Following the announcement by the Department of Education that all schools will share a grant of €1,700 + €34 per pupil, I’ve been asking primary school teachers and principals how they are going to spend their money. Well, to be honest, several primary school principals are asking me about how to spend their grant. These … Read more
This is a press release I received today. I was thrilled to receive it because in all the madness of the anger, revenge and striking, some agencies decided to think about the people that are being affected most. So without further a do – Primary Management Bodies call on Unions and Government to avoid disrupting … Read more
Readers of this web site know that I enjoy ranting about technology in primary schools. I’ve been asked to give a talk in Carlow Town on Wednesday, 25th November about how schools around the country are using technology in their everyday lives. The talk is aimed at parents, teachers, business people and anyone with an … Read more
According to a principal colleague of mine, it appears that every school will get €1700 plus €34 per pupil (based on last year’s numbers) from this new ICT grant announced last week. This principal rang the Department of Education to find out about this grant. Big schools are going to get a lot of money! … Read more
The following press release confirms that Smart have the biggest market share in IWB technology in Ireland. This is interesting news for all those schools that believed it was their main competitor who were the number one seller. I’m assuming within a few days I’ll be getting an email from them with a retort! 😉 … Read more
The following is a press release. National Geographic and Promethean unleash the power of nature in classrooms country-wide Today Promethean, a global leader in education technology solutions, introduces National Geographic Young Explorer ActivLessons; a series of interactive whiteboard lessons designed specifically for pupils in junior infants, senior infants and first class. Engineered to expand and … Read more
Faced with the exciting prospect of having a new Smart Interactive Whiteboard in my classroom in September I took it upon myself to become armed with a host of internet resources. I opened up Google and typed in “Interactive Whiteboard resources” only to find that there were 1,480,000 links. Where to start? There is a … Read more
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed the Interactive Whiteboards on the Irish market and there’s been a number of major changes. The biggest news for me was the big change in distribution of Promethean boards, which are no longer sold by Prim-Ed. There are now 18 completely different types of IWB on my review. … Read more
For those of you following me on Twitter, you would have heard me going on about a new web site that I’m writing called Mash.ie. Essentially, this web site is another idea I have of making teachers’ lives a little easier, including my own. Now, Mash.ie is not up and running yet. It’ll take another … Read more
I decided I’d go about asking the powers that be about online application forms for teaching posts. My intention for next year was to do this when hiring our next teacher. I rang the INTO and CPSMA. Basically the story is that we can’t do the online application thing. Technically we shouldn’t be even accepting … Read more