ireland

Jim O'Sullivan and Sally Reynolds presented the results so far of the SoRuraLL project during the CESI annual conference held 5-6 February in Portlaoise, Ireland.

This conference, entitled Creative Technology for Challenging Times brought together about 150 teachers and others working with ICT in primary and secondary schools in Ireland for a day and a half of presentations, exchanges and discussions about the effective implementation of ICT in Irish classrooms. One of the highlights of this conference was the presentation given by Joe Dale on 'New Tools, New Curriculum, New Opportunities', to find out more about Joe and the tools he recommends, visit his blog.

The SoRuraLL presentation provided an opportunity to showcase some of the blogs and websites being developed by rural schools in Co. Clare as part of this project.

On Thursday and Friday 14 and 15 January 2010 ATiT participated in the mid term project meeting of the European Commission Lifelong Learning Project SoRuraLL, which focuses on using information and communication technologies in rural parts of Europe, especially within the education and training domain.

Partners from Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Poland gathered in the excellent premises of Ellinogermaniki Agogiki to discuss the progress of development and pilots. The pilot activities are beginning now and will continue until July involving teachers in Greece, Spain and Ireland as well as learners in Germany and Bulgaria and citizens in Poland.

The second meeting for the SoRuraLL project consortium took place in Barcelona this week in which ATiT is a partner. SoRuraLL is experimenting with various social networking tools to support educational objectives in rural schools and telecentres in different parts of Europe.

The user trials being organised by ATiT involve primary and secondary schools in County Clare in Ireland who from September 2009 onwards will take part in a series of trials involving the creation of local content-driven, community-orientated web sites, school blogs and the use of Skype for learning purposes. Other trials in SoRuraLL involve Greek Farmers, the unemployed in Germany and Poland and teachers in Spain, Poland, Bulgaria and Greece.

As part of the European Commission supported SoRuraLL project, ATiT held a workshop in the Clare Education Centre in Ennis on Thursday 7 May on the topic of Social Networking and how tools supporting the creation of user-generated content can be used in primary and secondary schools.

Teachers from 5 primary schools in County Clare took part in this workshop which also provided an opportunity to talk about the trials that will take place in the 2009 - 2010 school year.

ATiT is organising an information evening for teachers in the western Irish county of Clare on Social Networking Tools and Platforms in Education in conjunction with the Clare Education Centre on Thursday 7 May at 19.00. Teachers taking part can find out more about social networking software and how it is being used in schools throughout Europe. They will also be invited to discuss how tools like YouTube, Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Bebo can be used to support teaching.

This event is part of the recently launched SoRuraLL project and will also be an an opportunity to find out more about the trials taking place in Clare during the 2009/2010 school year and how teachers in the region can get involved.

For more information contact info@atit.be

ATiT has recently joined a new project called Rural Social Networking for Lifelong Learning (SoRuraLL) which will investigate the potential offered by social networking tools and platforms to those living in geographically and socio-economically disadvantaged rural areas.

More specifically, SoRuraLL will develop and implement experimental learning approaches examining the potential offered by these new trends and tools for the alleviation of the socioeconomic disadvantage suffered by rural populations in Europe, and in particular for the enhancement of rural citizens’ opportunities for effective and meaningful lifelong learning.

ATiT will be responsible for managing a trial involving schools in the East Clare region of Ireland. This is a Lifelong Learning Programme project (KA3) involving partners from Greece, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Spain and Belgium. The kick off meeting of the project took place in Patras, Greece on 29-30 of January 2009.