Two Line Tuesday
Michael Noonan wants to give all children an iPad each as part of his election manifesto. Noonan is clearly either trying not to get re-elected or he’s trying to annoy Microsoft, Google and all the other companies who make tablets.
Microsoft
Swapping Books for iPads?
The Irish Independent reported recently that an anonymous donor had given a school in Fermoy, Co . Cork, a load of money to buy iPads for all the pupils and staff. The Independent states that it will be to replace textbooks and homework. The school’s principal, James O’Donoghue, hailed it as “a landmark day for Irish primary … Read more
Tablet Review October 2014
Almost everyone is interested in buying sets of tablets for their schools these days. 2014 has been the year where they are starting the gain a lot of attention with primary schools. Like the world of Interactive Whiteboards a few years ago, there are a lot of choices out there so I’ve decided to take a … Read more
Sleeping with the Multinationals
I was fairly shocked when I was made aware of this press release from the Department of Education. Twenty graduates of technology or teacher training college courses are to get work placement positions in Microsoft Ireland to help develop digital material for the school curriculum as part of a deal signed by the Minister for … Read more
€150m for Smart Schools isn’t smart at all
I feel that I should reiterate that I have deep concerns about the €150m investment in “Smart Schools”, which I wrote about a couple of months ago (http://anseo.net/?p=1538), as it’s just been published this week. My main problem is with the impression that our ICT infrastructure in our schools is even adequate. There appears to … Read more
A committee to save ICT in schools
The Irish Independent featured an article about how Ireland is languishing near the bottom of league tables for computer usage. Everyone is pointing their finger at the government. So, a nice big committee full of Department of Education officials, a couple of quangos and the heads of Ireland’s major IT companies have got together to … Read more