 Rwy'n meddwl am ydy'r gwoundedig o'r perifer o'r dŵr iawn i'r raddyn ni i mewn i gyfyddiadau arall, chi'n system ar gyrraethu chi yn ddylch i'r llwydd. Rydych chi'n digwydd yn debyg arall sy'n ni'n со uchydigodd y mae'r yn niechau ar y Rhifeddaeth, ym dryl iawn Iann McLaren. Iann wedyn yfodol y Nallanolol Cymru ar y gким yn y fwelth. Dyna chi wedi amser y dyfodol yma yn 2013. A rydyn ni'n fawr yn eu cyfatr oedd i ni yn ei hyn ymmyddiadau i'r hynion. ond yn gweithio'r bwysig yw'r yw'r wyf yn gweithio'r ysgol. Yn dweud o'r cyflwynt yma, ymlaen y gweithio'r ysgol, y pethau cyfrannu ac yn gweithio'r gweithio'r cyfrannu yma yn ddifu'r cynhyrchu cyrraedd digitalol sydd wedi'u ddweud y dda, mae'n ddegwyddiadau o'r dddefnydd. Yn ei wneud bod yn blaen o ôl o fewn fwyaf sydd wedi'u cyfrannu. Felly, ein bod yn ymddangos maen nhw'n cerdd, ddau allan o pertyd yn yr unig o'r ysgol, am eu bod yn ddweud i dyleu ddau'r ysgol yn maneill ddangos maen nhw'n cerdd, yn y llai ymddangos gwaheg, yn y llai'r jyf entropynau, yn ynchwyngu i'r gwaheg a'u gweld. Ian hefyd yn y fyddiol ar y llyfridd unrheill gweithgai naturen, yn ei hirgyntedd i'r gweithiol chi. Mae'r bobl yn wneud i'r ffordd nesaf, ac yn ystod yn ymgyrch meddwl i'n bwysig o'r hyn yn eich bod yn eich bod yn oed yma'r ffraimorg felly mae'n cael bod yn oed yn ffwrdd gwybodaeth o'r gwahon o'r ffordd rhai, ac yn y ffwrdd rhai, yma'r llwyth yn dweud. Ian, rwy'n rhoi wedi'n fawr. Rwy'n rhoi'n rhoi'n rhoi. Rwy'n rhoi'n rhoi'n rhoi'n rhoi. Fi wneud yw eiscwer o'r idea yna lleol ar y bwyd. Felly y gwnaeth y ffeithiau a'r bwyd yn ym gazwch. Felly dyna'n insistiwn ffocusam na ffordd ag ffwg iawn, eu bod yn ymgyrch yn bwyd yn digwydd ar y bwyd yn gwisio'r sydd yn ymgyrch, bod yn dweud fy ffordd. Felly, nid oes i'n ddigon o ddau dros ymweld i'n ffocws i ddweud o ddod o ddau ddau arall. Yr ystod gyda, mae'n gwybod o'n gyflawn i gyd yma'r cyflawn o'r ddechrau yn fwy o'r cyflwynt yma oedd ym mwyaf, yn gwybod o'r ddau cyflwynt o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddau a'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. yw'r ddiweddol yn ymweld y ffordd yn ymweld y newid ysgol digital ysgol ymweld, sy'n ddod yn gweithio i gyd. Yn y gweithio, mae'n gweithio'n ysgol yw'r problemau clasic yw'r ffordd yn gweithio'n gweithio'r hwn yn ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos a'u cyfnodol ymddangos, ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ac ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos, Llanling experience. Ond yr hyn y gwangrifennu yn gael sylweddau i gael rhoi'r cynniadau sgolus gwaith. Dyna y gweithio dyna dyna fydd hynny iawn i gael nhw'n gwybod agor i fod yn gwasanaeth, ond whysbyrdd amddai bod yn olygu gael eich bod yn lle ffordd fel y board. Mae'r pryd gwneud bod cydnog ar whippedio'r ffordd yn ddechrau gael yng Nghymru i'r llêymau iddyn nhw'n ei rôl yn cael i fod yn glen ynghyn i'r iawn. But they're often not necessarily bundled into these kind of summary talks when you talk about students and academic staff. There's a whole lot of other people as well. If you've got an issue like this, as many countries have, of course, digital skills gap, then the typical solution would be for a project team like ourselves to perhaps sit down and draft a formal competency framework document, come up with a set of policies and standards and take it through various committees and so forth. Y cwestiynau yw, mae'n cyfnodd ar y projiect, ac mae'n ddweud o'r llanhau. Yn gyfnodd, mae'n cyfnodd ar y cyfnodd yma, mae'n cyfnodd ar gyfer y cyfnodd yma, mae'n cyfnodd ar gyfer, ond mae'n cyfnodd ar gyfer y llyfr, mae'n cyfnodd 60 o'r llyfr o ddigitalu o ddigitalu llyfr ymlaenwyr. Besiwch gŵr o drwng o'ch ddodol. Gŵr gŵr o ddodol, romog holl o ddodol, ond yn ni'n pethonol. Ond mae bywyd y gaffa between diilio a'r rheiddo, ac rwy'n rhai arniol iawn i'u gwasblynu o'r unrhyw gwaith. Mae gaffa wedi cael gweithio arall. Ond y dod chi'n gweithio, ynddo ni wedi wneud tudio i nhw weithio arna, maen nhw'n gweithio a'r thay wnau i'u mwy attaeth y gallai amser e little bit different for us a bit more imaginative we gathered people together we had workshops there were active workshops and sessions and try to get peoples opinions and perspectives from all across the sector and beyond and of course we paid great detail of the attention to those 60 free existing frameworks we incorporated the literature and so forth but we wanted people to feel part of something thats really the ethos of all basic So we got people to give us their ideas, and we jotted them all down, the sorts of things that should maybe be considered in a digital skills framework. And of course there's lots of different ideas all over the place, lots of different things. But we wanted to try and see if we could make sense of these ideas, if we could perhaps structure them into some sort of arrangement. And perhaps there was a way in which we could help people make sense of this really complex digital landscape that we're all living, working and studying in. And that's when the idea of coming up with some sort of visual representation came to us. And we thought about the different ways of doing it. But one of our colleagues on the team, Bloneth Maciari, she actually came up with this particular suggestion which we then adopted. Which was that we could see ways of navigating complicated landscapes by using maps and why not use an actual map. So that's really the origin of the metro map metaphor that we adopted in the project. But what we were really surprised by, pleasantly surprised, was by how many people really felt they could relate to that simple infographic. Now that infographic has been used in many other contexts before, but it did seem to strike a chord with so many of the people that we were trying to reach and many other people as well. And the whole notion, I guess you can extend the metaphors as far as you want, the whole notion of going on a journey, of exploring a new city, of crossing lines. Everything doesn't have to be in the one kind of package. So that notion really is what lies behind the all aboard metro map metaphor. Now if you still like your traditional frameworks, we also have documents that summarise that for people who like that. And we've also got a nice clear structure to the actual metro. But I think the thing is what we really learned, and to some extent echoes what David was saying, that there's a tremendous power in the visual. And it's been fantastic to see how many people really, as I say, took to this notion. So that was the first thing that we did, was try and make sense. And we also wanted to try and make things, we hoped, a bit more fun and creative and participatory. So the second thing that I'm going to mention here is we also believed that we should be providing open access materials to anyone. And we shouldn't necessarily structure training programmes or workshops just for specific groups of people just tied to this specific job role or whatever it was. We wanted to make things open in the hope that that would also encourage other people to contribute. I'd like nothing better than for somebody to say to me, oh I could do much better than that. That's great. So please do it. So we wanted to create a framework where people felt they could contribute. So we embraced the whole idea of openness, and we also embraced the idea of digital badges. Now digital badges, many people are familiar with them. Some people don't like them because they don't like the concept of a badge, which I'll explain in a few minutes. It sounds a bit trite and a bit childish. For those people we talk about micro-credentials, and that seems to keep them calm for a little while. But what we've found out is that the best way to convert people to the idea of awarding digital badges is to give them one, and then they ask, when can they get the next one? You won't believe how many professors hold a whole string of digital badges now, who would never have gone near the concept if we just described it to them. But we have to make sense of our metro. So what we've done is, in each of the little stations, each station on the map is a topic, a subject, or a concept that's really important that our broader community felt was important enough for us to put it into the map. So in each station what we've done is we've begun to create digital online interactive lessons and study materials. Very, very simple style, hopefully reasonably open and accessible in terms of the language and the structure that's used, so people can pop in to one of these stations and simply work their way through this online lesson, and if they complete various tasks that are there, they're automatically awarded a digital badge. So it's a very straightforward thing. It's not about embedding cosies of so many ECTS into the programme and really kind of get a complex monolithic kind of certificates and structures like that. It's something that people can dip into and just do if they feel actually I'd like to learn a little bit more about that. Here's a source for them to get that information, and also to get some recognition for the achievement they've demonstrated and that's the role of the badge. The digital badge is a mark of achievement or the attainment of a skill. We've also realised that it's possible if you look at the metro map and you have all these lessons and resources, cos there's lots of other materials as well. There's, for example, tools to help people run local workshops on the topic, that you could take the map and you could actually construct your own journey around that city, going crossing from metro line to metro line, visiting different stations. And in a sense, if you collect some of those little journeys together, you're effectively building a curriculum. So we've extended our little metaphor into that domain as well by creating what we call travel cards. This is an example of one of them, the student zone one travel card. And what that is, is it specifies six stations that you might like to visit and you might like to do the lessons on and work through them. And if you do those six particular lessons that we've just picked for that example, you will be awarded the hierarchy, which is the travel card. And we're doing that for all sorts of other things too. We're doing a travel card for creative use of technologies. Anybody can create their own little travel card. It's completely open and flexible in that way. So the website is up and running and we've been tweeting like crazy about it this week. More and more resources will appear on there. But we're also really, really, excuse me, we welcome anybody who wants to contribute, resources you might already have, or suggestions for topics, or anything that's open. It really is all aboard. It's funded this project by the National Forum and we're incredibly grateful for not just their funding, but their advice and mentorship through the project. But without that funding it could never have happened. But to maximise the impact of that funding, we're trying to create, as I say, this open system where people can feel that they can contribute. And it belongs to everyone. That's the other thing. It doesn't belong just to the institutions that happen to be in the consortium that set this project up. It belongs to everyone. Now the digital badges thing has really taken off and so we've actually been providing advice and support to lots and lots and lots of people far beyond the area of digital skills and we've seen thousands and thousands of digital badges being issued across the Irish higher education sector and it's really interesting to see that take off. And we're very happy to continue giving people advice on that. And they're just some examples of some of the different topics that we've produced badges in. Now I won't go into too much detail, but just to say that the badging system has so many really powerful affordances. It's very, very effective if it's done properly and not just issuing badges for breathing or for sitting still in a lecture or something like that. If it's actually a recognition of an achievement or a new skill that's acquired, then it has a lot of potential. Okay, the third one, just the third aspect and it's really important is partnership. In this project through all the stages we try to maximise the engagement of the people for whom we are working. And that includes in particular students and student groups and a huge source of the energy of the project has been the contribution from students and it's really important to say that. Any patronising sense at all, I mean it genuinely. If we look at some of the work that's gone on in that area, then we have schemes that have been running initially in the partner institutions called digital champions or digital ambassadors. There are different variants of a similar idea, but it's really that the students are taking control and being involved. In the digital champions case for example, they're running workshops that they themselves choose the topic, organise. They also campaign around issues such as online safety, digital identity, these sorts of topics. The digital ambassadors is a slight variation of that, running a couple of the other institutions and that's where the students will do lots of the training and learning but they will also do an internship in some other part of the organisation and help empower that part of the organisation to make more effective use of technologies. So there really are an ambassador for the digital and there's no better ambassador than somebody that's really enthusiastic and passionate about it. We've also been doing research and surveys producing materials that we are going to share with other people telling you how you can set up a digital champions or ambassadors scheme. Some hints and tips, things that we have learned. But what's been fascinating is to see the extent to which people have really, as I say, embraced the concept of the metro map and all the other aspects around about it. We really are humbled by this. We didn't expect it and a lot of our time is spent on dealing with queries and enquiries from people and we welcome them. It's really, really nice to know when you're sitting on the western periphery of Europe that people are really interested in what you're doing and that's another key point to make about Ireland and about the potential that's there for Ireland. So our topic, our project has, as I say, spread across other countries. There's a lot of interest. We've also been pleased to see that the National Forum itself has been interested in the potential, for example, of badges and the professional development framework that it's currently working on and that's great to see. But also, I guess, we've also been really, really, I suppose, flattered by the fact that the forum and other organisations decided to adopt the metro map metaphor and the other board idea behind the Digital Skills Week that's going on at the moment so we're really, really pleased with that and we want to thank you for doing that and it's great to see the idea spread. So we try to do things, as I say, that we hope are a bit more fun, a bit more engaging, a bit more participatory and try and encourage people to come aboard. So hopefully, rather than the yawning cat that we saw earlier on, perhaps some of you are feeling a little bit more intrigued. But really, you know, I just want to thank the forum for the support, the financial and the moral support as well and everybody, I want to thank everybody for basically what it looks like coming aboard and we've got a lot more of the journey to travel but it's looking like it's going to be a lot of fun. So thanks very much. Huge thanks to Ian. I think one of the most important preliminary aspects of the National Forum's work was to say, with the small amount of funding that the National Forum is responsible for applying throughout the sector, it is our responsibility to make sure that we maximise that funding in the most creative and imaginative ways and a project like All aboard is a perfect example of how we can leverage the intense work that often goes into that investment in a way that will be sustainable and mainstreamed for many years to come. I think this is a really good example of that. Of course, the champion of this very joined up thinking that has, I think, been a feature of the National Forum's work is the person who leads the forum team and I don't think there's anybody in the country who doesn't know her now. Her name, in just in case you don't know her, if you've been asleep for the last decade, is Dr Terry McWire. Terry is the director of the National Forum. I'm telling you that, I don't know because I'm sure you all know that too. Her energy and her commitment and the kind of imagination that she brings along with her 24-hour working day has had an incredible impact on me and I know on us all. The footprint of Terry McWire is gigantic and I think that some of the ways in which she helps us to think about smart innovation and transformative thinking has made an extraordinary difference to the way in which Irish higher education links with all levels of education and all parts of Irish community and society so that the reach has been extraordinary. I think, again, talking about Ian's development of this all aboard concept is that kind of how evocative it has been. We started off as something that just applied to higher education but very quickly it became obvious that you can never restrict everything just to higher education. Our students are our students and human beings are human beings and we have to connect all the different parts of the system if we're really going to make important changes. The fact that the all aboard framework is equally evocative to primary school teachers, to secondary school, to further education, to employers, to various public bodies and activities, that is its power and that is why our illustrious panel of digital champions which represent different parts of that very complex landscape are here to talk to us today. Each of them is going to talk briefly but it gives me huge pleasure to invite Dr Terry Maguire to the podium to introduce them and to manage this part of the discussion. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you everybody. When we came up with the idea of having a national initiative for building confidence in digital skills and we were trying to sell it to the National Forum Board, they said, you want to do what? When we tried to sell it to the Higher Education Authority, can you just explain what the National Forum is actually involved in this for? It actually stems from one thing, it stems from the fact that when we were doing our consultation for our digital skills road map for higher education, our students said to us, we want a seamless digital experience. I said, okay, no problem. So then we're looking around and we have our road map for higher education. At the same time, our further education and training sector, it's got strategy for technology enhanced learning, our schools are being guided by the digital skills strategy, we're all trying to do the same thing. Then you realize that it's not higher education students, our second level students, our FET students, our primary school students, they all are our students, they just have a different phase in the education system. So we really need to work together to be able to give that seamless experience for our students in higher education, which they actually wanted. And when we saw what was coming out of the All A Board project, I went, shh, that's really interesting. So we went to primary and we went to second level, we went to FET and we went and we said, look at this, isn't this really interesting? Don't you think we could all use this? And All A Board 2017 is actually showing that for one of the very few times that I know of, everyone across the higher education sector is working on the same framework. Yes, primary school is looking at it through their lens, our traveller education centres in Wiclo are looking at it through their lens, our adult literacy learners are looking at it through their lens, but it enables that to happen. And personally, I love the idea that you can refurbish the stations, that you can add new stations, that it's quite dynamic, and it'll actually be something that actually might go on. But the most important thing is that it's accessible. And what we've asked our digital champions to do today is to actually speak on behalf of particular cohort for which digital skills for learning are important. So it gives me great pleasure to introduce our first digital champion, who's Kathleen O'Connor. And Kathleen is a retired primary school teacher. She was the principal of a rural school in County Leish. She was a member of the teaching council from 2012 to 2016. And she's committed to her own lifelong learning, she's currently doing postgraduate work in DCU. And Kathleen is our digital champion for our primary schools. So Kathleen. Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and Terry, thank you for inviting me here today. Well, if you, Lord Putnam, feel intimidated, you should stand in these shoes right now. However, it gives me great pleasure to address you briefly on the importance of building digital skills for learning in primary schools. Sir David has actually answered the question as to why. But I'm just going to give you a brief story and I have been told not to use visual image, which is a pity. And I haven't put in the pauses on my speech, but I am going to keep to five minutes, so don't worry. Primary schools are exciting and busy places. They are not the same as they were 50 years ago. I know because I was there at the age of four and equipped with a pencil and copy. I was prepared to take on the world. The knowledge required for my attempt at world denomination or domination would flow initially from my teacher, the very kind Mrs Jacob. That knowledge was carefully packaged into texts and workbooks to be completed by the month of June each year and was augmented by a family fiercely interested in education who ensured that we enjoyed weekly visits to the local library. Newspapers, radio, black and white television, along with featherlight airmail letters, expanded our horizons beyond that of the local village. There were technological advances in the classroom with the arrival of the reel-to-reel tape recorder. By the time I sat the interstert, and that dates many of us in the room, we could enjoy colour television and cassette tapes had arrived. Fast forward through the 80s and 90s with the arrival of photocopiers, videos, CDs, DVDs, computer rooms, laptops and the internet. And then into the 21st century with interactive whiteboards, broadband, digital cameras, video tablets and smartphones. Yes indeed, schools and the tools available for teaching and learning have changed, but the challenge for teachers is to use that kind of the range of technology that we have available to shift the balance from teacher as provider of information to facilitator of learning. And what of the children? The experiences children bring with them to our primary schools today are very different. They inhabit an increasingly visual digital world, their experiences ranging from playing games on computers and tablets, communicating and posting information on social media, accessing information and media on the web and through to participating in out-of-school computer clubs such as Coder Dojo. These children are learning in different ways, at their own pace, and their learning experiences are not confined to the schools. As 21st century learners, children will be expected to develop the skills of critical thinking, skill communication, collaboration, creativity and problem solving so that they will be equipped to take on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. So how can we harness the powers of digital technologies in the development of these skills for all our learners? Well I am not advocating that we abandon the art of writing, that we empty the school library, libraries such as this in favour of a steady diet of ebooks, and that we abandon language development in our enthusiasm for developing a digitally skillful and competent cohort of students. But as outlined in both the primary curriculum and the digital skills strategy for schools, ICT should be integrated across the curriculum. From the introduction of digital technologies in primary school, the skill of word processing fitted easily into classroom practice across all subjects as children used the computers to draft, create and edit a final piece of work that could be shared with pride. With the advent of presentations, blogs and school websites, children had new audiences for their work. Local history, social and environmental stories could be shared. As internet access became more available, new sources of knowledge could be accessed and children had to acquire the skills to source and check their information and importantly to develop an awareness around copyright. The web provided pupils with access to digital images to illustrate their work but the availability of affordable digital cameras empowered them to create their own images. Using digital images with accompanying audio or written text, children could work collaboratively to create digital stories and presentations and topics of real interest sharing their work with classmates or with a wider audience on the web. Digital images also provide a useful assessment tool for children with which to assess their own learning as they review series of images related to particular tasks. Spreadsheets provide pupils with a method of handling larger data sets in math, science and geography and these skills are regularly on display as children share their research results. The Fiche Films and Schools Project fostered the skills of film and video production with teams of children engaged in story development, storyboarding, planning, rehearsing, filming, editing and sharing their work. The skills acquired as part of this project transferred across the curriculum and children chose to capture and tell their stories using the meeting of film. Podcasts about school projects and events around individuals in their local community are regularly uploaded to school websites. A glance at the primary science projects presented each year at the BT Primary Science Fair or at a wide range of projects sponsored by the education centres around the country demonstrates how these skills have been embraced by pupils in primary schools. Primary school children are further engaging more excitingly, I think, with problem-solving, collaboration, coding and design thinking. In short, developing computational thinking skills as they engage with Bebots, Scratch, Scratch Junior, WeDo and DV3 Lego Mindstorm Kits, Minecraft and app development. These exciting projects also foster creativity, remixing, debugging, persistence and communication skills and all through the medium of play. That wonderful, wonderful thing. More than just consumers of technology, children are becoming creators and they're doing so at their own pace. Developing an awareness among all our pupils of online safety and responsible use of digital media is a challenge, but it's one that's always to the forefront of teachers' minds. Fostering and developing a broad suite of digital skills at primary level empowers all learners to access meaningful ethic curriculum and it provides a base for the future of lifelong learning. This has been but a whistle-top tour of some of the stations of that wonderful, wonderful road map. It's a very dynamic metro map, I hope, and will accommodate more and more steps and lines along the way, much like the street outside actually that we stepped over coming in here. It is certainly an exciting time for both teachers and learners. I wonder what the world will look like 40 years from now for those who started in our primary schools both teaching and learning on September 2016. Certainly when I began my teaching career at the end of the 70s, armed with chalk, the curriculum and I hope a very active imagination, I could never have envisaged even with that imagination the digital opportunities afforded to both teachers and learners as they currently exist. Thank you all for your attention. Thank you very much, Kathleen. Now our next digital champion is Neil O'Sullivan. Neil has worked both in mainstream and special education in Ireland for many years. He is the cheap validator for digital schools of distinction award which recognises the integration of ICT in teaching and learning in Irish primary schools. He teaches part-time and cluster-owned in Dublin and he is currently also planning a national summit in computational thinking which will take place in June 2017. The summit is going to be the first of its kind in Ireland and it is designed to further develop digital skill in schools and supports the government's strategy for digital, the government's digital strategy for schools. Neil is also the director of Innovate Together and Neil is our digital champion for speaking on behalf of second level and our digital schools of distinction. Thank you, Neil. Good afternoon, thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. I'll five minutes, so I'll rush straight into what I have to say. First of all, as validator, chief validator for the digital schools of distinction award our program is designed to encourage teachers like Kathleen to engage and to develop in teaching and learning and the integration of ICT in teaching and learning. It's a framework where schools can evaluate their performance in their delivery of, or in their usage of technology in their teaching and learning using a self-evaluation tool which we have developed. It focuses on five key areas leadership and planning, how you might plan for the integration or the better integration of technology and teaching and learning. It focuses on the curriculum and how technology can be used for example using the metro map for integrating technology into teaching and learning. It incorporates a culture and our pride in the use of technology in the school where a school is a website, they may get involved in inter-school collaboration projects, they work to the kids do works played on the school website and engage in other projects nationally and internationally, e-twinning for example. Then there is a crucial part of it is continual professional development which as we know is a non-going feature of technology and education and it really needs to embed confidence in teachers so we have training courses and working with different education centres around the country with right training and advice on teachers who want to learn more about integrating technology. The final feature of the digital schools distinction award then is making appropriate use of the technologies that you actually have and again we have advice and guidelines and standards that schools can engage in. The digital schools of Europe is a child of digital schools of distinction for example there are eight or nine countries Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal Ireland are all engaged in looking at the digital school of distinction award that we have here in Ireland because it really is a bottom up organisation there are 3,500 primary schools in Ireland and 1,600 plus of those schools are actually engaged in becoming digital schools of distinction and from our work as a chief validator visiting schools we see what's happening on the ground in schools and we visit schools in various countries that I've mentioned and one of the comments that comes back all the time from teachers who visit Irish schools is that maybe we don't have the money for the best technology in the world but the schools that we visit have enthusiastic teachers and I think that emphasizes the importance of a bottom up approach we give the skills and the tools to the teachers to develop it and we have schools from one teacher to 50 teachers where there is absolutely fantastic work going on with the integration of technology in teaching learning in a cross curricular basis and my role then is a second level teacher I have seen the road map and again we are very conscious of the continuation of development of technology from primary on to secondary because some primary schools do fantastic work like Kathleen outlined and then when they go into secondary school with the pressure of the junior cycle and the senior cycle the creativity is beat out of them just like in Robinson might have mentioned and we are very conscious of the fact that secondary schools really need to pick up where the primary school teachers have left these children with huge abilities to create, innovate, critically think, evaluate, communicate, collaborate and find new ideas and resources with the national curriculum the new national strategy and the development of the idea of computational thinking we feel this is an opportunity that can be grasped and taken advantage of and we feel that cross curricular teaching and particularly in transition year maybe in the first year of second level school offers the opportunity for more and more integration with and use of technology but there is one key thing continual professional development is vital and guidelines and resources and examples of innovative practice and evolving practice I won't say best practice because practice gets better and better this needs to be made available teachers love to see good examples of lesson plans they love to see examples of engaged active students with the technology which is ubiquitous our students want to engage with technology they want to use technology we need to give the teachers ideas examples and tools to be able to deliver and teach 21st century skills in a cross-curricle environment with all the other subjects so that's what I suppose the goal of the computational thinking summit is about on the 20th June this will involve engaging computational thinking skills of abstraction algorithm design decomposition and evaluation persistence all these tools that we've been our skills and attitudes that we've been talking about are really part of computational thinking and you don't actually need a computer to develop computational thinking it's a problem solving process that we engage in to a lesser and greater degree every day but we need to as Lara Putnam says we need to let our students know that there is a vision as a journey in doing this and give them the skills for it to be able to compete in a world exactly as if we don't know what it's going to be ahead of them but at least they'll be able to compete, communicate, collaborate, create and innovate thank you very much our next digital champion is Ines Bailey Ines is the director of the National Literacy Agency or NALA and as the CEO of NALA Ines has been responsible for initiating the development of the first national quality and assessment framework for the adult literacy service for devising the first nationally accredited online and distance learning service for adult literacy using mass media to increase participation rates in adult learning tenfold and mainstreaming workplace literacy programs and having successfully lobbied for the use of amendment to secure an adult literacy strategy within the first strategy for further education and training in Ireland Ines Bailey is our digital champion for adult literacy learners and those in further education and training I bring my phone to keep me on time here I just wanted to talk maybe a little bit about people who are often excluded from the education system which I don't think we're often aware of how often that happens and how detrimental it can be for people and I suppose when I started working in the whole area of adult learning it was a shock to me that there were people who hadn't had a very strong or beneficial experience from education and I was really intrigued about how that had happened and possibly more importantly what we were doing about it and around the late 90s we were looking at very high levels of adult literacy issues in Ireland and a very low level of service and one of the things we could see happening globally was the embracing of the technology as a solution to this area because we were coming from a very low base of investment high technology seemed beyond us so we started to look at low technology and at that time low technology was actually radio and indeed to an extent to television and we looked at how we could use radio as a form of I suppose access for people around education and a very small little initiative was tried and tested and people liked it and we kind of got some confidence from that so we moved from there into television and television was a really interesting I suppose medium to look at in terms of something that Lord Putnam mentioned it tends to have very good production values if it's going to be produced for the masses so we got some really really interesting engagement from television producers from RTE and funding coming in later years from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to look at how you could bring content together learning content of very different I suppose subject areas but that would be actually accessible for people who have literacy and numeracy issues but was designed with a very high quality attached to it and when we started to see how many people were A watching those television series because I could tell you RTE were not really very optimistic when we started this enterprise we really did think people wouldn't watch the programs but when the ratings came in they were really really impressed that slots that were perhaps maybe not performing as well as they'd want them were actually starting to perform very well with this kind of learning content accessible learning content so we grew from that to the idea that actually maybe we could attach more and more I suppose learning opportunities for people who are watching these television series and we looked at then the higher technology and we created a product called writeon.ie which in effect is a free online learning platform it's I think still unique in the world insofar as what it does is it enables people to go on who are people designed for people with literacy and numeracy issues it's designed for them to go online to learn modules that are available through the qualifications framework across a whole range of modules either thematically or according to certain subjects to have recognition of their prior learning so if they actually already know enough of these skills and don't know it or would like to get that recognised they can get the RPL facility thrown in as well and one of the things we found was that first of all most providers and indeed practitioners said that this couldn't be done and wouldn't actually be embraced by the learners themselves but we stayed very strong to listening to learners we did that I think that gave us the bravery to keep going because actually people loved learning online and they didn't necessarily have literacy and numeracy barriers that stopped them doing that but if they did they were very driven to get over their literacy and numeracy barriers so that they could continue on learning online and I suppose the lasting memory that it gave us was that people really did feel that they were learning in a way that everybody else was learning so it brought them into I think education or back into education and I think that was something that they felt wasn't necessarily ever going to happen again in their life after being excluded for it so I would just like to say it's a kind of an inspirational story about what people themselves can do once they can get online and indeed start embracing learning opportunities and see a whole future on a pathway that obviously the older board framework I think will supply a lot of people that we're working with who want to learn more and certainly will need that open access to enable them to do that but it also is a testament I think to the people involved in this particular project that it is both open access and it has reached out to people across the education and training sector because often these are I suppose the very people who will be excluded from a lot of the very powerful learning opportunities that are available through all of our institutions but often exclude this group of people so we're really grateful that they have been included and that we're able to contribute to the content of the programme and indeed support it going forward thank you very much Well I'm not sure our next digital champion needs that much introduction Mihael Marharthig requires he's a much-loved former teacher a broadcaster, an author who first came to prominence following the famed Polargrounds All Island violin in 1947 and for many years afterwards the instantly recognisable voice could be heard commenting on the minor matches as Gielge Now Michael has recently championed things digital when he worked with David on the RTE programme making Ireland click and we're delighted that he has agreed to be one of our digital champions speaking on behalf of the community Mihael Gwmili Maarharthig I think you've got the day it's slightly mixed up it's 1949 I didn't get a trip to New York and the reference of New York there is a very very good example of the complete change that has taken place in many facets of Irish life to those of you that might not be followers of Gaelic football the All Island final of 1947 was played in New York it was a decision taken as a gesture to the immigrants and evidence of those years and before it rarely ever came home they hadn't the time holidays wouldn't that long and so on the interesting thing that only one journalist to my island went to cover that one that was somebody said Mitchell Calgley was sent by the independent now if such a thing was happening the All Island final of our 2018 our 2017 to be played we'd say in Manbog you'd need a special play to bring all the journalists and different angles to journalism to do it and that's a very good example now listening to the speakers in the time we had Lord Putnam on here the one thing I'm convinced that will drive it all is a high level of curiosity about advances and curiosity brings enthusiasm brings further research buying into it and the first thing of curiosity that I would mention now this is nothing to do with the digital age or anything a way way back in 1907 there was an All Island final played in Thorblas between Kildair and Kerry Kerry had won the two previous ones and it was fantastic news when Kildair beat and a Kildair man and I read this in the Kildair paper of the time he was walking up the street afterwards happiest man in the world and you can understand but he was sorry that the people at home have no idea yet what happened and then he got a brainwave he saw a house with post office written out there there's a house like that in Nace and there are rumours going around that if you were in it you could speak to somebody that's not there at all and very few believed it's the beginning but he said I will put it to the test he was curious and he knocked at the door opened by a postmaster but the plain question is a true that you could preach to somebody who's not here at all indeed I curious there's a man in Nace with a house like yours they were all built alike could you talk to him I could could you tell him that Kildair have beaten Kerry and he said I will indeed come in with you and I'll show you how it's done now that was a new innovation I'll tell you and he describes that the way he operated and spoke to the man in Nace and when it was all over then he said there's a man with a house like it in silence as well should I tell him now that was the first result of any type of sport ever sent in the air but the curiosity developed there were building post offices at the time and post offices then wherever the big match of the day would be of other matches as well somebody would deliver the result of the post office and then they would send it of what post office would list that was a major event and people brought into it they were enthused by it it helped their own interests and that's what the digital age has to do get people curious get them inquisitive get a step further and try it out and tell others about it now come back again to sport I've been involved in sport for a long number of years Ireland had its first radio station in 1926 in the first of January it was ready on England and France and Spain and Germany and Italy America and all these places before that but not having a government of our own I suppose until 1923 people could say we had none but they had it listed we will have our own they were looking ahead rather than looking back looking ahead it went down the air in the first of January Douglas Hyde was the first to speak on it very very enthusiastic about it and very very positive we'll be on the air every day for three hours I think it's around the clock now it was the only radio station in Ireland there are 44 of them there now huge events but the interesting thing from if you like things technical happened in the month of August that year a member of the small staff situated or located in the GPO he got an idea told nobody present out the street up to Croke Park whatever office they had in Johnson's Road at the time he said he was some of the new radio station to our end and we have equipment that would make it possible to have a man here next Sunday when Kilkenny go out to Horl Gael and anybody that has a wireless would know as that man described what was happening there would know instantly what was happening that was a big advance in the telephone call and they said you will try it and the strange thing is that was the first sport to bend anywhere in the entire warrant that went out on radio nobody had thought that sport would be or that radio would be a suitable medium for sport and it all stemmed from a person he had an idea he wasn't afraid people would laugh at him or anything he was willing to put it to the test again he was optimistic about it he was curious about how it would work and so on and it did work and you can see the huge industry that broadcasting is now now to come back to what we were speaking about this week promotion creating a greater interest than the big interest that's there already within all the whole and it said that some speaker mentioned here today you've got to get everyone involved it's not just primary education it's not just the pupil and the teachers back up staff was mentioned very very important and if you like that postmaster in tordlus in 1907 he was the first if you like support it was his idea the support I'll ring and I'll ring salad and that's a big big help when you're advancing any cause and certainly the coming of the digital age and the different developments since then I think it's a fantastic thing we all have benefited by it some people are doubtful they're quite, that wouldn't work our ancestors did without a window the modern age they're very very positive now I go to a lot of schools now I find them enthusiastic I find that they know they can almost learn things themselves and then when it's a feature at the school learning and so on I think we're on a good foundation but to take it all the way from the very top of higher level education down to the primary school it must be involved in all of it and they will co-operate I remember being in a rural school down in west meath there were only 32 pupils in the whole school they were all brought together while I was answering questions I saw a little lad in the front seat he was no more than maybe 7 years old he was taking a photograph of me and I said how many of you have your own phone I was astounded and this is maybe 5 or 6 years ago 25 at the 32 at now I think in a way that's a good thing people talk about abusing things that confidence confidence has grown and being used to facilities like that and the new ones coming and coming all the time now the first time I got into it I was asked by Penguin would I write my art by art and I said there's no way I'll do it the way I've been doing articles or different newspapers over the years with the typewriter that I won't play in golf or that I exchange with somebody who won it and he had no respect for it he said now and I said now I'll exchange my price for that if you're happy and we made some a few golf balls to the person who had the more valuable when I'd come with the typewriter I wrote articles in that but I had to deliver them to the different places or post them if they'd be far away but I said then I'm going to get a computer if I'm going to write the art by art I knew a little bit about them from seeing other people using them to for a long time before they became fashionable by the journalists every journalist now has a computer they can write their report send it out contact with the whole world but only for the computer I wouldn't have written any one of the three books I did all the things it can do I learned according to the needs I had at the time I had been involved with third age that's if you like they look after elderly people all over the country they get them in local communities to come together they're brought in outings and trips and there are lessons and everything for them and they're all nowadays encouraged to have to have a computer and this learn and what they love more than anything is they have children abroad I have four members of my family abroad from Aberdeen to Singapore and you can Skype and you can see them there and so on all these things that are possible with a little knowledge and curiosity all those types of things are taking shape another thing that's great benefit to communities organisations like the Sheds started in Australia I remember the first person to come to Ireland talking about it I went to hear him out of curiosity again people retired people who have a bit of energy someplace where they could gather they wouldn't have a room as nice as this but they're sufficient to accommodate and all facilities there'd be computers there there'd be for handcrafts and everything that the people want would be supplied and they'll learn and they'll come together as a community and again the digital age is a great help to those now I'm very hopeful that within a short time there'll be huge advances made created by curiosity enthusiasm enthusiasm and interest and the backups that are there now at all levels and we have them all and I'll finish with a Irish proverb you don't appreciate what can be accomplished until everyone are pulling in the right direction in what's called for them Rhymyle Mahalwchart Rhymyle Mahalwchart, mi haw our next digital champion is our cultural digital champion Claire Lannigan is the education and outreach manager for the digital repository of Ireland she is responsible for the repository's training program which was launched in 2016 her interests include digital and web archiving, audio visual collection management, training education and digital preservation hi there, it's a bit of a tough act to follow but I'll try and be I don't know if I can be quite as entertaining I'll try so I just wanted to introduce the digital repository of Ireland to anyone who might not be familiar with it it's a national it's a national repository for Ireland's digital cultural heritage and what that means is that we store digitized and born digital versions of various types of cultural information including photographs including scandal letters including research data including a broad range of other objects including the national cultural institutions like the national library or the national museum or the Royal Irish Academy and many others or from research institutions like universities or from smaller community archives we're open to all institutions or organizations that are working with cultural and historical and humanities archive information so it's built up of a consortium of partners including the Royal Irish Academy which is where the administrative bases also Trinity College Dublin Meneith University and the National University of Ireland in Galway there's an access point where all the collections can be viewed online which is repository.dri.ie but that is not just many things that call themselves digital archives are not much more than a website but the point of DRI is that all the items that we have stored in our digital repository are kept in what's known as federated storage which is a high tech version of long term digital preservation the objects and all the collections are designed to be accessible in the future across different format changes across software changes, across hardware changes the point of it is long term digital preservation not just having something available online for a short period so the long term storage is a really key part of our work and everything that we do we also do training and publications we publish a number of guidelines for things like metadata standards which are important for any institution or group that are looking to deposit data in DRI and we also run a training course for institutions that are looking to sign up that's the training course that Terry mentioned there and they are basically introducing sometimes they're quite basic ones introducing people to the principles of digital archiving which working on archiving principles in general and then specifics to do with the digital aspect when it comes to archiving and also running through more details things like copyright metadata standards and more in precise levels of collection management we also try and run practical workshop sessions as often as possible to allow people to use a repository in real time so that they get the practice that they need so I thought for today I might mention two particular projects within DRI that would be of particular interest for teaching and learning at kind of all levels really there is a series of online exhibitions that we launched beginning in 2014 but kind of coming into their own in the last two years and they're all under the agus of the inspiring Ireland project which was a specially curated series of exhibitions which takes material from many of our national culture institutions including the National Library and the National Museum and the RT archives and various other institutions as well and also includes material taken from people's personal memorabilia collections which we had things known as collection days where for our 1916 specific exhibitions people brought in memorabilia associated with their families to do with 1916 and we provided digitisation in the National Library they were our partners in this and then they were able to store that digitised material into our repository and then curate exhibitions around it so the inspiring Ireland 1916 exhibitions were launched last year they were supported by Ireland 2016 the Agus of the Department of Arts and Heritage and there were a number of themed exhibitions using the type of material that I just described and themes were broad ranging but some of the more popular ones included women in 1916 and 1916 in the regions which I think sometimes the more less spoken about stories are the ones that have more interest especially last year in the whole Ireland 2016 programme I should mention that all these are available at inspiring-arland.ie Each themed exhibition was accompanied by an expert essay which was usually given by an academic with an expertise in the field which was really great for contextualising the information and the exhibitions both by going with the theme often tended to draw out elements of it that might not have been immediately obvious that's why they're particularly useful in teaching and learning environment so inspiring art in 1916 I'd like to focus in on it's from the women and the rising section of the exhibition and the title of it is the Lizzie Walsh compensation file and what this refers to is a documentation that was submitted by a maid named Lizzie Walsh whose uniform was destroyed when a hotel on O'Connell Street was burned down during the rising and as a maid she was actually obliged to pay for her own uniform so she got a new uniform and she couldn't afford a new uniform because she didn't have a job so she claimed for compensation from the state after the rising had finished and that item was in the National Military Archives and the digitised version is in our exhibition the reason why I think that's interesting is that it shows that the story of the women and the rising is not just the monad of hair that we've all heard about it's not just about Constant Markovits interesting in all as those people are it's also about ordinary people who maybe had no political connections whatsoever whose lives were still impacted by the rising another exhibition that's particularly interesting to people who are working and teaching and learning is a more recent one called Frangoc Frangoc recreating a lost landscape this also kind of falls under the umbrella of inspiring Ireland 1916 but it focused in specifically on the Frangoc internment camp in Wales you may, some of you probably heard of it where a number of the leaders of the 1916 rising were sent after the rising and it was often termed Oesgol na Rhefloidur because so many of the leaders ended up forming connections in that internment camp that they wouldn't have otherwise and were more boosted politically by it and we turned out we had a great deal of material in there especially from our people's collections and we found that there was enough there to form its own exhibition so we decided to collaborate with both again supported by the Department of Arts and Heritage in Gweiltocht and we collaborated with the People's Collection of Wales which is an initiative of the National Library of Wales and the National Museum of Wales and we got this great cross-country collaboration which was really really fruitful for all of us and launched this exhibition last December and again it was made up out of material from national cultural institutions and from the public and we found some very interesting material from the public and from all the institutions one item I'd like to kind of focus on again in a similar way is an autograph book that was kept by one of the prisoners whose name was Sean McStefan no sorry the autograph book belonged to somebody else but there's a section in it where this person would go around and collect names of everybody in the camp just it was a kind of a habit at the time where people just kept autograph books and they got everyone to sign it, famous or otherwise people sometimes wrote little poems or drew pictures or something like that and there's one page of this by Sean McStefan who was one of the the lead the rebels at the time and he went on to work in Dublin City Libraries and actually his son was the noted architect Sam Stevenson but this man wrote a little quote and the quote was a crank is a small thing that turns a revolution and it's a very memorable little quote and it actually comes from Francis G.H. Skeffington who for those of you who know of him was a pacifist who did not want to be involved in the rising but supported the aims of the rebels and I was actually arrested and executed by British by British military personnel simply for being a witness to them doing an extrajudicial killing so the kind of confluence of different figures coming together in this quite innocent little object that we wouldn't have seen if not for the fact that somebody brought it from their personal collection to be digitised and to be brought into the frangoch exhibition is a really good example of a kind of a type of serendipity that happens when you kind of focus on bringing digital collections not just making them available but also making them available in a curated way that speaks to the needs that people have when they're teaching and learning and also just for curious people in the outside world we have a number of other collections that are also of interest to those in research and those in teaching we have a number from the Irish quality of data archive which is a social sciences archive which has a number of material from interviews with Irish people across the century and covers many many instant cultural and social change and all these are available again on repository.dri.ie and then the regular website dri.ie has links to all our publications and other information and so all of those are easily available and nearly all our collections are open access so I just like to close by just saying that it's really good to be here today we really want to keep pushing our kind of connections to the world of education we've been speaking with the National Council about National Educational Council about possibly collaborating with teachers in presenting material from the repository for use in the junior history curriculum either informally or formally and we also can have a strong connection to the higher education sector as well so again it's really good to be here today and to meet all of you and I hope that some of you who may not have been familiar with dri will get a chance to explore further thanks very much thank you for your patience I know we've gone a little bit over time lunch will be just it's only just a few minutes away I promise but I'll just introduce our last digital champion I'd like to introduce Donal Maguire who's the director of agriculture development for on board East Llyfrada also better known I suppose as BIM the Irish Seafoods Development Agency and Donal is championing the importance of having digital skills for growing and developing our industries in a digital world and stay on time or maybe even bring back some time first of all thank you very much to the National Forum for the opportunity to speak in these wonderful surroundings and from a Bordish Kiwara point of view it's lovely to note that the mission for seafarers is next door as well so they're very much a community close to our heart as with what I'd like to talk to you about is something very simple actually in comparison perhaps to some of the previous speakers but it's not an exaggeration to say that it's actually genuinely a matter of life and death for some time we've been running a program called live to tell the tale and that's about encouraging Irish fishermen to wear life jackets and it sounds terribly simple but actually there's a long history involved in this I suppose if you think about the Irish seafood industry and you wonder where does seafood come from it either has to be farmed or somebody has to go out and catch it and going out to catch it or even to go out to sea to farm it is a hazardous business we have the highest energy coastline in the world we have the biggest waves the most frequent bad weather and it is a dangerous occupation statistically it's the most dangerous occupation in the world as you've probably seen from programs like deadliest catch where everybody now begins to realise just how dangerous it is to be a commercial fisherman or a commercial fish farmer and you know in some ways people think about the fishing industry in Ireland and perhaps they think about the wonderful super trawlers that go out to killy bags or the big whitefish boats that leave Castletown Bear Haven and that's actually the big bulk of our industry on the one hand but on the other hand that's not where most people are employed there are about 1800 vessels in the Irish fleet only about 80 of those come under the heading of a trawler the rest of them are small inshore vessels and that's where most people earn their living in the Irish industry and many of those vessels are manned by people on their own or at most two people and there was a long tradition in the Irish industry of not wearing life jackets unfortunately because they were regarded as cumbersome they were regarded as heavy for all sorts of reasons, so bodyschiwarae working with manufacturers of life jackets for quite a long time has been trying to break this idea but also trying to work to come up with a better life jacket and again it sounds surprisingly simple but actually it isn't so in recent times we have come up with this very durable, very compact, small life jacket that's worn like a collar just over the shoulders which inflates automatically if a person is unfortunate enough to go into the water and so we thought that's great that's one big problem solved but of course that doesn't really solve the problem because if somebody does go in the water and they're from a small boat perhaps on their own Irish waters are very cold so people will not survive very long in those waters unless they're rescued along came another wonderful technological innovation and that innovation is called a personal locator beacon a PLB, these in the past were things that were only carried on ships but technology has advanced to the point now where there are tiny little things which can actually be built into the life jacket so if somebody is unfortunate enough to find themselves in the water the life jacket inflates automatically they find themselves in the correct orientation and now they can activate their PLB we had a situation just recently last week where a fisherman was unfortunate enough to find himself in the water loan fisherman off the Donegal coast his life jacket deployed as it should he activated his PLB within half an hour he was in Lettercanny hospital only suffering from mild hypothermia he'd been airlifted in the past that would have been a tragedy that would have been a casualty in a lost sea so where does all this bring us to where we're interested in all aboard these personal locator beacons each of them has an individual signature and those have to be registered with Comreg so that when and if unfortunately somebody finds themselves in the water they activate the beacon up to a satellite the satellite alerts the rescue services that there is an emergency signal being transmitted the emergency services then have to go online and say who's is it is it a real emergency or is it a false alarm and this is very serious because as we can see from the terrible tragedy in rescue 116 the emergency services cannot lightly initiate a rescue so it's vaguely important that anybody who has one of these life jackets uses the PLB engages with Comreg how do you engage with Comreg you must register online and this is where we came to find that there was a really strong issue for BIM at this stage we've probably granted and assisted with the issuing of more than a thousand of these life jackets but we were finding that there wasn't a thousand registrations going to Comreg so my colleague D. Moore was just here we've been trying to engage with the fishermen and of course these are a cohort of people who are many of them 25 plus some of them may have literacy issues they're not the natural cohort of people to use digital skills so we've developed amongst other measures a little unit which allows them to download from the BIM website a step by step guide so that they can register their beacon with Comreg easily and quickly and in doing so if they are unfortunate enough to find themselves in the water then they will be rescued really quickly and we hope to have far more positive outcomes for everyone concerned so that's why we're really pleased to be involved and thank you very much Thank you so much Donal and thanks to the entire panel for the stories that they've told us it always strikes me how it's the stories that we come away with and how that in livens and connects us in all sorts of important ways I know that we've gone out a little bit over time and I know that lunch awaits and we're going together some of the ideas remember that this morning was just a smattering and just a kind of an indicator and just a set of signals of all of the developments that are going on around the country and which are kind of really represented in the 300 plus events that are being coordinated this week but these speakers this morning have reminded us of some very important things David has inspired us as ever he has begun today's conversation but of course has been part of that conversation for a very very long time and I think again how important his role has been in constantly reminding us of the challenges that still exist and how much still needs to be achieved and the obstacles that still exist and lie ahead that we must try together to dismantle to Ian those challenges within a particular context and for showing us how those challenges are being addressed through his extraordinary leadership and through the coherence of the all aboard framework which everybody is becoming more and more familiar with and connecting with to Kathleen for stories of how far we've come and it's good to be reminded that things 50 years ago were different that there is access that the kind of sense of the gradual development of digital engagement is something that sometimes we need to recognise as having happened in quite transformative ways recognising of course that there is a great way to go and that we still have much work to do and to Niall I think Niall showing how you can drive important technologically relevant work like computational skills even in situations where resources are limited I think that was a major message for me from all of the important things that Niall was telling us to Ynnes for reminding us how access to online learning must be open to all and can make a particularly disproportionate difference to people to whom it's traditionally been denied or who have not had access and I think that's an important message and we must be reminded of it and it's interesting in this you of all people with your leadership in Nala saying how shocking and surprising that is that we can sometimes occupy bubbles within the education sector not realising how difficult it is for some people in parts of that sector so I'm grateful to you on all our behalf for reminding us of that to Miall for his insights and memories and stories and I think one of the things that he reminded many things that he reminded us of one of which is that human beings have always been designed to reach out and to connect we always have had that need and that working to make technology help us to do that is part of its purpose we earlier this week talked to Wayne Denner who was talking about the dangers and the risks and the absolute how absolutely vital it is for educational institutions to take leadership and making sure that technology doesn't control people control technology and are empowered by it not diminished in any way by it Claire, I mean again all of the connections I think we operate in national form in the RIA building and Claire for teaching us more about the role that digitisation is playing in creating archives and stories that we can always have access to and access in that informed pedagogical way that you so beautifully described and also I think for giving us something of the richness and importance of those stories by selecting some of the examples that you did and that was enormously thoughtful Claire and I think it really helped us to see how that works and why it is so important to Donal for reminding us that technology matters to everybody it's not some Orwellian controller of ourselves and our identities but that use properly clearly it can enhance our learning our lives and how sometimes it can literally save us Terry for helping to keep us all on the tracks to extend the metaphor and to her incredible national forum team who have worked so hard to help us climb a board I'm proud to be part of this on behalf of the entire forum board and the sector I thank everybody he's been so involved in this week and for everything that it represents I'm grateful to all of you particularly to our student representatives for whom all of this is about and I warmly invite you now to join us for lunch thank you very much