Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

30 Irish Primary Schools who Tweet

May 26th, 2011 Simon
schoolsthattweet

There are now a number of Irish primary schools using Twitter.  Over the last year thanks to projects such as Digital Art Week, The cross-Atlantic Sweets Project and various other projects, the power of using Twitter to help schools communicate with each other is starting to gain popularity.  If your school wants to start tweeting, here is a list of primary schools that you might want to check out.

  1. @carlowetns – Co. Carlow
  2. @Room2_cetns – Co. Carlow
  3. @lisavaird51 – Co. Cork
  4. @mrsdoherty1011 – Co. Donegal
  5. @smdp_ns – Co. Dublin
  6. @mrsbellsclass – Co. Dublin
  7. @Room3StRoses – Co. Dublin
  8. @MissFlynnDub10 – Co. Dublin
  9. @mscurtinsclass – Co. Dublin
  10. @room11smgs – Co. Dublin
  11. @StMolaga5 – Co. Dublin
  12. @maree_ns – Co. Galway
  13. @StFiniansNS – Co. Louth
  14. @castledrumns – Co. Kerry
  15. @stcorbansbns – Co. Kildare
  16. @mrlanesclass – Co. Kildare
  17. @BaileRoibin – Co. Kilkenny
  18. @Galballyns – Co. Limerick
  19. @glenmorens – Co. Mayo
  20. @Rang4gsnr – Co. Meath
  21. @CmoreLacken – Co. Offaly
  22. @breachoill – Co. Offaly
  23. @mrquinnsclass – Co. Sligo
  24. @misshynesclass – Co. Sligo
  25. @maugherowschool – Co. Sligo
  26. @mrdalysclass – Co. Waterford
  27. @DysartNS – Co. Westmeath
  28. @MrGallsClass – Co. Wexford
  29. @MsMahersClass – Co. Wexford
  30. @GoreyEducate – Co. Wexford
Posted in Twitter 2 Comments »

Digital Art Week

April 30th, 2011 Simon
tap2011e

This month we had Ireland’s first Digital Art Week for primary schools and it was one of the best weeks I’ve had as a teacher and principal in years.  Over the course of a week (or two) schools all over Ireland used digital tools such as Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia and more in order to learn about art and to create their own pieces of work.  The idea of a Digital Art week sprang up from a Twitter conversation a couple of weeks before my school were due to start our own Art Week, which we hold every year.

Each year, children in my school get a drawing pad and they draw a picture and caption it.  Each year they get the same drawing pad and by the end of 8 years, they will have amassed a progression of their drawing skills from Junior Infants to 6th class.  I wanted to expand on this idea so I went on to Twitter to see if there was anyone interested in collaborating on something else.

Over the course of a few days, Fred Boss from the NCTE (and an art teacher), Damien Quinn from Seomra Ranga (and a primary teacher in Sligo) and myself (also a primary teacher) worked on some ideas to integrate Visual Arts with simple technology.  We came up with a number of  interesting ideas.

There were four main parts to the project.  Firstly, there was to be a shared gallery that all schools could upload images to.  Secondly, there would be an online Art Treasure Hunt.  Thirdly, we wanted to give a list of web sites that children could play around with to gain an insight as to how some famous artists worked.  Finally, being big fans of Twitter, we really wanted to get conversations going there and this was going to be a medium for sharing ideas, questions, etc.

We created a Twitter hashtag (keyword) for the week #tap2011 and began tweeting about the event and asking anyone we knew on Twitter to retweet it.  We also emailed the various education fora and mailing lists such as IPPN, DICTAT and CESI who kindly did not object!  I created instructions for the event on my personal blog (http://www.simonlewis.ie).  On this, we answered questions and hoped that lots of teachers and parents would pick up on it.  Thankfully they did.

We decided to use Flickr as the place to share all the pieces of art that the children were to create.  Flickr is one of the best known photo sharing sites in the world so I felt it would be a good choice.  Teachers simply had to email me and I would give them the username and password to the account and they could upload whatever children’s art they wished.  There was no theme, no type of art and no restrictions (within reason!)  Pupils could take photographs or draw something using Paint or use iPod Touches to create their masterpieces.  There was a great variety of art work uploaded with almost 100 pieces of work uploaded by the end of the first week. Samples of this artwork are scattered throughout this article.  The only downside to this was Flickr is blocked by the Schools Broadband Filtering Scheme on levels 4 and below.  This made it very awkward for some schools to upload images but it was amazing how inventive some teachers were.  One teacher emailed me to say she had uploaded the images on her iPhone using the 3G signal!

Fred Boss acquired a new Twitter friend for us all – a Vole by the name of Leo – who created a fantastic Twitter Art Treasure Hunt.  For two days, Leo would tweet clues, which would link to a web site and questions would be asked about a particular piece of art.  Pupils had to tweet back the answer.  If they were right, they collected a piece of a jigsaw.  If they got all 12 piece s of the jigsaw, it revealed a famous painting!  It was amazing to see so many new faces on Twitter and hopefully it will encourage them to keep on tweeting with their classes after this.

A while back I discovered a fantastic app which allowed children to make paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock (jacksonpollock.org).  I wanted to find other web apps that let children “paint” in the style of other famous artists.  I found a few of these and children were able to play around with artists like Picasso, Keith Haring and Henri Roussau. Some of these images made it onto the Flickr album.

One of the great successes was the use of Twitter throughout the project.  A quick search of the term #tap2011 contains hundreds of tweets from loads of schools and other followers. Another great thing about the project was that there were a number of non-teachers who got very interested in the project.  One such interested party was the National Children’s Gallery who offered to use the art uploaded in the project to their national gallery.

I definitely think this should be an annual event.  The project welcomed teachers who may not have used social media like Twitter before.  It also helped children create their own art and share it with each other.  Most of all, it helped hundreds of children around the country learn a little bit more about art.

 

Posted in Featured, Twitter 1 Comment »

This Month’s Pick of the Web: Twitter

April 30th, 2011 Simon
potwtwitter

There are so many brilliant web sites out there that I thought it was time to start theming my pick of the web each month.  While our sister site, Mash.ie, provides links for thematic planning, this list of web sites is not necessarily for planning lessons.   Moreso, it is a list of useful web sites that I have found through my friends on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.  This month, I’m going to list some of the best links relating to Twitter.  This doesn’t include any of our own Twitter articles, which you can read under the Technology section.  Without further ado, here are 20 of the finest Twitter finds this month!

Opinions on Twitter

Guides to Twitter

Twitter Apps

From Tweepskey.com

Source: Sebastian Bergmann

Interesting Twitter-related Lists

Humour

Posted in Top Picks, Twitter 1 Comment »

EdChat IE

March 28th, 2011 Simon
edchatie

A brilliant new initiative was set up in March for Irish teachers on Twitter.  Every Monday evening between 8:30 and 9:30pm, teachers have the chance to get together on Twitter to discuss a topic relating to Irish Education.  It’s based on the very successful worldwide #edchat and works in the following way.

(From EdchatIE) Firstly, a poll is set up to look for input from all on topics for discussion.  Once that poll has closed the topics are set and then put up for a vote.  The topic that gets the most votes will become the topic for the edchat on the chosen night.

After that, on the following Monday night, the conversation begins.  Anyone can join in the chat by writing a tweet, (a Twitter message), and as long as the hashtag #edchatIE is in the tweet, everybody reading the conversation will be able to see it.

Generally, most Twitter chats begin with people introducing themselves before the  chosen topic is discussed.  Often the Twitter web site, itself, isn’t the easiest way to follow an #edchatie conversation and an app such as Twitterdeck or Hootsuite can be more effective.  One simply has to follow the hashtag #edchatie and as the conversation continues, the tweets update automatically.

At the end of the chat, the organiser takes all the tweets that have been contributed and often places them on a wiki or blog for everyone to see.

The very first #edchatIE took place on 7th March 2011 and the topic chosen for the conversation was “Examples of how a little technology in class can go a long way.”

There were 69 contributors who offered almost 500 tweets over the hour! There were some great contributions and all of them can be found in the transcript: http://edchatie.pbworks.com/f/session_001_ordered_07-03-2011.pdf

Anyone is welcome to join in the #edChatIE conversation.  For more information, go to http://edchatie.pbworks.com/ and join the crowd every Monday at 8:30pm.

Posted in Featured, Twitter Tags: , No Comments »

Twitter and Children’s Hopes for 2011

January 23rd, 2011 Simon
twitterhope

Over the last 6 months, I’ve been trying to use Twitter to support different parts of the Irish primary curriculum.  The plan is the get schools to use Twitter to update their feelings, thoughts and opinions on particular topics.  So far, over 20 schools have joined in and we’ve covered subjects like geography, art and science.  This January, I decided we would try SPHE (Social Personal and Health Education).  The plan was to ask our pupils what their own hopes for 2011 were and to tweet them with the hashtag #2011hope.

It was really interesting to see the different things that children hoped for in Ireland.  There is a lot of talk about the recession and job losses, etc. in Ireland at the moment and I was wondering if this would be reflected in the tweets.  While there were one or two tweets, which went along the lines of:

I hope my dad will get a job this year

I was unsurprised that the vast majority of tweets were not depressing and many of them were fun and some were inspirational.  It was also great to see our Twitter project going international thanks to a link built up by a school in Sligo.  @superkiddos from America contributed to our project.  Here are a selection of my favourite tweets from the project.  You can see all of them by searching for #2011hope on Twitter for the next few days.

I wish that I could go to Lanzarote again on holiday

I hope that im able to beat my mum at monopoly and beat my brother at chess.

I hope that I can help out in the local homeless shelter

I hope that my brother stops hitting me!

I hope there is a new taoiseach.

My hope for 2011 is that Tipp win another All-Ireland

Posted in Featured, Twitter 1 Comment »

Science Week Ireland and Twitter 3

November 24th, 2010 Simon
sciweek3

Science Week in primary and secondary schools in Ireland was showcased a lot on Twitter this year. Using the hastag #twience, schools from all over the country tweeted blog posts, images and videos about experiments they were doing in school throughout the week. It created a huge buzz around the schools participating and schools got to have a glimpse of what was going on in other classrooms around the country.

However did we learn anything?  Can Twitter be used to help children learn aspects of the Irish primary curriculum? Is Twitter just a gimmicky way to be cool and current for the sake of it?

In many ways, the answer to all these questions is yes.  I can only speak for myself, but I did learn lots from other schools.  I will be utilising some of the experiments I saw in any classes I take in the future.  From the rotting melon to the gravity defying eggs, there were some brilliant experiments showcased on Twitter and some great photos shared.

I also think children did learn a number of things relating the the curriculum.  Aside from the Science stuff, they learned some other skills – including how to write a tweet, how to have a conversation on Twitter, how to upload a photograph using handheld technology to Twitter, how to write a blog post and so on.

Sadly, I do believe in a few weeks time, all this great science week work will be lost in cyber space due to Twitter’s short term presence.  It’s said a tweet needs to be read within 15-20 minutes.  Unless it is retweeted, it more or less dies after this.  While using Twitter is great fun and gives great learning opportunities, it is very much an “in the moment” experience.

A more long term, and possibly more educationally beneficial way to have shared our Science Week work, would have been to open a blog and use it for the week.  The blog would be there forever and could be referred to again and again.  Better yet, a wiki would be a cool way for all of us to share our Science Week work in a more permanent way.  Donna McCabes’s wiki – Investigating Science – does just that.

Having said that, Twitter is cool right now and maybe we should embrace it in spite of its limitations.  When the next cool web app comes along, I’m sure we’ll all be using that!

With 3 subjects now investigated, perhaps it’s time to mention the dreaded “C” word and try out a Christmas Twitter project.  I’ll keep you posted…

Posted in Twitter Tags: , , 1 Comment »

Science Week Ireland and Twitter 2

November 18th, 2010 Simon
sciweekj

In the previous article, I introduced a Twitter project about Science Week and in this article, I’m going to showcase some of the work that was shared on our #twience project.

First up was Loreto Secondary School in Navan who kept us up to date with some fantastic projects including 2nd year’s Eggnaut experiment (more information here). During the week, the students had to drop eggs from a height and try not to crack them.  Their job was to protect the eggs as best they could.  Their teacher, @magsamond drew up results throughout the week of their progress.  For example:

#twience 2nd Years Eggnaut Challenge, Loreto Cavan: Today’s Results: Gravity 8, Student Design 3. Ouch. Better luck tomorrow

Day Two Eggnaut Challenge – 3m drop made betters odds – Score = Gravity 3, Second Year Spacecraft Designers 3. DRAW!

They also posted an image to show a flavour of their work on yfrog, an image sharing site.

The first primary school to tweet was Carlow Educate Together NS (my school) where we mixed art with science to explore colours with Junior Infants.  The children mixed colours to invent new colours, some of which can be seen below.

Other great tweets from the first day (along with respective links) included:

AnnKinsella17: Rang 4 had a great time at the solar system workshop in Dunshaughlin. Thanks Deirdre http://eolaiocht.webs.com/scienceworkshop.htm

KerBear1986: #twience #scienceweek day one: quiz on famous scientist and also a static electricity race! Fun fun! Randel (cont) http://tl.gd/6sgi30
@thefrogblog: The Frog Blog Science Week Art Competition http://bit.ly/9IcgWb #scienceweek #twience

However, it was the Tuesday where things really kicked off with some great science tweets.  Schools from all over the country tweeted, blogged and photographed their great science work.

mrquinnsclass wrote several blog posts during Science Week and shared them on Twitter.  For example, their Rotting Melon project, where they investigated how food decomposes produced this rather interesting image:

A 6th class sent their names to Mars.  They shared the web site, where others could do it too! There were also experiments with helicopters, magnets and rockets.

Throughout the rest of the week, Science was alive and well throughout the country with dozens of school’s web sites filled with brilliant science images, slideshows, videos and experiments.

Conversations began from tweets.  For example:

mscurtinsclass: #twience we are comparing jungle animals and pets. There are so many amazing creatures! We would like a tiger but it might not be safe.
sparked some interesting questions about jungle animals and @mrquinnsclass even got an email from a Helicopter Training Academy in Australia after their experiment with helicopters.

By Friday, #twience was over, which coincided with a Twitter user by the name of @Twience tweeting:

twience: Wow! I take a short break, come back and I’m all over the place! #twience

Oops! I probably should have checked whether there was anyone on Twitter with that username!  Anyway, I hope he enjoyed our flurry of tweets about Science.  In the final article on Twitter and Science Week, I’ll reflect on whether Twitter worked for Science Week and what I learned as a result.

Posted in Twitter Tags: , , 3 Comments »

Science Week Ireland and Twitter

November 13th, 2010 Simon
sciweek1

This week is Science Week in Ireland and I decided to try out another Twitter project for schools.  For those of you who missed the previous Twitter projects, the idea behind them was to investigate whether Twitter could be used to support the Primary School Curriculum here in Ireland.  Our first Twitter project focused on Geography – my local area and the second focused on Visual Arts – The most expensive painting in the World.

In line with Science Week’s theme, My Place in Space, the plan this time was to investigate whether schools could share their work for Science Week in their area through a series of tweets, images and videos.

This time we decided to include secondary schools into the loop as I felt it may start some interesting conversations between the two sectors and it might show the some of the similar sorts of work we both do in Science albeit at different levels.

All participating schools had to use the hashtag #twience in their tweets in order to get noticed and we were delighted that the official Science Week people were pleased to back us along with their own hashtag #scienceweek.

Altogether, well over 30 different users participated with 124 different tweets posted.  In the next article, I’m going to share some of the interesting things that were posted and then some of the interesting things we learned from the project.

Posted in Twitter Tags: , , 2 Comments »

Twitter and Visual Arts in Primary Schools

June 26th, 2010 Simon
The Big Curls (Carlow ETNS)

Primary schools in June are hectic places to be. With reports to be filled out, sports days and school trips on the agenda, there isn’t usually a lot of time for anything else. So, it was probably not the best time for me to ask schools if they were interested in an experiment to see if Twitter could be used to support the Irish primary school curriculum.

When twenty schools tried out my first Twitter experiment, which simply asked schools to tell us a little bit about their local area, it was easy to see the potential educational benefits from it.  Not only did we learn about each other’s areas,we found out about all sorts of different things.  For example, schools began talking to each other about their own sports days and school trips.  We found out about famous past pupils from schools.  A couple of the schools even had pupils writing blog posts on their school web sites about their Twitter experience.

I wanted our second Twitter project to push the boundaries of text conversations.  I also wanted to pick a subject that I thought might not be too obvious for a process like this.  I chose Visual Arts.  The theme was to be “the most expensive painting in the world.”  Currently this accolade goes to Jackson Pollock’s “Number 5″ which was bought for $140m in 2006.

Schools were asked to vote on whether they liked the painting, whether they thought it was worth the money and to find out any information about Jackson Pollock as they could.  The schools were also invited to scan in and post up some paintings the children had made inspired by “Number 5″.

The comments came thick and fast:

We don’t think Jackson Pollock’s painting is worth $140m. We think the Mona Lisa is better!

The painting reminds me of a storm.

After a brief glance, we took a vote: 6 liked the painting; 17 didn’t!

It’s colourful & smartly done & unique to other paintings. Your eye stays on it and that’s why I like it.

I like it because it looks fun to do.You see lots of things within it.

I didn’t like it at first, cause I thought I could do it myself….maybe I’ve changed my mind now though!

In first and second class 17 liked the No. 5 painting by Jackson Pollock, 9 did not like it.

we think that a real Jackson Pollock picture would take ages to paint and we think he would needed help

junior infants are painting Jackson Pollock style paintings! Will post up photos. Only 1 junior infants liked the Pollock painting!

We also shared information about Pollock:

Jackson Pollock died in a car crash at the age of 55. His last two paintings were called Scent and Search

He was born in 1912. He would have been about 36 when he painted ’5′.

Jackson Pollack liked to work in a warehouse and he was famous for his splatter paintings.

It was also great to see some interesting ways that schools used the Number 5 painting.  For example, a school in Dublin traced images on their Interactive Whiteboard that they could see in the painting.  They had great fun and said that “even our principal had a go!”

Another school, who are currently involved in a pilot programme using the iPod Touch in the classroom used them to research information on Jackson Pollock and they also wrote blog posts about their experience.

However, for me, the best thing of all was the paintings that children from different schools did inspired by Jackson Pollock.  Three schools were able to upload their efforts to the Internet.  I was blown away by the amazing art that the children produced.  The three schools, Carlow Educate Together NS, St. Martin de Porres NS and Ransboro NS created some brilliant and unique pieces of work.  Below are some examples.  While Carlow ETNS and St. Martin de Porres both used the service “Twitpic” to upload paintings, Ransboro NS downloaded a “Jackson Pollock” app for their iPod Touches and created some interesting works of art.

As we come to the end of the academic year, I feel that we have proved that Twitter can be used as a tool to aid children in the primary curriculum.  Using Twitter has opened up conversations between schools, which are continuing long after the project has finished and many schools are using the service to report on all sorts of events in their respective schools.  I think we’ll continue to try out the use of Twitter in the next academic year and see what sorts of subjects we can focus on.  A big thank you to all the schools who took part.

Posted in Twitter Tags: No Comments »

Our Twitter Experiment according to 6th Class

June 15th, 2010 Simon
Twitter-640x480

The following article was written by 2 sixth class pupils in St. Martin de Porres NS in Dublin. Their teacher is Anne McMorrough, a well known primary school teacher in ICT circles. I’m delighted that the children got so much out of Twitter and I look forward to trying it out again! Over to you guys…

Last week we learned how to use Twitter and we were tweeting with about 21 other schools in Ireland. Twitter is like blogging, only much more posts can be put up during a day, so it’s called micro-blogging – get it?!

Once you have a Twitter a/c, you can follow us @smdp_ns (this stands for St Martin de Porres National School) and see the project at #twexp1 which was organised by @simonmlewis. He is a principal in Co Carlow and he has a website called www.anseo.net and here’s his post about this project: http://www.anseo.net/?cat=147.

Our teacher, Ms Mc Morrough taught us how to tweet, delete, reply (using @ sign) and we had a lot of fun with it. It’s fun, safe and easy to use when you get used to it, but we learned about how important it is to use it responsibly, like not use bad language and spelling and to know that you can follow people and people can follow you. But when people follow you, anything you say will go up on their page!

For this project, we mainly started with Geography. We had to remember to use the hash tag and the code #twexp1, so all the entries could be grouped together and we could see only the schools in the project. We introduced ourselves and we told the other schools who were following us where our school is, a little bit of background on the area, famous people who come from our area etc. It was great when other schools replied and we gathered lots of information. The other schools were from all over Ireland and we had great fun tweeting them!

We’ve had a lot of fun and we hope we get more chances to use Twitter like this in the future.

By Callie and Nadja (6th Class, Ms McMorrough)

Posted in Twitter Tags: 3 Comments »
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