Today, the Youth Media Team were really excited to have the opportunity to interview Fintan O’Toole. Bridin and Jack managed to find a quiet space, pressed ‘record’ and had a wonderful, relaxed chat with one of Ireland’s most passionate journalists.

Twenty minutes later, they had it in the bag, took a photo and Fintan left for pastures new. Sadly, when we looked down at the device which held all of his words of wisdom, it was crashing. Crashing hard. Almost in tears, we struggled to find the file, to recover it but sadly it wasn’t to be. The interview was gone.

Earlier, Fintan had spoken about the importance of learning from failure. So here’s what we learnt today:

1. Always have a back-up plan. If we had been recording with a second mic or device we’d have secured the interview.

2. It’s ok to fail. We conducted many, many interviews today. One was bound to go wrong – we were just sorry it was our guest speaker. We were gutted but we were also more careful what device we used for the rest of the day.

3. Even though the technology failed, we still had the experience of interviewing Fintan. We can’t have that conversation again, but at least we had it once!

In this interview, well known psychologist David Coleman talks to us about how the education system meets the psychological needs of children and teenagers and the various impacts entering the post primary school system has on teenagers.

David was at #FEILTE as part of the closing panel discussion which turned into an amazing discussion about schools and teaching and mental health and wellness

Interview by by Seán and Éadaoin de Búrca

And here’s David with the  YMT:

 

Here David and Finn interview BEO.

BEO was founded by transition year students from Coláiste Ailigh , St. Eunan’s College, Loreto Convent and Errigal College. All of these schools are located in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.

BEO aims to get young people interested in music by encouraging them to organise a series of concerts in their local area. Students are in charge of every aspect of the organisational process – booking the acts, promotion of events, filming of concerts etc. This encourages an interest in live music, while helping students develop a wide range of organisational and communication skills.

This project also puts a firm emphasis on the Irish language and seeks to encompass it in the organisational process – “Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste, ná Bearla cliste”.

Check out www.beoireland.com for more details.

 

This interview with Caroline Sherlock from Walk In My Shoes was focused on the sensitive subject of mental health. ‘Walk in My Shoes’ is St. Patrick’s Mental Health Foundation’s leading awareness and fund-raising campaign. It aims to provide vulnerable young adults in Ireland with mental health services, and also to challenge the stigma associated with mental health. It provides downloadable mental health packs, a cyberbullying guide, as well as promoting the message to teachers and students ‘to seek help early’ with regards to mental health problems.

Interview by Seán and Éadaoin de Búrca

Here David and Finn interview Young Social Innovators about their work. YSI seek to engage and prepare young people aged 15-18 to take part in civic action, whether through volunteerism, community service, service-learning, citizenship education, social entrepreneurship and innovation.

 

John McGabhann from the Teachers Union of Ireland was invited here today to #Feilte as a guest. Once upon a time, he was a teacher of English and Gaeilge, in Tallaght Community School. Today he took a great interest in Fintan O’Toole’s speech, particularly in how he talked about efficiency in education. John raised interesting points about how he thinks conferences like this should be held at a local level around the country, and involve parents in them so they can see how their children are progressing with knowledge, drama, art, etc. He believes parents and communities should be able to see the importance of the school in the community, and just how valuable it is. He thinks that technological advances in education are important but can never substitute for direct human interaction, and should instead supplement the needs of children.

Interview by Seán and Eadaoin de Búrca

Here Finn and David are talking to Ann White about her future hopes to start podcasting with her 1st class.  We think she will succeed because she knows lots about technology and about teaching.

 

Interview by:  Finn Briody and David Lombard.

Dissolving Boundaries uses Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to facilitate cross-cultural educational links between schools in the North and South of the boarder. It is jointly funded by the two Departments of Education.Once teachers have chosen the topic to work on, for e.g mapwork projects for geography,they present the idea to the pupils explaining that they collaborate with partner school who will do some of the work and that it will be project based using online interaction and video-conferencing.

Interview by Seán and Éadaoin de Búrca

Here Finn and David caught up with Bridge 21 and asked them about their new learning model that they use in their centre in Trinity College Dublin. They’re planning to spread this model of active learning into more Irish secondary schools.

Here are some pictures of their workshop:

Here’s our interview

Interviewing Bridge21