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Welcome |
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It has been a very busy month with a number of
courses being run and some exciting events taking place. This month
also we start on the road towards iFestival 2010 and we have a
competition for you to enter. Your feedback as always would be
welcome. |
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iFestival
2010
AGM
Virtual Learning in Secondary Schools
ICT Coordinators Meeting
Showcases
LEGO
Course
Sherston
Software Offer |
F?S
Managed Learning
Environment
Multimedia
Competition
ICT
Challenge
Useful
Links |
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iFestival
2010 |
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Following the success of last year?s
exhibition, iFestival 2010 will take place in the Central Library,
Ilac Centre from the 9th to the 26th of June 2010. The interactive
exhibition will display a fun and exciting range of comics, 3d
designs, digital pictures, photo journals, games, videos, animation
and much more! We also have two new categories in the area of
writing. Click here for details.
The
official "iFestival" website can be seen at www.ifestival.ie |
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AGM |
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Click on the
picture above to see a successful demonstration of LEGO
WeDo.
James Smith from SMART
Technologies presenting Roy Atkinson with a
Visualiser.
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Our
Annual General Meeting took place on Wednesday 7th October. There
were representatives from twenty schools.
The
meeting covered the state of funding for DISC personnel in the
coming year and details of the achievements and objectives of the
Managed Learning Environment Project and ICT Projects Initiative.
There
were quick demonstrations of Photo
Story 3 and the Easy
Scope Microscope. There was also an interesting demonstration of
the LEGO WeDo kit.
We
would like to thank all those who took the time to attend,
especially our guests Mr James Smith from SMART Technologies and
Alan Wright from Go
Interactive.
Roy
Atkinson from Westland Row CBS came first in the Senteo quiz
winning a Visualiser for his school.
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Virtual Learning for
Secondary Schools |
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Dr
Mark Glynn from the Institutes of Technology Ireland has kindly
offered the secondary schools associated with DISC an opportunity to
get involved with "The Virtual Learning for Schools" Project which
is being run by the Institute of Technology Tallaght. This would
allow your school to experience first hand the online learning
platform Moodle.
What does this involve for your
school?
Four
classes and their Teachers from each school can participate
initially. Each participating Student and Teacher will have unique
usernames and passwords for logging on to Moodle where Teaching
Resources are hosted. There will be opportunities to participate in
Workshops and Demonstrations on how best to use ICT in the Classroom
and support in learning how to use Moodle will be provided.
What's in it for the teacher?
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Free
use of this learning management system to integrate into the
everyday teaching.
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Free
resources in Leaving Cert Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
Other subject resources will be made available in the near future.
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The
opportunity to network with other teachers in your subject
area.
What does it cost?
Participation in this project is free of
charge. ITT Dublin has agreed to host the server required to run
this software.
Moodle
is currently in use in St Aidans Community School as part of the
Connect School Project which aims to improve school attendance,
participation in class and educational outcomes for students
through the use of ICT in Education.
Please
contact us if you would like to get involved. |
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ICT
Coordinators Meeeting |
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Our
ICT Coordinators meeting takes place on Friday 13th November in DIT,
41 Mountjoy Square at 2.00 pm. The theme of the meeting will be
"Using ICT to teach Literacy". We have invited Ken Wikstone from DISKOVERY to be our guest and
demonstrate some relevant software. We will also be demonstrating
the Fizzbook
Spin We would ask those who are attending to please fill in the
following two form:
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Registration
This form is particularly important, if you would like a sandwich
on the day otherwise we can only guarantee tea, coffee and
biscuits.
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Software Choice
Select the Literacy software you'd like to see demonstrated.
Please do this before Monday 9th November to give Ken a chance to
put together a presentation.
If
there is anything you would like to discuss at the meeting, please
contact us. |
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Showcases |
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The RDS Primary Science Fair provides an opportunity
for 100 lucky primary schools to exhibit a class project at the
annual BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition which will be
held at the RDS in January 2010.
The Fair which takes place
on Thursday, January 14, Friday, January 15 and Saturday, January
16, 2010 is open to 4th, 5th and 6th class in the Republic of
Ireland. Teachers interested in knowing more about how to their
class can exhibit at the Fair are encouraged to visit the RDS
Primary Science Fair website at www.rds.ie/primarysciencefair
.
Please note the allocation of the 100
stands is on a strict first come, first served basis and so those
interested in taking part are strongly advised to contact the RDS as
soon as possible by either emailing primarysciencefair@rds.ie
or telephoning 01 2407990.
The
Closing Date for the Our World Irish Aid
Awards is Friday 4th December. Make sure you
have read the Entry Guidelines. Good luck to all schools that are
entering the competition.
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LEGO
Course |
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Thanks to
sponsorship from Arup Consulting
Engineers, we ran our LEGO course on Thursday 15th and Friday
16th October in St. Paul's CBS Primary School, North Brunswick
Street. Ten teachers took part. The course covered the very basics
of using LEGO in the classroom to programming the LEGO NXT brick. We
would like to thank Johnny McCaw from St. Paul's Primary school and
Rob Widger from Dacta UK who
were the inspiring tutors on the course. |
Video extracts
from two day course with some examples from the
classroom
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Sherston
Software Offer |
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Having invited Ken from DISKOVERY to be our guest at the
ICT coordinators meeting he asked us to let you know about a Sherston
software offer. Here is the link if
you'd like to check it out If you are not familiar with Sherston
software Ken has made an short introductory video to illustrate the
software http://www.wickstone.com/video/sherst/sherst.swf
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F?S |
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We would like to
congratulate the boys and teachers from St. Paul's CBS Primary
School and St. Laurence O'Toole's CBS on receiving awards at the
recent F?S Film Festival held at the Helix on Tuesday 20th October.
It was a terrific event that was professionally and enthusiastically
run by the staff from F?S and NCTE. All the boys and some members of
their families had a great day out. St Laurence O'Toole's also won a
video camera on the day. They have a full report on their school
website http://www.larriers.blogspot.com/
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We featured both winning
videos before in our updates but if you missed them here they are
again with a short report from RTE in the middle. |
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St. Paul's CBS Primary produced this
video called "Torkel's Journey to Ireland". |
This is a short piece covering the
event from RTE's News2Day on The Den |
This video animation from St. Laurence
O'Toole's used green screen to enhance the
production. |
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We'd be delighted to
support you if you are thinking of making a video with your class to
enter next year's competition. Please contact us if you feel we can
be of help. |
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On
Wednesday the 21st of October, the teachers involved in the
MLE project met for a 'meet and greet' session in Belfast.
DISC teachers and teachers from Northern Ireland met to
discuss the project goals, learning objectives and desired
outcomes of the project.
A
class from each of the Dublin schools has been partnered with
a class in a school from the North of Ireland. Communication
between the schools will be facilitated through a range of the
virtual learning environment's features such as discussion
boards, resource sharing and the virtual classroom.
Each class will collate resources such as
digital images, video, podcasts, information, interviews etc.
about their subject area. Pupils will then upload the
resources they have created and collected to LNI to share with
their partnered school. The partnered school will then take
these resources and create a project / presentation / story
about what they have learned from their partnered school and
present their findings via the Virtual
Classroom. | |
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Multimedia |
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We
have a great selection of multimedia presentations for you to view
this month. Rutland School, St. Paul's CBS Primary and St. Laurence
O'Toole's CBS have been working hard and producing some excellent
material. |
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St. Paul's CBS Primary 3rd Class
produced this video after visiting the Bubbles exhibition in Trinity
College. Be warned you'll be humming the tune for
days.
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Here is a simple but excellent Photo
Story from St. Laurence O'Toole's CBS. We are always delighted to
see maths related ICT Projects. |
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Another video from St. Paul's CBS
Primary. This time Photo Story has been combined with some Crazy
Talk into a video resulting in a very enjoyable piece of
work.
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This video is from St. Laurence
O'Toole's again. This time it is a video of the 4th class Irish
Puppet Show
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Second class in Rutland School have
produced this pleasant Photo Story of their trip to the Botanic
Gardens |
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Competition |
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ICT
Challenge |
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This month we have two
challenges for two teachers.
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We have a number of HP
IPAQ handheld computers. We are offering them to a teacher for use
with his/her class for the rest of the academic year. The
challenge is to integrate them into the classroom curriculum and
devise six lesson activities using the built in software or other
programs that DISC would fund.
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The second challenge
centres around the Nintendo DS. I am afraid we can't fund a class
set of Nintendo DS machines but you might find a significant
number of pupils in your class have them already. We are not sure
about the practicalities of allowing the pupils to bring in their
own but if you feel it is a possibility, DISC would fund some
edutainment software needed. The challenge once again is to
integrate their use into the classroom curriculum and write a
short report on your experience. The following link might inspire
you. http://www.cesi.ie/digiteach-dsandwii
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Useful
Links |
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http://www.diigo.com
Annotate, archive and organise web pages. This
software will help you manage your surfing.
http://www.educational-freeware.com/
Reviews of learning games, software and
websites. You might find something useful for your class.
http://www.teacherstv.ie/
TeachersTV is a multimedia resource website
containing videos and audio related to education in Ireland.
http://www.avermedia-europe.com/news/visualisers-a-teachers-view.aspx
This is an excellent page about using
visualisers in the
classroom. | |
