Siobhán’s presentation outlined the need for today’s learners to become proficient in the critical consumption of information. This included the acquisition, selection, management and presentation of content. She highlighted some of the capabilities that search engines offer to explore and filter specific information on the Web. Siobhán also outlined several alternative search engines to Google such as instagrok , which presents search results in a mind map format. The full presentation can be accessed on http://www.pdst.ie/innovationacademy2015.
As part of the Innovation Academy Entrepreneurial Educators programme, we were tasked this afternoon with interviewing Stefania Bocconi from CNR, Institute for Educational Technology. Stefania’s project is entitled Creativity and Technology Approach to Innovative Learning and Teaching Practices.
Stefania gave a short presentation on her research into the creative classroom via Skype. Ironically, the technology failed during the interview with Stefania and Dr. Conor Galvin stepped into the fray. Conor explained the outcomes of the research, which sets out key dimensions and building blocks for developing the Creative Classroom in primary and secondary education. Conor stated that although the developed framework offers a useful guide, the feedback from teachers across Ireland suggests that it is more aspirational than practical. Conor concluded that the key to the Creative Classroom is a creative teacher, and that we need “more teachers that take the chance more often, even if it’s chaotic and messy”.
Caitlin interviewed one of today’s keynote speakers Paul Hopkins. Paul is a visually-impaired creative with the voice behind @vipodcasting on several social audio channels,know’s it’s better to “make your takeaways inclusive by design” , the title of his keynote.
Paul and Caitlin talked about the importance of braille in education and in everyday life. We also spoke about the conference today, #ictedu and how his keynote went.
We were delighted to get the opportunity to work with RTE Digital on a behind the scenes recap of the Dragon’s Den event at the Excited conference. Here’s what we produced
Our Youth Media Team traveled to Dublin on Friday 4th October for Féilte. On the Friday night we went to the CESI Meet and interviewed some of the attendees to elicit their thoughts on many topics including teaching, technology in education, #edchatie and many more. The main aim of the exercise was to re-familiarise the team with the technology that they would be using to interview, blog and tweet.
Busy researchingPrepping with Conor and Bernie
Saturday morning saw the familiar red shirts take their place at Féilte in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham for the start of a busy day. We planned some of the interviews for the day ahead, and tasked the team with researching the people and organisations that they would interview. It became quite an organic process as, for the most part, they chose the interviews that they would do. Their instructions were straightforward:
Of course no day would be complete without a bit of drama. For us this came in the form of the loss of one of our first interviews of the day, Brídín and Jack’s interview with Fintan O’Toole, Deputy Editor of the Irish Times. To the team’s credit, despite the bitter disappointment at the loss of this interview, they kept going and put it down to experience. Unbeknown to us all, our resident techie Bernie, worked tirelessly during the day to try to retrieve the lost interview and, miracle of miracles, he managed to retrieve it at around 4pm. To say that we were delighted to get it back, doesn’t even begin to come close to how we all felt!!
The team with Aoibhinn Ní SuilleabháinThe team with David Coleman
The feedback, both on the day and since, has been very positive towards the team. The idea has really caught people’s imaginations and I’m delighted to hear that it has prompted a number of teachers to look into setting up Youth Media Team’s in their own schools.
Photos courtesy of @_conorglvin, @fboss and @evelynoconnor
You can check out the blog posts from the team here and you can access their interviews directly here.
A final word of thanks to the back room team of Conor Galvin, Evelyn O’Connor and Bernie Goldbach. Their guidance and expertise made it a very enjoyable and rewarding experience for all involved.
