Last week saw the publication of the OFSTED report “The most able students: are they doing as well as they should in our non-selective secondary schools?” . It concluded that bright students in the UK were being failed by those secondary schools who chose not to stream students early according to ability. The report showed […]
Great Expectations Read More »
Roughly 80-90% of Irish primary classrooms have an Interactive Whiteboard, (IWB). However, now that they are part of the furniture in most Irish classrooms, what have we learned? When IWBs came out, I spent a lot of time reviewing them and finding out which board offered the best value and service. I was convinced that
IWBs – Time to dismantle the Trojan Horse? Read More »
I seldom get the opportunity to write about an IT topic that is rooted in the Revised Primary School Curriculum and I have never had the opportunity to write about an IT topic that can be presented to a class in its entirety “as Gaeilge”! Therefore I was delighted to get an invite to review
This booklet was released at the recent Microsoft Educational Summit in the Aviva Stadium. The document explores the literature around how children learn today before going on to explore the changing workplace that they will enter in the coming years. Having established that the workplaces of today and tomorrow require a unique set of skills
Redesigning Education: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Read More »
As more and more of my own reading material moves from traditional hardback and paperback texts to electronic format, one application that I make increasing use of is that of Calibre. Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) is a free, cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) application that allows you to view, convert, create and manage e-books. The software supports e-book
E-book Management, Conversion and Creation with Calibre Read More »
Many teachers of junior primary classes, learning support and resource teachers and indeed other SEN teachers will have familiarity with Clicker 5 and 6 on the PC and Mac platforms. The good news is that Clicker has come to tablets also with the Clicker Docs app for IOS – (€25.99) available for purchase on the
Clicker Comes to Tablets Read More »
People are always recommending new online sites that are useful for classroom teaching and learning. However with so many available options I find myself gravitating towards resources that are easy to use as I don’t have the time to learn the ins and outs of every resource. After someone recently recommended Gooru, I decided to
Gooru: The Ultimate Educational Search Tool Read More »
We have had the pleasure of updating our primary school history policy recently and we used ICT in a number of ways to create resources that may be used within the classroom. We found ICT particularly useful in creating a bank of resources on the local history of Harolds Cross, Dublin where the school is
Using ICT to create resources for history in the primary classroom Read More »
The old routine for using computers, was quite often a “Computer Room”. Each class was allocated a time, usually 1 hour a week/fortnight. In my own case when I was at school, it meant that every Wednesday afternoon, we dropped our pencils, stopped whatever we were doing and marched in an orderly fashion to the
Timetabling of Equipment Read More »
Virtual field trips are a wonderful way of introducing a class of students to the world of Exploration and Discovery. Gone are the days when an SESE lesson on this topic focused on static images and copious pages of text. Instead, teachers can now give pupils the freedom to explore and research the Great Outdoors
To the Top of the World and Beyond – Virtually! Read More »
