Anseo.net Review of 2011

As is traditional at the end of the year, Anseo.net looks back at the stories that occurred in 2011.
January
This time last year, we were in the depths of temperatures never seen in Ireland before as the icy grip of winter closed down schools for almost two weeks.  Roads were impassable and temperatures dipped to -20C.  We had decided that this was now going to be a normal part of Irish life and techie teachers around the country were looking at alternative ways to help children learn during future cold snaps.  Our guest blogger was Caitríona Carty, a principal from Mayo, who wrote a great article about how she used Google Apps to teach while the snow came down.
It was also the beginning of the conference season where Anseo.net enjoyed a day trip to London and recorded a podcast about what kind of products were out there.  Interactive Whiteboards were the norm in Irish classrooms and Anseo.net gently began to retire its regular review of Interactive Whiteboards with the Genee Board topping the list.  Looking back now, it’s sad to see that a number of these companies are no longer with us.  A big problem in Ireland with Interactive Whiteboards was that there were still a large number of teachers struggling to use the boards so Anseo.net started a series of articles for beginners.
Finally, Anseo.net started a series of articles about web site design for schools.  While not claiming to be experts, Anseo.net looked a a number of school web sites and made recommendations for improvement.  One school got nominated in the Irish Web Awards later that year, though I don’t know how much credit we can claim for that!
February
The conference season continued with the Irish Primary Principals Network (IPPN) at the end of January (reviewed in February) and one of the highlights of the calendar, the CESI conference.  The CESI conference had an interesting focus of iPhones, iTouches and iPads on the Friday evening and the Saturday had one of the biggest crowds ever!
Rozz got herself published in the Irish Sunday Times with a great article about web safety.  Rozz outlined some of the fears she has in the classroom when accessing the Internet.  In other positive news, Scoilnet reached the million mark, Teachnet and Educate Together launched new look web sites and Google unleashed the Google Art Porject.  Promethean launched its first touch-enabled Interactive Whiteboard, which blew almost everyone else out of the water.
March
With Ireland getting a new government, we welcomed Ruairi Quinn as our new minister for education..  He quickly released a plan for education, which has become the Literacy and Numeracy initiative, which is threatening to slowly destroy our education system at primary level.  The original paper was interesting in how it was scathing of certain “interest groups”.
However, far more important to education that this was one of the most innovative things ever to happen to education in Ireland.  I may sound premature even now but I believe that #edchatie may be one of the most important things to happen in education in Ireland.  EdChatIE, which is a weekly chat on Twitter for teachers, has gained immense popularity and has teachers talking professionally to each other, tackling chosen issues.  There are a number of teachers that have only started using Twitter because of EdChatIE, which is good in itself, but what they take away from a one hour session can affect thousands of students around the country.  This is real CPD.
Another great publication was ICTs in the Primary School by Robbie O’Leary and John O’Mahoney.  This fantastic book was published by the Dublin West Education Centre and a copy was sent to every school in the country.  It has been followed up with a Literacy and Numeracy focussed book and every school received a copy of this in December.
April
For me, April will be remembered as the month of Digital Art Week.  This small project designed by Fred Boss (NCTE), Damien Quinn (Seomra Ranga) and me gave children around the country the opportunity to learn about and publish art to people around the world.  In all, 365 pieces of original artwork were published and we’re looking forward to making this big in 2012!
One of the biggest obsessions for schools this year was Management Information Systems.  In 2010, almost nobody had heard of them but by the time 2011 has kicked off, there were at least 5 different Irish companies offering their take on them.  Back in early 2010, I had written some articles about a small company called Aladdin, who I tried out.  It is heartening to see that they are still doing really well and the pressure is truly on the Department of Education to ditch those rollbooks and move onto an online system.  In April, I decided to challenge these companies with an article about 10 must-haves that Management Information Systems should have. By the end of 2011, I can vouch that the one I’m using has almost all of these.
Another obsession of teachers in 2011 was visualisers, something that seems to be unique for Ireland.  To be blatant, I’m not convinced by these devices and I outlined some of my thoughts in a rather over-dramatically titled article.  With Twitter gaining traction with teachers, I listed some nice web sites I had found through my PLN and went through some good mobile learning tools out there, all of which are better than visualisers!
May
The second technology in education conference of the year was held, as usual, in Tipperary.  As with every other year, it was super and Rozz’s review of the event summed it up really well.  It was also nice to see some of the digital art being displayed in frames at the event!
We also published an interesting survey about Web 2.0 usage in schools.  It was interesting to see how things had changed in less than two years.  With all this in mind, we also published 30 Irish Primary schools who had started tweeting.  I’m sure this figure has grown since then!  We also investigated whether Facebook had a place in primary schools.
With our own Facebook page gaining a few hundred fans, we invited teachers to ask us questions so we could write articles to answer.  One such request was about software so we wrote about our 5 must have pieces of software for primary schools.  Interestingly, most of them were published well before 2011!
June
With the summer holidays upon us, Anseo.net took a slight break from blogging.  However, one interesting event was the first Bloggers International Conference, which was held in Portlaoise.  While it was quite business-focused, it was good to see that there were a few teachers in the crowd and it was interesting to see what we could learn from business and what business could learn from us.
The main news was awaiting Ruairi Quinn’s literacy and numeracy plans.  Quinn flashed us a preview of what was to come in a document that changed very little when it was published.  Sadly, it looks like the section, which will see schools publishing their annual literacy and numeracy scores, will signal the beginning of league tables at primary level.
July
With a huge shortage of jobs for teachers, Anseo.net published some tips for teachers when filling in applications.  However, the big news of the month came from a secondary school in Co. Mayo who announced that all their first year students would be offered an iPad with all their books on it.  This made national headlines and bemused techie-teachers looked on at this damp squib of an idea gripped the nation.
Far more innovative uses of technology were completely ignored by the media.  One such project was “Keep on Track” and another was the Targetboard Project.
Google Plus made its appearance and we all pondered about its uses in education.  Despite initial positive feedback, it still hasn’t really kicked off around the world in a major way and Facebook is still the king of social networking.
August
The Kindle was the main focus of Irish teachers during the summer when a number of them decided to invest in them.  A Kindle book club for teachers was set up and educators thought about their use in the classroom.  With the advent of the Kindle Fire in 2012, the monochrome Kindle 3 probably won’t make it into Irish primary schools.
With the security scandal in Sony, I decided to write something about the security of cloud storage.  Perhaps it was a way to convince myself that cloud security is safe, and I still feel that it is.  Essentially, if a company loses your data, they lose their business.  Therefore, it’s within their interest to be ultra-careful.
It had also been a while since I had written about Interactive Whiteboards, so I summed up the news over the last six months. In fairness, there hasn’t really been much to talk about since Promethean released their touch-enabled board.  The only reasonably big news was Hitachi’s EZ Link tool which was similar to an eBeam.  The difference being that it allows users to touch the screen to interact for the first time.  By the end of the year, it hasn’t really taken off.  This is more to do with schools having no money and already having so many boards.
September
Back to school, I decided to make a prediction that 2011-12 would be the year of the teacher blog.  While it’s still to early to say if I’m right, all signs are positive.  The EduBlog awards in December had a huge number of Irish teachers nominated with 3 blogs reaching the finals.
A number of Scratch workshops went on around the country as programming with children gained some media attention.  I’m a big fan of Scratch and have used it a few times with small groups of children.  With a bit of training, I can’t see why schools couldn’t start using programming somewhere as part of the new digital literacy programme.
October
One of the most successful Maths Weeks took place in October with Anseo.net’s Targetboard project being transformed into an interactive country-wide competition by Waterford IT.  In light of the week, I decided to republish an article I had written a few years before claiming that learning tables off by heart was rubbish.
We also investigated the idea of centralised printing in schools.  We compared the costs of classrooms having individual printers versus one good printing machine, such as a networked photocopier.  We concluded that the latter is a better option but not everyone agreed.
November
Carlow Educate Together became the first school in Ireland (or perhaps beyond) to have its own Smartphone app.  (An iPhone version was subsequently published in December).  The app received local media attention and I would expect that as this idea spreads, other schools will begin to publish their own school app.
Ruairi Quinn finally published the Literacy and Numeracy plans, which ended up including the need for schools to publish their scores to the government.  We wrote an article lamenting the death of our primary school system as we know it.  It will be interesting to see this happening some time next summer.
December
The final month of the year showed no surprises with almost all our articles focusing on Christmas.  However, the budget in Ireland saw some interesting cuts made to education, where there will be many more teachers unemployed come June 2012.  Further strange cuts saw the end of resources for children with English as a second language and a cut to the Modern Languages Initiative.
It will be interesting to see what 2012 brings us.  Right now, we’re looking forward to the BETT conference in London in January.  I’ve volunteered myself to talk at their TeachMeet, which will be the first time I’ll be speaking outside of Ireland, if I’m chosen, that is!  I’m hoping to start developing apps for the iPhone this year and offering those on Anseo.  I also want to improve the navigation on the web site as over the last 4 years there are over 750 articles and it’s not that easy to find everything.  I’m sure that 2012 will bring the “next big thing” in technology in education and we’ll take a look at that.  I’m also hoping to record more videos and podcasts.  Now that I’ve written all this, I’d better get started!  Happy new year everyone!