Paul Breen

Developing Educators in the Digital Age: A Framework for Capturing Knowledge in Action

Evaluating skills and knowledge capture lies at the cutting edge of contemporary higher education where there is a drive towards increasing evaluation of classroom performance and use of digital technologies in pedagogy. Developing Educators for the Digital Age is a book that provides a narrative account of teacher development geared towards the further usage of technologies (including iPads, MOOCs and whiteboards) in the classroom presented via the histories and observation of a diverse group of teachers engaged in the multiple dimensions of their profession. Drawing on the insights of a variety of educational theories and approaches (including TPACK) it presents a practical framework for capturing knowledge in action of these English language teachers – in their own voices – indicating how such methods, processes and experiences shed light more widely on related contexts within HE and may be transferable to other situations. This book will be of interest to the growing body of scholars interested in TPACK theory, or communities of practice theory and more widely anyone concerned with how new pedagogical skills and knowledge with technology may be incorporated in better practice and concrete instances of teaching.

The 1916 Irish rebellion

This timely work, published by Cork University Press, offers a powerful illustration of how the 1916 Easter Rising served as the focal point for a reconstruction of Irish identit (ies) that then became crystallized on all sides and defined the decades and possibly century which followed.than bridges to learners’ achievement (for example, ‘“digital natives” describes contemporary students and assumes their success’, while ‘digital delivery’ expects achievement as a natural consequence of access). The two concluding chapters in this section provide frameworks for understanding myths constricting teaching and learning specifically in online education. Chapter 10 defines myths in terms of four realms, called social, organisational, instructional and technological, and Chapter 11 names out-dated, over-optimistic, drawback myths and confronted myths. Retrospectively these two chapters can be viewed beyond their applicability as a tool with which to look at online education. They tie the book together and increase the volume of the voices by amplifying the messages in previous chapters. As a reviewer struck by the strength of the voices behind the words in this volume, turning the final page led me back to the easily overlooked ‘notes on contributors’. The brief descriptions of the 30 authors reflect a remarkable depth of experience across a wealth of cultural and political contexts. Here is the heft behind the offerings in the volume. Any reader will be well served by reading this section before moving into the book. The educators profiled there are the ones calling for our attention to the constricting effects of educational myths tacitly accepted by teachers, policy-makers and students. Individually, the essays provide accounts in which unrecognised myths are shown to be in the middle of a tangled nest of consequences for teaching and learning. Collectively, the essays communicate an imperative. This imperative claims that unexamined assumptions that act as referents for practices and policies can become as mythic as the Trojan Horse Laocoön warned the citizens of Troy about.

Healing past wounds with more than an elastic bandage– A small scale evaluation of attitudes and aspirations of contemporary Northern Irish Catholics

ABSTRACT There remains a certain ambiguity or lack of articulation as to the contemporary and long-term expectations and aspirations of Northern Irish nationalists. On account of such a gap in the literature, I conducted a small-scale research study in early 2016 to access the voices of ordinary people within the nationalist community by means of a Mixed Methods approach. The goal was not to prioritise these voices over those of unionists but to find out what possible changes have occurred in terms of nationalist perspectives, aspirations, and sense of identity almost two decades since the signing of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement [1998. Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/136652/agreement.pdf].

Realizing the power of social media in the 21st century

Social Media has become predominant in both our personal and professional lives and organizations across sectors are beginning to take advantage of social networking sites. Still, the full potential of social media has not been fully realized and adapted to the fit the needs of educational, business, marketing, and governmental units.