[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Theresa,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Google Classroom here, particularly within the context of SSE and how its use can drive whole-school improvement plans across a number of LAOS domains. The beauty of a platform like Classroom is that it can be used at a whole variety of levels, bringing about varying benefits to classrooms and administration practices. Supporting diverse learner needs is something that all teachers are faced with on a daily basis, and the use of Google Classroom can help in this regard. Subsequent modules on the specific Google tools will allow you to see how some of these can be integrated into Classroom to support individual needs and provide differentiated instruction.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Theresa,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Google Classroom here, particularly within the context of SSE and how its use can drive whole-school improvement plans across a number of LAOS domains. The beauty of a platform like Classroom is that it can be used at a whole variety of levels, bringing about varying benefits to classrooms and administration practices. Supporting diverse learner needs is something that all teachers are faced with on a daily basis, and the use of Google Classroom can help in this regard. Subsequent modules on the specific Google tools will allow you to see how some of these can be integrated into Classroom to support individual needs and provide differentiated instruction.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Michelle,

It is so important that children understand how AI applications operate and the information that they draw upon. Google’s Teachable Machine is a great tool through which this can be explored. It is so important to have these discussions around the mistakes that can still be made by AI and how we can best go about fact checking and ensuring the information we have is accurate. These are key skills that our children will need as they progress through second-level education and beyond.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for sharing such a comprehensive overview of a potential plan to assist ‘Seán’ using the SETT Framework. Your overview clearly outlines your understanding of the framework and how it can be used to provide targeted interventions to address the needs of individual children or groups of children. Your final comment is one which really strikes a chord with me (and many others likely). For a huge length of time, I was always looking for the next tool or the next piece of content. A couple of years ago I decided to step back and think about the specific children in my class, and what their needs and motivations were. I found it really transformational and had so many knock on effects in terms of classroom culture, behaviour, etc.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for sharing this classroom experience with us here. I am sure it is an experience that many of us can relate to and will have had to deal with at some point in recent years. I think you have raised an important point around how these attitudes and behaviours are either passed down or learned from online sources. Our children are very unlikely to acquire these mindsets automatically by the time they have reached 5th class, meaning it is likely that they have latched on to the opinion of others. The Netflix series, ‘Adolescence’ dealt with this on a much deeper level than sporting events, but it illustrates the potential direction these attitudes (formed from online influencers) can have on our young people and is certainly something to be cognisant of.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Eleanor,

Thanks for sharing your reflections here. Like many other things, when we get further into something we can often get the clarity we are looking for at the outset. Broadening our use of AI tools beyond Chat GPT is a really important step – whilst they are all pulling from the same data, many apps such as those listed can play a key role in saving time and increasing productivity. Various platforms have been specifically designed with education settings in mind and can often create ready made templates and designs that are in tune with exactly what you are looking for. As you work through the course, I hope more of these will be discovered.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Leanne,

Thanks for sharing the first hand experience the children in your school have of the impact of extreme climate conditions on our local areas. The damage that can be caused to local areas from extreme weather conditions, both directly and indirectly, can often be overlooked and quickly forgotten. As you have said, working together with those in your school to put clear and actionable targets in place is so important in  this regard. Having everyone on board can ensure consistency in messaging and can ensure that the key principles underpinning the improvement plan are permeating all aspects of school life.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Thomas,

Thank you for your post here and for your engagement throughout the course. I really like how you have been able to incorporate the children’s use of multiple AI tools into this lesson outline. As you have said, you can often be provided with way too much information and detail for a single lesson, but this content could be used over a series of lessons. Additionally, you could ask AI to further refine this lesson outline down also.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Mary,

Thank you for your contribution here. It’s great to see that you have found the SETT model useful, and thinking of a specific child to which it can apply is a great of simulating its potential use in a classroom scenario. Like you have alluded to, it allows us to consider a plethora of resources to support an individual child. What’s great is that it removes much of the ‘outside noise’ that we might be thinking and allow us to think solely about one child’s individual needs and the tools that may be best suited in meeting this need.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Oonagh,

Thanks for your post here. It is great that you have had the chance to look through some of the Microsoft tools that are available through the 365 suite. It really is an impressive collection, and fully available within the education license. Immersive Reader is a hugely beneficial tool for allowing children understand information better and help those with reading difficulties to consume information. However, Dictate can be so beneficial for those seeking to create content and turn speech into written text. As you have said,m this could be a powerful tool for students wishing to make their own content within PowerPoint.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Olivia,

Thank you for your post here. You are right to say that development education has an evolving importance in today’s society given the current unstable nature of global affairs. Being able to think logically and rationally around key global issues allows us to make clear decisions around what we can do to try to address this. The reliability of information we receive needs to be fact checked, and this theme of digital citizenship is becoming an increasingly important skill for children. This course will explore specific development education themes and how some of these ideas can be looked at through the lens of these specific themes.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Agnes,

Welcome to the course. Thanks for sharing your post here and for raising the key point around seeing issues as global issues rather than local issues. Seeing ourselves as global citizens and highlighting how interconnected we are is key to seeing all issues as global issues. Just because we cannot tangibly feel the effects of some issues, potentially around global inequalities, can make it more challenging to see the need to take steps to address this. However, promoting global citizenship allows us to see all these issues as issues that ultimately have an effect on us.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Geraldine,

Thank you for your post here. Khan Academy Kids is such an excellent resource to use at many classes across the primary school, but especially in the junior end. The range of free resources is remarkable and one which provides us with huge choice across different subjects. The digital citizenship idea you have mentioned is so topical and should be central to children’s lives and school experiences as they grow up. The way children experience content online requires them to have a set of skills that allow them to act ethically and responsibly online.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Jackie,

Thank you for your contribution to the forum here. It’s clear that here is lots of excellent work being carried out in your local community to help accommodate and assimilate migrants and refugees of all ages. Key words that you have mentioned such as ‘safe, inclusive and welcoming’ get to the core of what we should be looking at when it comes to helping people who have arrived in our country having experience terrible trauma in their home country.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Jimmy,

Thank you for your post here and for your overview of how Scratch may be incorporated into your work with 3rd class next year. I really like the idea of linking it specifically with SPHE themes and topics, with social stories being a  really relevant choice in all classrooms. Scaffolding the learning from introductory videos and demonstrations to paired creations of their own resources is a really valuable way to gradually release responsibility away from the teacher and towards the children.

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