As part of last Nov’s Galway Science & Technology Festival I organised a very special event in the Galway Education Centre with its director Liam Mitchell. Bernard Kirk my good friend & internationally renowned educationalist, acted as Master of Ceremony.
The occasion was a re-launch of science films made by the children & teachers of 35 Galway city & county primary schools involved in the Fionn School Science project, an inspiring pioneering government-funded initiative that operated from 2001/2002 to 2004/2005. As well as the viewing of the project films, there was an exhibition on the night comprising equipment, media coverage, awards & even science exhibits made by the young participants all those years ago.
Fionn led the way in successfully pioneering the introduction of science into Ireland’s primary school curriculum by having participating schools make a series of highly informative child-centric science & technology online videos during the period 2002-2005.
I was delighted to see so many fellow veteran STEM & Science Festival stalwarts in attendance as well as so many of the great teachers I had worked with on the Fionn projects all those years ago.
We were also honoured to have present at the event the family of the late Noel Treacy TD who, as Minister for Science, Technology & Commerce, secured the government mandate & funding for Fionn. Noel was one of the most ‘lets get things done’ politicians that I ever had the privilege to work with.
Over the last few years I spent much time searching for & gathering up these films that were on old VHS tapes, DV cassette tapes & DVDs in order to digitise them & make them available online once again after a gap of nearly 20 years for the benefit of present & future generations.
With over 110 videos digitised & to be made available shortly on the BEO heritage website (provided by Insight Centre for Data Analytics in association with University of Galway and the Heritage Office of Galway County Council) they show the children of Galway city & county schools of nearly a quarter of a century ago as vanguards in bringing science into the Irish Primary Educational Curriculum which occurred in autumn 2004.
Many of the themes of these films include topics so relevant to today’s educational world e.g. air quality, waste management, biodiversity restoration, peatlands, reforestation, heritage protection, water pollution, renewable energies, communications, optics, circulatory system, geology & farming.
Nor surprisingly these videos became a valuable online resource for schools nationwide over a number of years. Furthermore, for 4 consecutive years the Fionn schools also formed the major educational component of the annual exhibition of the Galway's Science Festival which was held during this period in Salthill(Leisureland & Galway Bay Hotel). Up until 2001, there was usually only one school having a stand at its exhibition finale. In 2002, there were 28 Fionn schools exhibiting & their presence remained constant for the following 3 years & beyond.
Encouraged by Jimmie Browne I applied for & was appointed coordinator to help develop, under the stewardship of the Galway Education Centre, what turned out to be an innovative & pioneering project. It was my first re-entry into Irish education after a gap of over 10 years which included spending a few years working outside Ireland & in other sectors within the country.
Bernard at the time was Director of the Galway Education Centre with Ciaran Folan as its technology advisor. Both powerful STEM advocates. The project was also generously supported by Jimmie Browne, Pat Morgan, Tom Hyland (RIP), Simon Lenihan, & Malachy Thompson in their capacity as members of Galway Science & Technology Festival committee.
Our remit was to help in what was really a RE-introduction of science into the primary school curriculum after an absence of nearly 80 years. For it was taken out to make way for the Irish language soon after the foundation of the Irish Free State.
We knew that teachers already had a packed daily schedule, providing a wide range of subjects as well as sport, health & social activities. Now they were expected, with very few additional long-term resources, to become familiar with & embrace a brand new & very important subject, one that was expected to help shape the country’s economic development.
Understandably there would be resistance from some within the teaching profession.
A difficult challenge lay before us.
Still we planned to capture the imagination of both teachers & children.
Our aim was to make science exciting, fun, hands-on, using high tech, easy-to-embrace, inclusive, relevant to their everyday lives, cross-curriculum, involving the whole class or school that they would enthusiastically want to sign up to as a pilot school!
So at the start of the 21st century, we came up with something completely different from anything that had gone before...(Part 3 is next post)
At a time (early 2000s) when the public perception of a scientist was oftentimes of someone who was male, old, grey-haired, ‘nerdy’ and dressed in a white lab coat, we adopted a logo (designed by Lol Hardiman) for Fionn that portrayed a happy boy and girl dressed in colourful clothing trying out science experiments together.
In an era before broadband, smart phones and social media immersion, we gave participating schools their first ever laptop (Apple iBook- Macbook's predecessor), their first ever high speed digital phone line (ISDN), their first ever hand-held video camera, their first movie editing software (iMovie) and their first training in video production in order for them to make a series of child-centric films every year for four years related to science and technology but also taking in other aspects of the school curriculum such as languages, music, history, geography and art. The completed films each year were hosted on a Department of Education website as well as on a specific Fionn website (developed by Diarmuid O’Riordan) that gave schools their first ever presence on the World Wide Web. A 'Directory of Science Experts' was compiled comprising scientists and other STEM advocates from NUI Galway (now University of Galway), GMIT (now Atlantic Technology University, Galway Atlantaquaria, Coillte, Teagasc, Western Health Board (now [Health Service Executive, the Western Regional Fisheries Board (now Inland Fisheries Ireland) and elsewhere who were available to support schools with their Fionn projects. We also funded artists Martin O'Ceidigh, Lol Hardiman, Diarmuid Mullen and Podge Daly to provide artistic mentoring to the schools for their projects.
Not surprisingly Fionn projects won many local and national awards and acted as a catalyst in the establishment of a Schools category within the inaugural Galway County Heritage Awards (now the Cathaoirleach Awards) launched in 2003 by its awesome Heritage Officer Marie Mannion.
Fionn’s legacy is a proud one. For I sometimes meet teachers, scientists and engineers who tell me that a Fionn science project inspired or reinforced their interest in what became their future careers. And today science is a key subject taught in all of the 3000 primary schools schools in Ireland. As the old proverb states, “Mighty oaks from small acorns grow”.
Photo on left shows my son Dáire at a Fionn stand in the Galway Science Fair 2003.
Photo on right shows Laura Porter (teacher & science advocate at New Inn National School) proudly pointing to herself on a Fionn film from 2003 when she was a senior infants class pupil at Ballymana National School. With Laura is Anne Murray, manager of the Galway Science & Technology Festival. Photo taken at the Fionn Science Films Launch.
