Summer Courses 2017

For Summer 2017, TeachNet are offering seven EPV Day Approved courses, to help you and your school achieve effective ICT integration into teaching and learning, including two new blended (Face-to-face and online) courses, ‘Making Sense of Minecraft for Education’ and ‘Enhancing 21st Skills using Microsoft Tools’, developed in association with Microsoft Education. TeachNet’s online courses bring together the expertise of St. Patrick’s College and the practical approach of our course…

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BETT 17 – What were some of the highlights?

The BETT Show in London has been on the go for over 30 years now and it never ceases to amaze me how many people make the journey to see what is new in the world of ICT and education. This year there seemed to be an increased Irish presence with the announcement of funding for ICT in schools. This year’s show was notable in that it had some very…

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The Best Things in Life Are Free! Part 3

With the end of the year fast approaching, I thought I’d use this post to conclude the walkthrough series on setting up Office 365 for Education (and for free!). That’s an email service for staff and students on their own school domain, 1TB of cloud storage per user, shared collaborative spaces (virtual staffroom/classrooms) cross-school and cross-platform, free gratis! The only possible stumbling block was setup and hence this trilogy of…

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The Best Things in Life Are Free!

I’ll keep going and roll out all the clichés ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’, ‘You get what you pay for’, ‘Pay peanuts and you get monkeys’, I could go on… instead however, I just want to remind readers, that on occasion, you can indeed (legally) acquire valuable digital tools free gratis and an excellent illustration of same is Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office suite AKA Office 365. Whilst this…

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OneNote Learning Tools

One of the most powerful and useful tools within Office 365 is OneNote. OneNote is s a computer program for free-form information gathering and multi-user collaboration. It gathers users’ notes (handwritten or typed), drawings, screen clippings and audio commentaries. It is a tool that can be used by students, teachers, principals for a multitude of purposes. Whilst OneNote is bundled with the subscription based Office 365, it is also available…

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Advancing the tablet beyond an e-reader ; a forethought or an afterthought?

Much of the initial argument to introduce 1-to-1 digital learning devices in schools hinged on the imperative to address physically demanding weight of students’ schoolbags.Now however management and teachers are tasked with advancing these devices beyond e-readers. Here lies a bone of contention; devices were opted for without proper consideration, training, and planning regarding their role in terms of e-learning, digital creativity and  adaptability to a new curriculum. Scaling this…

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