Two months ago I was asked Minister Ciaran Cannon & Bernard Kirk to be a part of the Junior Panel for the Conference/Festival Excited in Dublin Castle on May the 30th & 31st. They explained to me that Excited would be the“ Bringing together of digital learning trailblazers from Ireland and abroad to celebrate and learn from past achievements. In consultation with teachers, young people and leaders in enterprise and academia we will chart the way forward for the future of technology in education”. To me that sounded a little bit optimistic, but how wrong I was.
The minute I arrived in Dublin Castle on Friday the 3oth I could feel it, I could feel an unexplainable buzz, it was amazing. I spent Friday meeting the rest of the Junior Panel ( The BT & EU young scientist winners Sophie, Emer and Ciara. Also Catriona Carrigan who created Piano Rock Star which was developed into a GCSE short course on algorithms by CoderDojo, Intel and e-Skills UK.) and then had the pleasure of meeting Marty Cooper the inventor of the Mobile phone ( One of the best moments of my life ☺ )
I then spent the rest of the day walking around meeting kids from schools from all around the country and seeing and hearing what they were doing in school and what ideas they had to improve Technology in Education. To say I was impressed would be an understatement, every single child I spoke to had amazing ideas on how to improve Technology in education(I am 95% the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs was in that room). It proved to me and Im sure everyone else that we don't need someone with a PHD to tell us how to improve Technology in Education, we need the kids who would be using it to tell us.
I also had the opportunity to sit in on the Dragons Den, which truly blew me away. The amount of fantastic ideas the kids had was amazing
I also had bit of fun while I was with the kids. Me being as childish as I am. #ExcitedSelfie
Then there came the official launch of Excited that evening which was fantastic. I had the opportunity to meet people from Mircosoft, RTE, Lego and many other major companies. We then all went into the main centre where we started off the night by hearing the very talented Ciaran Cannon play the Keyboard and then onto Lord David Puttman.
Then to day two where I heard a number of fantastic Teachers speak about what they were doing to introduce technology into their schools and how they felt they were getting on. These teachers are amazing and the work they are doing is fantastic. They proved they were going the extra mile to improve the quality of education their own students and other students are receiving.
We then proceeded on to the panel discussion that featured Evelyn O Connor, Tricia Kelleher, Peter Creedon, Prof Mark Brown, Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning, DCU and Bill Liao, SOS Ventures investing partner and co-founder of CoderDojo.
Then we heard what the girls Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey, Sophie Healy-Thow — BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition winners 2013, had found out from speaking to the kids on Friday.
Then we had my panel discussion where I had the opportunity to be on stage with some fantastic people, Caitriona Carrigan, Teenage app developer, Ciara Judge, BTYSE winner 2013, Ciara Chaney and Pamela O’Brien.
We then heard a number of people including the MD of Lego speak about what they are doing to introduce more creative learning and Steve from Microsoft show us some of Microsofts cool resources. We then finally heard Sean O'Sullivan & Ciaran Cannon speak to Salman Khan from Khan Academy.
As I walked out of Dublin Castle that Sunny bank holiday weekend I couldn't help but feel that we achieved something truly fantastic, I couldn't help but think those two day really would make a difference and I truly feel they will. The reason being that I constantly felt that the people there genuinely wanted good to come of the event and that they weren't just there to show their faces or to make up numbers but there to make a difference.
I really do hope something good comes out of Excited. I can personally say from Kid Techs side that we will do all we can.
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