Category Archives: Social Media

How can someone say that my family isn’t ideal?

On Friday, 15-year-old Safia spoke on the Ray Darcy Show and read out a beautiful letter that she wrote after hearing some people describe her family as not ‘ideal.’
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Listen to the interview here: Interview

She writes: ‘One of the things that upsets me and makes me very angry is hearing people talk about how my family isn’t ‘ideal’. Hearing this does upset me as they don’t know a thing about my family.’

Dissolving Boundaries

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Today a group of Year 3 students at Maynooth University’s Froebel Department of Primary and Early Childhood Education made a poster, took a photo and sent it out on Twitter. It was posted at 11.50am and I took this screenshot at 11.50pm (12 hours later). As you can see from the photo the tweet had 280 interactions with tweeters from every continent in the world. 

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‘You’re gay, this is gay’: how can we tackle homophobia in PE?

I came across an article by @matthewjenkin in The Guardian called ‘You’re gay, this is gay’: how can we tackle homophobia in PE? Evidence and experts suggest that 30 minutes of physical activity a day can have a positive effect on our health, mental health and general well-being. However this is not the case for some LGBT students, as the thought of PE and/or team based sports for them can be a cause of anxiety that they cannot avoid (being part of the school curriculum). The article addresses the use of homophobic language used in sporting activities (at school and extra curricular), as well as the effects this language has on LGBT students. It suggests how improving teacher awareness to the topic can be a first step towards positive change. It asks if a more diverse range of activities and games, which are less gender segregated would be beneficial.

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Twittering in School

2013-10-07 15.59.31-1I am not a fan of handwriting copies, however I found that integrating social media into our handwriting copies made it a much more enjoyable task. Everyday students wrote a tweet (140 characters) in their handwriting copies.
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