 👋🏾 I’m very excited to offer you two gifts to celebrate my 30th anniversary. The first is an app I created using an AI tool that might be useful if you use social media. The second is a new video showing you how you can use image generation for Gaeilge. In this newsletter: 📺 In the Media🎙 Are schools in worse a financial situation than before?💭 Education Stories over the last few weeks🧵 Some threads 🤖 How to generate a comic book strip Please pass on this newsletter to your friends and please encourage them to subscribe so it comes to their inbox every 2 weeks.  Latest Podcast Episode On this week’s show, I’ll be exploring whether the school that threatened to close its doors was in worse financial trouble than they would have been before and what are we going to do about the financial pressures that schools are under?Listen Now I was very happy to appear in the Sunday Business Post Connected Magazine. I don’t have a link to the article but it’s all about technology in primary education. |
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 Like most people, I watched the Netflix series, Adolescence, and like most teachers, I wasn’t shocked or surprised by it. There’s already too much commentary trying to find some gotcha so I won’t add to it but I think this is one of the stronger articles written about it. In other unsurprising news for teachers, Smartphone bans in isolation in schools don’t have any positive effects. The upcoming new curriculum was also in the media this week focusing on RSE and Modern Foreign Languages. Both try to sell us a pup. The obsession with trying to clickbait people into thinking the new curriculum will be all about gender-identity shows no signs of slowing down, despite the fact that it is definitely not going to be on the curriculum. We’re also introduced to a school that has nailed Modern Foreign Languages even before the curriculum is released. We are gluttons for wanting to be the best boys and girls in the class. Back in 2001, I taught as an unqualified teacher. Thankfully since the Teaching Council was formed, the practice of hiring untrained people to be teachers has disappeared…. oh wait. Almost all Irish primary schools employed unqualified substitutes in last academic year. The meme, “you had one job” comes to mind. Helen McEntee continues to underwhelm in her position as the Minister for Education but ensuring all students get a placement in special education is at least the bare minimum. She manages to introduce that bare minimum and the media and social media commentators treat it like a revolution. You can read all the stories I found interesting here! Given how “threadful” X has become, I’ve decided to focus on anything I can find on social media that might be of interest. Some of them I’ve found and some of them I’ve made. Let me know what you think. Another day, another debate on religion in schools (X)My blog post about Different Families, Same Love and why Catholic Schools can easily enter it (Medium)Reframing Failure with Roger Federer (Instagram)An Irish Mammy is “red-pilled” (Instagram)Killing Nostalgia or Fake News? (X) As someone that uses social media quite a bit, I was looking to make an app that converted my text-posts into Instagram carousels. I was going to do this with ChatGPT as my guide and show you another Code without Coding course but the AI world has been going on about a tool called MANUS. Apparently MANUS could not only do all the coding but it could also host the app for me! I tried to get on to the beta testing and I was successful. Sadly, I only got 3 days of testing before it wants to charge me but I did get my app done, and you can use it too completely free. Let me know what you think.Try Text-to-InstagramI also heard that ChatGPT has released its next generation of image generation! The Internet is going mad for it so I thought I’d join in. Here is my video on generating comic-strips as GaeilgeDon’t forget you can access my Code without Coding courses by clicking on the button below!Access Code without Coding |
