May-Jun: Educating Teenagers on the Good & Bad sides of Web Technologies.

The school year ended on a very busy note for my colleagues and myself at the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics in the University of Galway as we continued to introduce teenagers to our pioneering research and in upskilling them on the positive benefits of web technologies through workshops on creative coding and hands-on smart tools such as Virtual Reality, environmental sensors and citizen apps.

But once again I devoted a lot of time in making our young people aware and prepared, through Internet Safety sessions, of the dangers that exist in social media and gaming by educating them on cyberbullying, online misogyny, porn, hate, violence, racism, fake news and addiction.

In May, I spent multiple days giving Internet Safety sessions to the first and second year students of the BISH in Galway city and to those in both the junior and senior cycles of Coláiste Cholmcille in Connemara. These presentations always include insights into using social media/gaming positively, and Wellbeing elements such as on the importance of a good night’s sleep, spending time in the real world with friends, getting out into a natural environment or undertaking outdoor sports.

As always these presentations are two-way, for I also learn a lot from the young people themselves as they make me aware of problems or sites that they encounter which I personally may not have yet come across. So I always come away better informed allowing me to constantly update my content.

In a time of AI which brings huge benefits but also dangers, regulation of the Web is now needed more than ever before. Governments have to stand up to the mega tech giants and protect their citizenry. People come first.

The BEO project - Connecting Rural Communities to their past.

I recently enjoyed the warm friendly atmosphere of an old style local rural community night in Coldwood National School near Craugwell county Galway.

There was lots of home-baked scones, cakes and teas served by volunteers as grandparents and parents of the present generation of pupils came back to the school of their childhood days to reminisce and tell stories of life long ago recorded on the night by children for a series of podcasts for the 150 year celebrations of this fine educational institution.

As part of Insight's BEO online local heritage project, I was there to help in the collection of photographs from times past brought in by the older attendees and the identification of those in these images.

To support this process I enlarged and colourised in advance a lot of old images associated with Coldwood as well as bringing along multiple familiar artifacts from Ireland in days gone by such as a wooden school desk complete with inkwell, blotting paper, erasure and 1960s/1970s school books; a milk churn; a transistor radio, a Sony Walkman cassette player, photo slides and vinyl record albums.

The effort was worth it as the photos on display helped reconnect families across the decades. Paddy Cahill(on the top left in photo montage), standing beside his son, points to his dad in a 1910 photo that he had never seen before, whilst Paddy Rooney (on the top right) points to himself in a 1950 photo.

By the end of the night, most of the people in the sample photographs on display were identified as great grandparents, grandparents, parents and themselves by the attendees present.

The interesting and often unique materials collected over the last few years under the BEO online digital local heritage project, supported throughout by the Galway County Heritage Office, will be unveiled at a big celebratory launch next March in the Galway Education Centre. 

Details to follow at the end of January.

The Kids Know What is Best for Our City! Let's Listen & Learn from them!

 

The benefits of a partnership and inclusive approach towards developing a future Galway city that is sustainable and integrates nature into its infrastructure was shown yesterday when children from 13 city primary schools took part in Glór na Óganach ('The Voice of Youth') organised by the Galway National Park City (GNPC) initiative supported by the Galway Education Centre. It was an online event chaired wonderfully by Fionnghuala Geraghty, a teacher of Scoil Chaitríona Senior, where pre-teen students gave their opinions by way of talks, pre-event surveys and classroom discussions about what they want in a post-COVID Galway. This event was unprecedented and amply shows the important need and role of a multi-sectoral movement such as the Galway National Park City initiative.

We often talk about what children want but very seldom give them the opportunity to voice their own opinions on how they wish society to develop.

But their answers and comments yesterday were breathtakingly fresh, honest and full of common-sense. They displayed an awareness of the benefits of looking after nature in the city and having increased areas for biodiversity, in planting more trees and having more wildlife; in the need for information noticeboards in areas of nature; in the need to lessen screen time and to play outdoors in clean, safe green spaces and in playgrounds with flowers, more hands-on play equipment and having both walls and trees that they could climb; in the attractions of having lots of classes outside; in having safe walking and cycling routes to school and in/around the school, in banning once-off plastics and in increasing the possibilities of enjoying the local waterways.

Interestingly the overwhelming majority of these boys and girls felt that it was the woods, the seashore and the wildlife that they most liked about Galway city.

They were also fully aware of the dangers of biodiversity loss and of climate change.

So it was heartening to know that our youngest generation have strong feelings of what is most beautiful about our city, are expressing deep concerns about what is wrong with it and know what needs to be done to make it better for both people and wildlife.

So the challenge is for the adults to listen and to learn from the children in order to ensure that we hand them over a ‘liveable’ planet.

We will publish a summary of proceedings over the next few weeks.

Glór na Óganach was the first gathering of pre-teens on the subject of a future city. But not the last. There will be a follow-up in November as part of the Galway Science and Technology Festival and a third will take place in Spring/Summer 2022. A similar thematic gathering of teenagers from second level schools will hopefully be hosted in the festival also. Yesterday’s was the first such event and we will all learn from the experience, improving on it and looking at the possibility of hosting a children’s forum tríd Gaelige and a forum for infants, 1st and 2nd classes.

Finally I extend a big 'Bualadh Bos' (round of applause) to Fionnghuala Geraghty for her awesome work in preparing the teacher/student surveys and in chairing the event, to the Galway Education Centre for its support and of course to the teachers from the 13 schools who made it all possible in the final week of the school year when they are exceptionally busy. We really enjoyed working with ye all. Go raibh míle maith agaibh!

The BEO Project: A School Reunion- 74 years after closure!

A School Reunion- 74 years after closure!

A unique historical community gathering took place last night (Saturday January 18^th) when former pupils of Carrowbrowne National School attended a reunion in Cloonacauneen Castle. Unusual for two reasons: the school closed down in 1940 and the year celebrated will be 1938!

The event was officiated by Mayor of Galway county, Councillor Liam Carroll with local councillors Frank Fahy and Tom Costello representing Galway City Council. There was a display of memorabilia of a 1930s/1940s classroom such as desks, blackboard, books, writing implements, bell, maps, Tilley lamps and an abacus which were supplied by the communications museum located at the Insight Centre in NUI Galway.

Margaret Mulgannon (née O’Brien) of Mervue organised the reunion supported by myself. For in my capacity as Outreach Officer at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics in NUI Galway I manage BEO (Irish for 'alive') , an exciting digital archive schools-based project that represents the largest heritage programme involving schools since the 1930s Folklore Commission. 

Participating schools in BEO host informal local community nights where local residents and former pupils enjoy a chat over a cup of tea and cake with former classmates as well as bringing along photos and films that the pupils digitise, clean up and post onto a unique heritage repository website (irishbeo.com). Podcast interviews are also recorded of the older people’s memories of times long ago. 

The images and recordings collected provide a fascinating insight into an Ireland that is no longer with us- a time of small family farms, communal harvests, strong community spirit, peat fuel, market towns, town factories based on locally source raw materials, Gaelic sports, emigration, deep religious observance and the power and decline of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. 

The oldest person so far interviewed is 93 year old Maisie Sherlock, who was tracked down as a result of a 1928 photograph of Tiaquin national school. Maisie was one of the pupils in the photograph. She was born in 1921 the year before the Irish state was founded; attended Tiaquin school when it first opened on April 6^th 1926; spent most of World War Two as a nurse in London where she was officially commended for her bravery when her hospital was bombed, and witnessed the closure of the school in 1977. In fact her life is the history of modern Ireland. 

Over the last six months, circa 20 schools have organised such reunions with many more to follow over the next year. 2013 was a great opportunity to give impetus to the project as it was the Year of the Gathering providing a lot of goodwill and interest towards facilitating local heritage events involving schools. 

Already photographs from 120 Galway schools are on the BEO Photo gallery website, with thousands of images and dozens of films and podcasts on life in rural Ireland to be uploaded over the next year. The website has had nearly 600,000 hits already which will dramatically increase in the coming months.

The project’s aim is to have all schools of Galway city and county involved and to have all schools past and present identified on a shared website and associated digital map with images of the school and locality in days gone by.  At present, there are circa three hundred schools in Galway city and county, with an estimated two hundred more that have closed down over the last eighty years due to population decline, amalgamation and changes in government policy.

BEO is a partnership proje

ct involving the Insight Centre NUI Galway, Galway County Council, Galway Education Centre,  Galway Retired Teachers’ Association, the Galway Board of the GAA and Ballinasloe Active Retired Association.

At one reunion event held last summer in Castlegar National School as part of The Gathering 2013, Margaret arrived with a photograph of herself as a young girl with fellow pupils taken in front of Carrowbrowne school in 1938. No other known image existed of an establishment that closed two years later when it amalgamated into the new school in Castlegar.  By the end of the event, local people had helped identify the majority of the fifty five pupils and two teachers in the photograph. The interest generated by the image was so strong that Margaret decided to organise a reunion of former pupils and their families with the help of Brendan.

"Cyber Girls’ Power” comes to Galway - Ireland’s premier Digital City

Mercy Secondary School students with Ina O'Murchu at 'Women in Technology' event at DERI NUIG

The hosting of  a major pioneering initiative taking place at NUI Galway on May 17^th-18^th aims to encourage increased learning of computer coding amongst the local female population. Entitled ‘Rails Girls Galway’, the May event is part of a worldwide movement that aims to bridge the gender divide in technology and teach women how to code. The free weekend workshop will let females of all ages in on the exciting world of building web applications and software services. It will be held on Friday and Saturday May 17th-18^th at the NUI Galway’s Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) located in the Dangan IDA/NUIG Business Park.

Coders Needed to Make the much vaunted Knowledge Society a reality 

“Ireland needs computer programmers of both sexes to help lay the foundations of the ‘Knowledge Economy’ and to create the jobs for a sustainable future,” says Myriam Leggieri, DERI researcher and one of the chief organisers. “But there is in particular a serious shortage of female IT developers in Ireland and across the world as well as in the professions of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) professions generally. Events such as 'Rails Girls' directly address this issue and empower girls to take the first step in learning these in-demand skills and acquiring the tools to conquer one of the last great frontiers of science, namely the World Wide Web.”

Alanna from 091Labs

The organisers comprise mainly young female IT researchers involved in local third level colleges, businesses, schools and volunteer digital makers’ clubs such as Coderdojo and 091Labs. Though primarily aimed towards local female students particularly in post primary schools and third level colleges, nevertheless there will be attendees arriving from across Ireland and Britain. The weekend event is free, is open to all enthusiastic girls and women, and is suitable for absolute beginners to computer coding. No prior knowledge of programming is required.

This event is part of a radical technology learning transformation of the city.

Huge Interest in Learning to Code amongst Galway's Youth
Every Saturday morning at NUI Galway and other locations in Athenry and Kinvara, hundreds of enthusiastic children and teenagers create their very own games, digital stories and web projects mentored by the young volunteer mentors of Coderdojo. 

Coderdojo Class in DERI on Saturday mornings

Youth-run clubs such as 091 Labs are also providing informal after-school digital maker’s environments. Thanks to the combined efforts of volunteer tutors from Hewlett Packard, Avaya, GMIT, Medtronic, SAP and DERI working under the guidance of the Galway Education Centre supported by the work of the Galway Science and Technology Forum and Junior Achievement, approximately two thousand pupils and students in over 50 primary and post-primary schools across counties Mayo and Galway are currently being educated in computer programming.  

Transition Year students Davitt College Castlebar learning to code with Brendan Smith DERI

 Recognition of the importance of these developments is shown by the recent inaugural ‘John Cunningham Memorial Coderdojo Awards’ granted to young coders for their outstanding contributions to computer programming; the Boston Scientific ‘Coding the Big Bang’ awards;  and ITAG’s  new ‘IT in the Community Award’ that was won by Coderdojo Galway city.

Birth of Ireland's First Generation of Coders

The end result is that finally, five decades after the tentative introduction of computing into Irish schools, we are experiencing the first generation of children that can code, that are truly ‘digital creators’ rather than just passive ‘digital users’.

Retro Gaming event Computer Museum, DERI

Galway: Ireland's primary Science City
These developments are part of an even bigger picture of progressive change where the city can truly claim to be Ireland's oldest Digital City and probably its premier City of Science having in the process the potential to become the Silicon Valley of Ireland. See my article on this subject by clicking here 

Location for leading International & National Science Research & Science Education centres.
Galway is now the location for the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland (based at DERI NUIG), the national Marine Institute, the National Aquarium (Galway Atlantaquaria), Ireland's longest (2 weeks) annual Science and Technology Festival and the world's largest semantic web research institute (DERI). It was to Galway rather than to Dublin or to Cork that CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, sent their renowned interactive exhibition last September. It was hugely sucessfull and was visited by 12,000 post-primary school students from across the island.
Interestingly the DERI-based  computer museum hosts an exhibit dedicated to women (hidden histories) that were pioneers in communications and computer technologies but are largely unknown by the general public.

Retro Gaming event Computer Museum, DERI