Technological University Dublin has recently celebrated the launch of a landmark educational research project that will see every primary school in Ireland receive a free Digital Technology kit. EDTips: Enabling Digital Technology in Primary School will provide every primary school with free digital technology teaching resources and equipment to prepare for the introduction of the Primary Curriculum Framework during the 2025–2026 academic year. The project, led by CSinc (Computer Science Inclusive) at TU Dublin, has received funding from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and is supported by the University’s industry partners, AWS In Communities and Workday.
Running over two years, EDTips will train primary school teachers in a suite of age-appropriate and interactive educational tools, catering to the abilities of all pupils and encouraging them to become confident, creative, and critical users of digital technology. TU Dublin will develop comprehensive teaching materials and activities modelled on the Primary Curriculum Framework, while AWS In Communities will supply 3,000 free offline Digital Technology kits, enabling all schools, to fully engage pupils in the curriculum. EDTips is also supported by Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications. Workday will provide critical resources to help deliver the programme, including software development, content, design and project management.
The hope is that providing primary school teachers with resources such as EDTips will enhance their ability to deliver quality STEM education. These new technology kits will also enable teachers in every primary school in Ireland to learn and be curious about coding and empower them further with digital literacy tools ahead of the introduction of the digital technology curriculum next year.
If you would like to trial EDTips resources in your classroom in September 2024, then you can register your interest here
More information is available at https://www.edtips.ie/
