Technology has given teachers some new superpowers! It is possible for classrooms to open their walls around the world and to communicate with each other. Many schools are now communicating with parents via technology, whether it’s by text messaging or online newsletters or social media. In this article, I’m going to discuss 3 ways that teachers … Read more
Often you hear the cliché, “Back in the day, life was much simpler,” and in terms of technology, despite companies spending millions on making life easier for us, things are much more complicated. Back when the “new” curriculum was invented, schools that had computers generally had PCs running Microsoft Windows. Any devices such as cameras and video cameras … Read more
It’s probably every teacher’s worst nightmare: the children are plugged into virtual reality headgear and someone else is giving them their lessons while the teacher is redundantly hanging about or simply a bystander while the lesson is going on. Although the scenario is as unlikely as any virtual primary school teacher has so far proven … Read more
Lots of new school buildings are being built lately around the country, which is lovely news, and I’ve noticed that I’m getting a lot of questions around how technology works in terms of a new building. There are all sorts of decisions that have to be made in terms of what to buy and what setup … Read more
Back in 2012, I wrote an article about how to spend the €5,000 new classroom grant. This is one of the grants that escaped the cuts of the last number of years. Any time a school opens a new classroom, the DES give a grant of €5,000 to stock it with ICT equipment. It’s a … Read more
Selfie was the word of the year 2013 and there are no signs of it losing its popularity and you can see people, young and old taking selfies anywhere and everywhere! It might get on your nerves but if you try to incorporate this super easy and effective tool into your classroom, the children will … Read more
I received an interesting email from a principal who did a lot of station teaching work for literacy. One of the activities involved children listening to audio books using CD players. However, she has run into a problem in that she is finding it difficult to find anywhere to buy a replacement Discman when one breaks down. (For those … Read more
Last year my school invested in some Digital Signage. In the article, I wanted to share some of the ways we’ve been using the Digital Signage and how it has added to our communication system in the school. For those who haven’t head of Digital Signage, you will definitely have seen it! Look around many shopping … Read more
Technology has become a major part of our education system in a very short amount of time. Looking back to 2005, according to an inspector report on ICT in schools only 4% of teachers said they used ICT on a daily basis in their classroom. A few short years later almost 92% use technology in … Read more
One of the costs that schools have to think about is printing costs. It used to be a simple affair in that one would buy an inkjet printer for every classroom. However, laser printers and networked photocopiers have come down in price to a huge extent so should schools move away from having individual printers … Read more