How to use WhatsApp on your PC (and reduce notifications on your phone) 💚
Do you belong to those of us who prefer typing to tapping out text on the phone? Would you like your phone to ping less with notifications from all those…
Do you belong to those of us who prefer typing to tapping out text on the phone? Would you like your phone to ping less with notifications from all those…
Recently, I had the pleasure of running a 90-minute Minecraft project for Louth Libraries. Over a dozen young Minecrafters participated, and what they created in that short time was so…
Notes and Thoughts from the Learnovation 2018 Conference, Croke Park, Dublin, 3 October 2018 For what future am I preparing the participants of my creative computing classes? My vision is…
We both made the trip across the Atlantic to experience Scratch where it is created… in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Lifelong Kindergarten Group, led by Mitchel Resnick, at the MIT Media Lab has been creating and developing Scratch since 2003. We got to meet lots of them at the conference, as well as many of the 600 other educators. There were workshops and keynotes, an exhibition and lots of great opportunities to talk to others using Scratch. Most were educators (lots of primary school teachers, a good few secondary school teachers, more librarians than I would have expected). The Scratch Team were very much there as well, always available for a chat and very engaging and open to all.
I brought home so many great ideas that I can just scratch (oops) the surface here. The conference will definitely influence the cccSkerries coding classes for the next 2 years, until Scratch 2020! Still, here are a few thoughts. (more…)
It’s back to school time, and for most parents, that means re-establishing routines. Around bed times, around getting homework done, around outside play, around proper nutrition, around limiting screen time… It can seem overwhelming. So many things to consider!
One thing I’ve found is that having clear rules helps – as long as they are simple, and as long as there are not too many of them! As a digital educator, there are two aspects I’d focus on: Screen time, and what to encourage the child to “do online.” (more…)
Millions around the world use Scratch as their first coding experience. To learn from the best Scratch educators, to get some new inspirations, and to share my own experiences with this fantastic coding platform, I went to the international Scratch 2017 conference in Bordeaux, aka Scratch2017Bdx, this July, and I was not disappointed! Here are just some of my take-aways… many of them will make their way into my classes with cccSkerries (in real life, here in Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland) and (online) with thecccCo.
This is a longer version of the article submitted to SkeriesNews for their 21 April 2017 edition.
So you’re thinking about that summer holiday, as you would, this time of year. South of France maybe. Or Italy. Spain beckons. Or that city tour to Germany you’ve been promising yourself? Finally make it to Russia, see the Kremlin for yourself? You could probably get by with English there, but wouldn’t it be more fun to be able to understand and speak the lingo a bit?
Indeed it would, and there is an easy (and free!) way to prepare yourself for the linguistic challenge – in just 5 minutes a day! (more…)
What will all the developments in technology mean for our daily lives, here in this seaside town in North County Dublin? What is in store, technologically, for the next generation – what will life be like for our son, who is now 16, when he is our age? Indeed what will life be like for us all in one, two decades? That’s what I found myself wondering after attending the two-day 1st Dublin Tech Summit in Dublin on February 15 and 16.
Indeed. Subscribe to any of the Irish daily newspapers online, and you can read it without ever having to fold a paper again. Good for the environment, good for your purse.
For the environment? Have you ever looked at the pile of old newspapers building up in the corner?
It’s a lot cheaper. €4 per week for the Irish Times ePaper; €14.99 per month for the Herald, €19.99 for the Irish Independent. And they all offer the first month for just one Euro.
Same here. However, I’ve resubscribed to the Irish Times online, and it’s so much better now! (more…)
A: Well, you go to Instagram to see good, interesting, fascinating, beautiful, handsome, intriguing, happiness-inducing images – mainly shot with a smart phone, and practically always square. You share them – normally not with anybody in particular, but with anybody who is looking. Whereas on Facebook you share pictures with family and friends mainly.
Or, as Instagram puts it: “Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever.”