This morning Eoin and Finn interviewed RTÉ’s Ryan Tubridy. He talked to us about his schools days. Even though he wasn’t an ‘A’ grade student he still enjoyed school as a whole. In his keynote he talked about how teachers went off the beaten track to engage the class and capture their imaginations.
We also posed the question “if half the books I read are on kindle does that make me less of a reader?”, Ryan went on to explain his love for hard print literature and that the use of technology should be limited and balanced. He is a firm believer in people reading physical books. He also mentioned his dislike of social media describing it as “non-social media”.
Having been appointed as Minister for Education in July of this year, Jan O’Sullivan has so far experienced three months in her new position, only one of which has been during the academic term.
She took a Higher Diploma in Education at University College Cork, and she briefly worked as a secondary school teacher after this. She later emigrated to Canada, where she studied as a pre-school teacher. Between these experiences and her role as the Minister for Education, Minister O’Sullivan is the ideal person to interview at Feilte, a Festival of Education in Learning and Teaching Excellence.
Amongst the questions we asked Minister O’Sullivan were what she feels is the most rewarding part of being a Minister, what she thinks are the most important skills we should learn in school as well as what part does she see technology playing in education in the future.
Caitlin and Finn interviewed Conor Cusack who’s here at #Feilte today to talk about mental wellbeing. Conor was an intercounty hurler for Cork and is still pursuing his club career with Cloyne. Throughout his life Conor has battled with depression and spoke to us today about how being surrounded by teammates doesnn’t insulate you from feeling isolated and alone. Conor has openly spoken about his battles with depression. He did this via his blog : Depression is a friend not my enemy. This is an inspirational and empowering piece.
Bressie was at #FEILTE to talk on a panel about mental wellbeing, along with former Cork county hurler Conor Cusack, Presenter and ambassador for Pieta House Eoghan McDermott, Psychologist and Clinical Director of AWARE Dr. Clare Hayes, and Teacher and facilitator with ChilloutIreland AnnMarie Ireland.
Matt Cooper chaired the panel.
Bressie is a music star, an accomplished sportsman and a judge on the Voice of Ireland. He is outspoken on the topic of mental health issues and is an ambassador for Cycle Against Suicide, an organisation that seeks to raise awareness and bring support to those dealing with mental health issues.
We chatted to him about various topics in the areas mental well being, technology and his teenage years. He shared his own very personal experiences of dealing with panic attacks and insomnia as a teen and his regret that he waited so long to confide in his family. He feels that technology can be part of the solution as well as part of the problem and thinks that this is an area that should be investigated.
One of his parting shots in our chat was the importance of following your passions. He doesn’t believe that parents have a right to direct their children away from their passions, for example telling them that they have no future in music!
Eoghan McDermott is an Irish television and radio presenter mostly known for hosting The Voice of Ireland. We caught up with him at Féilte.
In the interview, Eoghan jokes that he has come to the conference because “he was paid loads of money and is in debt to a vicious money lender” before going on to talk about how his parents were teachers and how there were “always teaching conversations going on in the house throughout the years.”
McDermott goes on to talk about how when he spoke out about his mental well-being. He said that the overwhelming reaction from young people was saying thank you for speaking out, because it’s hard.
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.
Finn and David talked to Micheal Mulgrew, one of the Speakers at Feilte, about the festival itself and also about the differences between Irish teachers and American teachers. He had lots to say about what teachers in New York have in common as well as how they differ in his view. He also gave a great talk at the conference.
Michael is the fifth president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), whose 200,000 members include teachers and other professional staff in New York City public schools as well as family child-care providers, nurses, adult education instructors and retired members.
Earlier we blogged about how devastated we were when our 16interview with Fintan O’Toole disappeared from our list of recordings. Bernie worked all day to recover it and – woo hoo! – here it is!
Here Finn and David interview two of the organisers from Fighting Words about the work that their organisation does. Fighting Words is a creative writing centre established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love to help students to develop their writing skills. The idea behind Fighting Words is a simple one – it’s about creative writing, writing for fun. So, you get things like Space Unicorns and Aliens in their stories. (http://www.fightingwords.ie/adventures-ralph-and-joe) They have also published books of the stories people write when they go to the Fighting Words centre in Russell Street in Dublin 1.
This afternoon we shared a relaxed, enjoyable, humorous chat with PhD candidate in TCD and broadcaster, former teacher and Rose of Tralee winner, Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain. [@aoibhinn_ni_s ]
Aoibhinn told us about her views on technology in the classroom. She thinks that technology is really important and beneficial and can be a more exciting fun way of learning. However she said that books and writing are also crucial and necessary for learning, similar to what Deputy Editor of The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole had said this morning in our interview with him.
Aoibhinn used to be a Physics and Maths teacher so she understands the problems and worries teachers have about the Education System in Ireland. She said she loved teaching and guiding students. Her favourite part of teaching was helping students and she said had great fun with her students in the classroom.
