[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Seán,

Thanks for this post and for your engagement throughout. You have raised many fascinating points, and it is great that the course has prompted you to think about how the children are using technology in the classroom. We certainly want to move away from them using devices for the ‘sake of it’. As you have alluded to, progressing to active rather than passive use of the technology is crucial in developing skills and ensuring progress across different curricular areas. This is a process, and you have identified some key areas that you can get started with. Wishing you the very best for the year ahead.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Karin,

Thank you for this post and the clear overview of the Scratch programming tool. It is great to see, like many others on this forum, that you can see its potential for use in your classroom. I really like your ideas around allowing to children to work together as part of an overall challenge to allow them problem-solve in ‘real world’ scenarios.

I think the helpful videos on the Scratch platform you have mentioned sound great – I’m unfamiliar with these but feel they would be an extremely useful resource for us all on this course. Could you share the link to these with us please if you get the chance?

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for your post and for sharing the work of these organisations in the Kildare area. You have touched upon the importance of children understanding what a refugee is and why people may need to leave their home countries. Education around this in general as well as current affairs globally is so important. Outlining how you have managed to integrate this into the SPHE and Geography curricula in your school is a great thing for us to see, as it can become something we look at in the integrated manner it needs.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Mairead,

Welcome to the course. You have raised some really interesting and pertinent points in your post. AI can be hugely helpful for work as an SET – careful prompting can provide you with a range of suggestions for personalising your lessons and picking and choosing activity suggestions to meet the needs of the children on your caseload. However, like you have said, the human aspect remains the central component of effective teaching. Knowing what the child needs, adapting in the moment and responding to their evolving needs is something AI can’t help us with – it is a great way of reducing work and providing us with a menu of suggestions or adapting content to suit us, but remains only one tool in the teaching and learning process.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Clodagh,

Thanks for sharing that story – it’s often when things are said in such an innocent way that we get a real insight into the thought processes of children. It’s clear that this opinion hasn’t been made up on the spot and has either formed by things the child has either heard or witnessed. In terms of gender roles the picture book ‘Amazing Grace’ touches on similar ideas – the notion that a girl could play the role of Peter Pan in a play is ridiculed in the opening part of the story before becoming normalised as they progressed through toying with the theme.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Rachel,

Thank you for this comprehensive outline and for your engagement throughout the course. I like how you have used your learning from the course to identify ways in which Magic School AI could be incorporated into this. Indeed, you are already thinking about the additional things you could do and how this outline could be further enhanced and developed in subsequent lessons, which highlights the importance of human engagement and knowledge of the importance of the pace of learning, when operating in a classroom setting.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Ciara,

Thanks for your post and your interest in the use of Immersive Reader. When likening assistive technologies to other more concrete assistive tools, the word adaptability, which you have used, is a great choice. The dyslexia rulers do a very similar job to the ‘line focus’ in Immersive Reader but lack the same flexibility and adaptability. The option to focus on 1, 3 or 5 lines is a perfect example of this and may be interchanged depending on the length or complexity of a text.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Karen,

It was great to hear that you found the module interesting and useful. There is amazing practice happening in classrooms all around the country, and it is great to be affirmed that we are on the right track with what we are doing. The low-, medium- and high-tech assistive options is a really nice way to show and outline this. As teachers, we are constantly trying to make small adaptions to give children to best chance to learn and participate in class. So many of these small actions can absolutely be categorised as an assistive technology. It is likely that so much of what we do could fall into the low-tech category without ever realising it.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Nieves,

Thanks for your post here. It is great that you have been able to match the content of this module to a specific cohort of children you believe it could have assisted. Immersive Reader is such a powerful tool and is certainly one which can open up learning to those learning English as an additional language. The picture dictionary is particularly useful in this regard as it can allow these children make connections between English and their native language, which will ultimately lead to the learning being embedded that bit more.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Rachel,

I agree that AI really does have the potential to open up that world of possibilities. There are so many tools which can now make learning accessible and interesting for children who may have found ‘traditional’ approaches or content either too difficult or not interesting enough. You are correct to point out that a certain level of skill is required to engineer prompts and use technology at even a basic level. However, all of these challenges can be overcome with a structured and cohesive plan to develop basic computer skills.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Don,

Welcome to the course. Thank you for outlining a very clear vision of how you see the role of AI playing out in schools and how it can be used to enhance your own practice. You have made a very interesting point around future classrooms being places of collaborative where human and artificial intelligence work together. This is a key point – AI cannot replace the human element of classroom life and interactions. You have outlined so many ways in which it can be used effectively, but its true usefulness will only come when married with the human knowledge present in the classroom also.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Felicity,

Thanks for your post here and for outlining a really pertinent challenge in terms of the use of AI, and technology in general, to support learning. Especially in an SET setting (where the time we have with individual children is so tight), we want to be making the best use of our time. It’s fair to say that so many assistive tools can help the children we work with, but the danger is that it may take some time to land upon the correct tool. As such, taking a small step such as incorporating one tool each year could be useful. As we become more familiar with what these tools do, we will be able to make more informed decisions about whether it would be a suitable for for a child’s particular needs. Over time, we will build up a repository of tools that we can confidently pick and choose from.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for your post. It’s interesting to hear how things that can be spun as a positive for some people and sectors can have such negative effects on other aspects of society and the economy. Agriculture is certainly something that is feeling the effects of climate change here – from hotter summers to flooding in winter, there is such an impact on livelihoods. This will be felt particularly in certain parts of the country. The undertaking of upcycling projects sounds fascinating and an initiative which could really get children involved in thinking about how we can be more sustainable in all aspects of our lives.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi John,

Thanks for this post on how you would incorporate the use of Scratch in your classroom. I agree that it is very important that the children understand the language of Scratch and the different aspects of the platform before they are set to create their own stories, etc. Scratch Jr. can be a very nice introduction for younger children in this regard – there are a variety of manuals that go through a series of step-by-step lessons that will get the children looking at this and equipped with the knowledge and skills to use Scratch in more complex ways as they move through the year.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Lina,

Thanks for this. I think you have hit on something so important around raising awareness of the experience of refugees. Allowing our children to truly understand the meaning of the word and the type of conflict these people have had to flee from is so important in building the empathy you speak of. Often, we can take for granted what we have in this country and instead focus on many of its flaws. However, it is very difficult to comprehend what these people have been living through – building awareness of this through storytelling and the other means you have listed would be a really importnt first step.

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