THE TIME IS RIGHT to establish a place for an Edchatie hub in Ireland, similar to the TeachMeet Hub in Nottingham.
For the past five years, we have held a day-long conference in the Thurles campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology. The staff of Tipperary Institute has graciously supported these events, bringing together 100-150 primary and secondary teachers for a day of workshops and talks. For the past two years, the annual ICT in Education event has run in conjunction with lively CESI Meets in Thurles. The main space inside the Thurles conference centre can hold 240 people comfortably and there is 150 megabit per second bandwidth inside the venue that could stream the day's proceedings to an international audience.
Along with Pamela O'Brien, a fellow LIT lecturer, I'm going to set aside work hours every week to help create a memorable ICT in Education Conference in May 2012. My hope is that it will complement the regular Monday evening #edchatie sessions and offer participants an opportunity to meet face-to-face.
If we follow the Nottingham example, we will roll out invitations to join small groups of educators together in a series of monthly online meetings designed to explore specific topics of interest that unfold during the weekly #edchatie sessions. We would also partner with CESI, perhaps offering to bring a sponsor into the mix for the annual CESI conference.
As a taxpayer, my professional interest is to steer some of our third level practical sessions towards assisting in the capture, webcast, DVD rendering and archiving of material that can serve the continuous professional development of educators.
If you're an educator reading this short post, please share your thoughts and indicate whether you're interested in this initiative.
