Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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The opportunity for young people that I mentioned, Mathletes, is run on the Khan Academy platform. The Khan Academy is free. It does not cost anybody anything. Mr. O'Leary was correct to point out that unless one has a suitable broadband connection it is nigh on impossible to make it function within the classroom setting but where it does, it is a powerful learning tool.

We had a one teacher school on the border between Galway and Mayo, Cloghans Hill national school, which excelled in that Mathletes competition and went on to win a national award. We had a two teacher school in Cloghan, in Donegal, which also excelled because there happened to be an exceptionally talented and passionate teacher at the helm of the school and it happened to have just enough broadband to make it work. If we provide the tools, resources and support for the teaching community there are more than enough teachers to make this happen.

Mr. O'Leary is correct in pointing out that the digital schools of distinction programme is a powerful one in that it holds up certain schools engaged in best practice as an example to others. They are beacons to adjoining schools. This was achieved through collaboration between the Departments of Education and Skills, Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, HP. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible when we combine the expertise and the talent and the passion of the tech industry in Ireland - we have a serious presence here when it comes to the tech industry - and those teachers who really want to forge ahead to make substantial changes in the classroom. That is what happened with the digital schools of distinction programme. It is also what happened with the MATHletes Challenge, another industry-State collaboration that is working exceptionally well.

We are only beginning to scratch the surface as to what is possible. The industry is crying out to help us and there are teachers who know exactly what needs to be done. It is not as if we need to reinvent the wheel. Those teachers in CESI, the Computers in Education Society of Ireland, organise conferences year after year at which they share incredible resources, mostly for free and work with one another. Yet somehow, those teachers are treated like some witches' coven on the periphery of the education system. They should be embraced and brought into the heart of delivering this strategy. Their wisdom and expertise, garnered over 40 years, needs to be brought into the heart of this strategy. CESI made a submission but it needs to be more deeply involved than that. These are teachers for whom education is their life. They want to share the knowledge they have accumulated. They are doing it every day, every week, meeting and teaching one another. The ETBs, education and training boards, and other sets of beacons should be supporting CPD, continuing professional development, through these extraordinary teachers and should provide the technical support that has been referred to.

Schools in Århus in Denmark use the BYOD, bring-your-own-device, model for teaching ICT. Those teachers who made this model work go to other schools across Denmark to pass on their knowledge, teaching them how to use it. However, it must be acknowledged that Danish schools have exceptionally powerful broadband. Northern Ireland has just introduced Minecraft into every single post-primary school, another courageous and highly innovative move which will provide another learning opportunity for young people. It is a game young people, including my five year old nephew, are already using.

At the Excited Digital Learning Festival last year, a primary school principal in Gorey, County Wexford, blew me away with his account of teaching the history of the Famine to third class pupils. The school uses iPads for all its educational delivery. A month before he intended to teach the course, he asked his students to do their own research about the Famine on the Internet and bring it altogether in a one-minute video on YouTube. They all watched each other’s videos on their iPads and discussed them a month later. They debated topics such as how could the Famine have been prevented, did the British state react in an appropriate manner, is there any way famine can be prevented in the future and how is famine happening in the rest of the world. It was a far more detailed learning experience than he could ever have envisaged. He told me that he realised there and then that he was no longer teaching history but creating historians.

That is fundamentally the difference between what is possible if we get the right resources, the broadband and, most of all, the investment into our schools. Those drawing up this strategy are doing exceptionally valuable work. However, they need to be supported. If this strategy is not accompanied by a huge investment on the part of the State, then there is no point in printing this document.