News
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Well done to Ms. Rice’s 3rd class students of Scoil Assaim Boys N.S. in Raheny, Co. Dublin and Mr. McCullagh’s P5 class in St. Teresa's P.S., Omagh, Co. Tyrone on the production of their 2012 calendar.
Although this is their first year of involvement in the Dissolving Boundaries programme, Scoil Assaim decided to undertake an ambitious entrepreneurial project with St. Teresa's. Working in collaboration with their partner school in Tyrone, the children designed, produced their own calendar. Both classes have been very busy with the project since October. They used video conferencing and Moodle to discuss and develop the idea and to share and describe the images used in it. Following that they worked hard to secure local sponsors and supporters for their joint venture.
Pupils have been developing their skills in Marketing and Promotion. Clearly to very great effecvt since all three hundred copies of the Calendar have been sold!
The Dissolving Boundaries offices in Maynooth and Coleraine are very pleased to have this very colourful, interesting and informative calendar about all the different cultural events that take place on the Island of Ireland throughout the year. It is truly a work of art and we congratulate all those involved.The DB team in Maynooth have put the images from the calendar into a short video to give you a flavour of the work itself. If you would like to get more information about how the schools put the project together please contact the DB team.
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Around the world, teachers and educators are looking at how best to link schools together and in 2011, the Dissolving Boundaries (DB) team have been working closely with the Schools Linking Network (SLN) in England to share ideas. In November, four of the SLN staff came to Northern Ireland to look at how we in DB are using ICT.
During their two day visit they spent time in Portstewart Primary School with Principal Alan Millar, DB teachers Caroline Rankin and Sandra Smyth and pupils from Primary Seven.
They also spent time in Holy Child Primary school in Derry with acting principal Orla McDonnell, DB teacher Bill O’Donnell and pupils from Primary Six.
Angie Kotler, CEO of the Schools Linking Network sent us a wonderful thank you letter which we wanted to share with you...
SLN was so inspired by the Dissolving Boundaries programme that we made the very unusual decision to send four members of the SLN team to Northern Ireland to find out more!
SLN has, since 2002, established an effective model of face to face school linking, with proven results in terms of developing positive attitudes to people from different backgrounds and improving confidence and communication skills and increasing willingness to work collaboratively with others.
While we have always used ICT to introduce pupils to each other, we have not until now used it to develop ongoing collaborative work and we are now very excited about the possibility of doing so.
The Dissolving Boundaries team were extremely generous with their time and willingness to explain every detail of their programme to us and some of the participating schools were both impressive in what they have achieved and also in their willingness to explain and share this with us.
SLN has now put in place a clear ICT strategy which we will be able to offer to schools across the UK to support our ongoing programmes and importantly to provide more schools that have been unable to find sustainable links within visiting distance a means to develop a meaningful way of learning together with a link school.
We look forward to having an ongoing dialogue with the Dissolving Boundaries team, sharing successes and new learning from all the ongoing challenges involved both with the process of linking different communities and of course the ICT itself!
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The Dissolving Boundaries Programme was presented to an international audience of teachers participating in the 10th Asia-Europe Classroom Network (AEC-NET) Conference, held last week in Dundalk, County Louth. Over 100 secondary school educators from across Asia and Europe gathered to exchange views and knowledge on the latest technologies that enhance and foster creativity in education.
The five-day conference, entitled “Apps in Asian and European Classrooms! Unleashing Educational Creativity”, was organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), in collaboration with County Louth Vocational Education Committee (VEC). It was supported by the Irish Department of Education and Skills.
This international conference gave an opportunity for Louth VEC to show off Ireland’s education system to the conference delegates and to showcase key ICT projects such as Dissolving Boundaries.
Launched in 1998, the AEC-NET has since grown to involve more than 1,100 members in 846 schools across 43 countries in Asia and Europe. Every year, its members gather to exchange ideas for collaborative learning and intercultural exchanges. Under the motto of ‘Two continents: one classroom’, the AEC-NET aims to encourage innovative, effective and sustainable online intercultural, collaborative learning opportunities for secondary and high school educators and students across Asia and Europe.
AEC-NET confers awards on a selection of outstanding projects. NUI Maynooth picked up a Merit award this year for a project entitled GoCyberGreen that looked at the links between enterprise and the environment. Angela Rickard, as project coordinator who presented the project at the conference, was very ably assisted by fifth year pupil Louise Henry, from Ballyhaunis Community School, Co. Mayo, one of the participating schools. Louise pointed out that in her school there are pupils from 23 different countries. She said that among other things the GoCyberGreen project gave her class the chance to learn about some of the countries where her own classmates are from.
Other shortlisted projects included: A Magic Flight to Benevento, Italy (Italy) ; East Speaks West, West Speaks East 2010 (Germany); Flora and Fauna Conservation (Singapore); Home Seek (Singapore); and Red-listed and Endangered Species Database (RED) (Sweden). (See http://tinyurl.com/AECfinalists for more information about the award winning projects)
The conference was opened by Minister for Education and Skills, Mr Ruairí Quinn, TD and other guests throughout the event included Mr Pat Cox, Former President of the European Parliament; Mr Ciaran Cannon, TD Minister of State, who announced the award winners; Ms Brigid McManus, Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills; and Dr Harold Hislop, Chief Inspector of the Department of Education and Skills.
More information about the AEC-NET Conference is available at http://aec.asef.org
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The latest report on the work of the Dissolving Boundaries Programme, called ‘Crossing the Frontier’, captures work done in 150 schools in the school year 2010-2011. The title of the report reflects frontiers crossed in terms of new areas of knowledge, such as enterprise, innovative links made between different subjects in the curriculum and frontiers crossed in the use of new technologies. Some of the students have used flip digital video cameras with film edited on Macbooks, others have used the video-conferencing system ‘Elluminate’ while nearly all the schools have explored different applications in ‘moodle’ such as the forums, wikis, blogs and podcast options.
The report also shows how frontiers were crossed by teachers in dealing with the challenges of embedding ICT in their everyday work, liaising with their partner teacher across the border to ensure that the work was on track and learning a whole new set of skills about managing intercultural learning.
The final section of the report reflects on how the model that Dissolving Boundaries has used, with ICT at the centre supported by face to face visits is beginning to attract interest outside Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland particularly in England and in the Middle East.
The report is illustrated with hundreds of stunning photographs of work done during the year and especially on 26 May 2011 when all the schools in the programme marked Dissolving Boundaries Day by wearing special T shirts, holding whole school assemblies, inviting parents and members of the community into school to see the work they had done.
Copies of the report are available on the research page of this site.
We are very grateful to the Joint Business Council which represents the employers’ organisations IBEC in the Republic of Ireland and the CBI in Northern Ireland, for funding the report and helping us develop the work done by 20 of the schools on their enterprise projects.
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Media Gallery
The video was created by the pupils in St Mary's Primary School, Ballygawley whose partner school is Mother of Divine Grace National School, Glasnevin.
An overview of the programme, this video explains how the Dissolving Boundaries works, its impact in schools and on the wider community around schools. The film was made in 2008 by Marek Bogacki. documentavi.com
