[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Mairead,

Welcome to the course and thank you for your overview of both Forms and Sway, as well as your submitted links. Both 365 offerings have huge potential for both classroom and administrative use in schools. From your Forms quiz, it’s clear you have been able to edit permissions, create multiple choice questions and assign point values to each. This is such a time-saving exercise when it comes to corrections, and the digital element can produce data graphs that are easy for us to read and interpret. You have also highlighted the anonymous nature of Forms (when required), and this is a huge bonus when gathering feedback from students or parents.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Roisin,

Thank you for your post and for sharing this experience with us. I think it was an excellent idea to facilitate a group discussion on the war so that the children had some idea of what their new classmate was fleeing, and different ways in which they could make them feel welcome. It’s always so heart-warming to see children go out of their way to help  new child fit in, and it certainly seems like that was the case within your class.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Roisin,

Thanks for your post. It’s very interesting that many others on tis course have also chosen Aistear as a way in which they saw gender stereotyping to be quite prevalent within schools. Given these children are in infant classes, it just goes to show how ingrained this is, almost from birth. You have suggested many great ideas for getting children thinking around these issues. I love using big books to explore various themes within SPHE, and this is another area that would lend itself to be covered in this way.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Stephanie,

Think you for your post and for sharing your experiences with us. It is great to see the variety of the work being done up and down the country by various outreach centres and organisations. This is really complementing the excellent work going on in schools. Like so many others, you have outlined various specific steps you take to ensure these children feel included. The inclusion of significant songs to these children and their culture is a lovely idea within Christmas Concerts and other shows.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Aoife,

Welcome to the course and thanks for your contribution to the forum here. I think you have raised an excellent point in terms of using development education themes to build empathy and tolerance in children. It’s so important to acknowledge contrasting opinions and ways of doing things, with the key being mutual respect between all parties. This is a key skill for modern life, and one which can easily be interwoven into some of the main themes that you will focus on in subsequent modules.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Emma,

Thank you for your post and for sharing your own experiences on the forum. I am particularly taken by the ‘inclusion day’ you have described. It’s amazing to think that as many as 37 different nationalities can be present in the same school. It really does signify the open and inclusive society that Ireland has become in the main. I love the idea of all children being able to share a piece of their identity and for all people in the school to be exposed to small snippets of information about the places they have come from. All of this, I’m sure, will contribute to an excellent and inclusive atmosphere throughout the school.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Leona,

Thank you for your post. It is very interesting that your Aistear experiences mirror a lot of what other people on this course have also experienced. It is not an isolated issue, and seems to be very prevalent in society. I like how you have highlighted the ‘non-conformity’ of groups of females to gender norms. In recent years, the movement behind female involvement in sport has thankfully brought about huge changes. Young girls now can see many role models in a sporting context, and there is far more coverage of female sport on mainstream television. Last night, the country watched the women’s relay team run so heroically, and this will provide huge motivation for young girls seeking to follow in these footsteps.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your post and your engagement throughout the course. Farmers really seem to be bearing much of the brunt of the extreme weather conditions in recent years. Waterlogged lands and ruined crops are just some issues that they face. Children experiencing this at home will know the devastation that weather can cause to livelihoods. This gives them a real purpose to bring about actionable change that will help prevent these and make them less common as they grow up. I like your idea around debating, and getting the children to really dig deeper into the causes and solutions of this, arguing their thoughts and rationale in the process.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Ciara,

Welcome to the course and thank you for your post here. When new to something, there are always questions and teething problems, so feel free to come back with any further questions. I will attempt to outline how you may set up the accounts for individual children. They will all get an account within the school domain, e.g. (@school.ie). I always work with their first name initial and full surname (e.g. jbloggs@scool.ie). To set up an account, you will need access to the ‘admin’ suite, or get the school administrator to do this. The ‘admin’ can be found in the menu on the nine dots at the top right of your Chrome browser if you have access. When you are logged in as admin, you just press ‘Add New User’ and fill in the details. It is very straightforward once you have done it a couple of times, but the initial few may not seem that way. If you were setting up an entire school, there is an Excel that you can download and import all names from Aladdin, etc. but that might be overkill and more work if you are only setting up a few accounts / a single class.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Bill,

Thank you for your post. You have followed on from other members of this course in analysing the impact that the choice of toys and modes of play can have on the attainment of males and females in the shape and space strand in maths. The research backs this up, and points out that boys significantly outperform girls in this area, and it very much reads as an outlier within the data. I posted a video clip from Professor Douglas Clements earlier in this forum which highlights the rationale behind these differences, as well as getting us to think about potential solutions to this.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for your post and for providing such a clear overview on a number of ways in which Google Classroom can be used for a ‘flipped classroom’ approach. It’s also good that you have had the opportunity to identify some of the limitations or challenges in using Google Classroom – I find another limitation can be its functionality on tablet devices – it is certainly far easier to use it on a Chromebook or web browser on a Windows/Mac device.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Derek,

Thank you for your post and for sharing your thoughts on the ‘Redesigning Education’ paper. You have highlighted the way the paper identified various barriers to digital integration in schools. Despite the paper being a decade old, it could be argued that many of the same barriers remain, despite multiple government strategies. Some of the collaborative learning experiences that focus on project-based work are exactly what is required to develop these 21st century skills in children.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Leona,

Welcome to the course. Thank you for your contribution here. As you have pointed out, the interconnected and interlinked nature of these themes make them really important for children to explore. Being able to apply these themes to aspects of their own lives can be a really powerful way of creating a sense of empathy for those who have struggles associated with some of these themes. Issues like gender stereotyping and global inequalities will be explored later in the course in greater detail, which should allow you to explore these thoughts and comments further.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Desmond,

Thank you for your post and for your participation throughout the course. You have provided us with a comprehensive lesson outline for using AI to enhance the teaching of some of the traditional SESE subjects – combining the use of both Chat GPT and Dall-E is particularly notable. Your post shows a keen awareness of the different ways in which AI technology can be used to enhance teaching and learning, and I wish you the very best for the coming school year. Hopefully, you’ll be able to implement some of the ideas and content from this course.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Mary,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. You have raised a variety of interesting points in relation to Cosán. I fully agree with you regarding the commitment to lifelong learning that is required within the profession. Teaching is a profession which very much mirrors societal changes, and as such is constantly undergoing change and reform to respond to societal needs. As such, it’s really important that we are agile and willing to engage in professional development that will allow us to adapt our practice.

[Author]

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