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I hope you had a lovely bank holiday weekend. This week my podcast is a “love letter” as in what I’d love to see the new Minister for Education tackling in the primary education system.
In this newsletter:
- l🎙 Latest episode of the podcast
- 💭 Education Stories over the last few weeks
- 🧵 Some threads
Don’t forget, you can read all of my previous newsletters on Anseo.net. 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 Whenever I talk to teachers, they often say they agree with about 80% of what I talk about when I talk about the education system. I always know what they mean so I don’t think my list of things I’d love for the new Minister for Education to do will be any different. Listen in and see if I’m right!
With Helen McEntee ready to start her new portfolio as the Minister for Education, it was interesting to read what the media had to say. Emma O’Kelly listed a number of important issues on her RTE “blog” and Jess Casey also wrote well about education issues in the Irish Examiner. Meanwhile, the Irish Independent decided that the most pressing issue for McEntee was ending the infant hour as it is a pain for parents and their childcare arrangements. Just when you thought education was being taken seriously! I was also interested in a story that has been rumbling below the surface, that is the portrayal of Jews in Irish school textbooks. It was covered by Newstalk with Maurice Cohen speaking about it. It was timely, in some ways, due to a controversy at the Holocaust Memorial Day service. Given I’m the only principal in the country from a Jewish background, I thought I’d investigate with the help of AI. I get a daily feed of education stories from the media, and almost every day, there’s a story from a UK tabloid where a mother is giving out about being fined for taking their child out of school during term time. There’s something distasteful about it, in my view. At least in Ireland, we give people their dignity even when their situation is far far worse than Whitney in the Sun. My favourite thing about St. Brigid’s Day, apart from the new bank holiday, is the annual debate about whether spring starts in February or not. For those of you who agree with 80% of what I say, you’ve guessed it, I’m on March’s side! 
I’m still developing videos on my YouTube channel to summarise articles and opinions using AI. This fortnight I created a guide to starting a social media account for a school. I’m using an app called Pictory to do this. While I like Pictory, I do have a couple of niggles with it. The big big problem is that it doesn’t have any Irish accents, which is very annoying so I’ve had to go with a pleasant sounding Australian guy. However, it is the simplest way to create AI generated faceless videos I’ve found so far but unless they get the Irish accent sorted, I’ll be moving on. 
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