every oak tree was a little acorn once, and so it happens that TeachMeet was a wee blog post once – this day 20 years ago Ewan McIntosh published an edublog inviting teachers to an informal discussion session in the pub on May 24. That blog post grew and fractalised into something wide and strong and nourishing, the TeachMeet phenomenon.
Never underestimate a blog post 
At a school called LETSS*,
We’d a TeachMeet for CESI & guests,
Our number was twenty,
There was learning a-plenty,
And the craic that we had was the best
So our Limerick weekend just flew past,
Thanks to all of the CESIcon cast,
Volunteers every one,
Who get the job done,
With each other – and long may that last!
Our annual CESI – Computers in Education Society of Ireland – conference is built and delivered by a subset of the CESI National Executive. It is all done in volunteer mode during time borrowed away from family and other commitments, during weekend and evening time, out of belief that it is important that we make available a time and place each years for our teacher peers to get together in-person. And although there is a modest subsidy from the Teacher Professional Network (the in-service section of the Department of Education), a lot of ingenuity and tapping into goodwill goes into keeping the costs as modest as possible. We have been helped greatly in this for the past two years as we have been hosted by Limerick & Clare Education Training Board, and Príomhoide Kevin Ó Raghallaigh, at the gorgeous new school in Limerick city, Gaelcholáiste Luimnigh. As well as the spic-and-span space that was opened to us – with the day-long support of teachers and students from the school – there is something about being in the atmosphere of a school, sitting in the classroom as our students do, seeing the class work on the wall, lunching together and assembling for our keynote in the Halla – all of this reminds us of why we do it in the first place.
After initial greetings, coffee, and registration, we started our day together with Artificial Intelligence: Hype vs Reality, the keynote from tech journo Elaine Burke, former editor of Silicon Republic, co-presenter of the For Tech’s Sake podcast, whose suitably teacherly pseudonym on the fediverse is @CriticalRedPen. Elaine’s punchy and pertinent address set the tone of critical conversation for the day, including her warning to be careful with our integration of AI with a witty and topical play on the very Irish warning to “keep her lit(erate)”. It was also pleasing to see CESI’s own Conor Power as videographer, and for those who missed the day his edited production of the video is here – a useful discussion resource for both LCCS and CSPE classrooms.
For the rest of the day we had presentations and workshops, all outlined with abstracts linked from the programme timetable here. There are THIRTY names on the presenter list – that’s THIRTY people who gave us their time to share their knowledge with the rest of us. We had a lively vendor exhibition area also – and thanks to Helen O’Kelly the Turtlestitch machine was whizzing away there all day. I got a definite feeling from observing across the day that the main objective was being achieved – everyone who came went away with at least one good new idea, ‘something for Monday’ so to speak. Mine was a reminder of this thought – show a good idea to any bunch of teachers in a room together, and immediately they start chatting about how they can integrate it in their own classrooms!
A new feature was added this year, the Quiet Room; as one who availed of it, I hope it is here to stay, and I’m naming it Room Q.
Driving away tired but content at the end of the day, I had the same thought as after the TeachMeet on the evening before – the success of the each CESI gathering seems to come from the prescence together of people from all levels and sectors of Irish education – primary, secondary, FE, HE, teacher-training both pre-order and in-service, policy and curriculum development, ed-tech hardware and software suppliers all in one space together for a weekend. This unique CESI mix is always invigorating and motivating, and we are ever grateful to everyone who contrbiutes to it.
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Photographs courtesy of Richard Millwood.
[couldn’t resist, when in Limerick, etc., ah shur the limerick just wrote itself]
At a school called LETSS*,
We’d a TeachMeet for CESI & guests,
Our number was twenty,
There was learning a-plenty,
And the craic that we had was the best.
*LETSS is Limerick Educate Together Secondary School, a truly wonderful place to walk in to. Thanks to Conor Power of CESI, who teaches there, we had our first in-person CESI TeachMeet since exactly 6 years ago. 20 was the key number – TeachMeet is celebrating 20 years of being, and we had 20 in the room. Of the 20, 9 had signed up to present. The room was the school library, a bright open flexible space – the glass walls lined with very inviting rotating egg chairs – guess where we all made for on arrival! Thanks to media wrangler extraordinaire, Bernie Goldbach, for these on-the-fly posts to his Topgold Bluesky timeline. [I miss the days when Twitter was a good place, and we’d have a crowdsourced hastagged anti-FOMO backchannel running commentary projected on a side screen, and streaming out to those who’d like to have but couldn’t be there].
We had a terrific variety of presenters names in the hat – the old random name generator from classtools just about held up, given that the site is totally enshittified with pop-up trash, but nostalgia ruled for #TeachMeet20. One of the pictures above shows the plush camel toy being held up to show speakers what would be tossed in their direction if they went over their alloted 2 or 7 minutes. {Ironically, dear reader, the only sinner who got the camel treatment is the man holding it up in the picture !!!).
And so our speakers were called one by one – in Act 1 we had Caroline Clabby from Kinia outlining supports to schools; Keith Quille from TUD and CSinc previewed his talk for the morrow; second level teacher Jennifer Kelly from Warrenmount SS aksed for ideas for the new LC Biology investigations; live demos from Stephen Howell of his Body Blocks software interacting with Scratch (see picture top left above) and Bernie Goldbach who spooked us using Meta RayBans connected to a bluetooth speaker. We had a lovely breakout session with some refreshments and a Turtlestitch demonstration on the embroidery machine Helen O’Kelley had brought and set up. Straight after the break, Richard Millwood gave a rapid overview of the Turtletitch interface. Act 2 then resumed with Conor Power first showing us his students’ CanSat project, and outlined the project-based-learning that is central to LETSS; Helen O’Kelly did a lightning run through her Design Thinking work with Learnovate; Mags Amond (mise) updated the group on the current uploading of CESI newsletters to the Digital Repository of Ireland; and Richard Millwood outlined similar work he has been doing at the UK National Archive for Educational Computing, using his evolving Eureka challenge as an example.
The presentation slides can be viewed here
As well as those listed above, present were Kate Molloy, John Hegarty, Sheila McDonald, Pat Seaver, Elizabeth Oldham, Elaine Burke, Vincent Gleeson, Tim Tuckey, Patrick Hickey, Noeleen Doyle and Jon Witts (and better late than never, Sarah Jayne Carey!). Proof that this was a good TeachMeet? There was the conference keynote speaker Elaine sat in the middle of the mayhem, and no extra attention paid to her all evening (I suspect she was taking mental notes though) – no one was being rude, it is just that TeachMeet really is the ultimate non-hierarchical space I know of in education. The one time I took a panoramic look about the room I saw primary, post primary, FE, HE, tech media, teacher training, vendors and professional development suppliers all the one space on the same level. (If you read this and realise I’ve left out a sector, ping me).
It was a grand evening thanks to the volunteers who signed up to share, the audience who took part, Conor who set up the tech as invisible (the best way), Stephen who took care of the presenter laptop space, school principal Eoin Shinners who have us the run of the place, and top of my surprise list is Kyle the barrita from the school café who met us with coffee and pastries on arrival!
Some folk repaired to the bar at the Absolute Hotel for aprés-meet … ach sin scéil eile (but that’s another story).
All in all, a good event to set #TeachMeet20 sailing in Ireland for 2026. To be continued >>
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Every year for the past 70 years all over Ireland we are treated to local drama festivals. In early winter there is One Act Drama and in late winter / spring there is Three Act Drama. Amateur in name only – professional in approach and delivery, and well attended by local communities.
Right now there are 32 festivals ready to run, which will lead to two national finals. That means thousands of people will attend plays, live, in their local hall, town hall, theatre, or event space. All volunteer driven, both the competing drama companies and the hosting festival committees.
The list of plays in our local Town Hall Theatre in Cavan is here – the list of over 250 perfomances on offer at each of the nationwide festivals between Feb 21st and March 29th is available here. Confined (20 competing groups) and Open (19 competing groups) are two distinct categories, hence the two national finals. The ‘League Table’ for each group is scrutinised as soon as the first results are published this week until the last festival closes – that web page must be red hot about midnight as we all check the scores. I have a lot of close friends and family invloved in both competing groups and festival commmittees, so conversations are going to be heady for the next few weeks!
Cavan Three Act Drama Festival 2026 nightly performances >>>>>
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In Sept 2024, I wrote about a workshop at the Johnston Central Library at which we were invited to stitch a circle for a Brigid’s cloak project.
Last week I went to see the finished cloak on display in the Cavan County Museum in Ballyjamesduff*. It was lovely to see everybody’s contribution put together with artistry and skill; the green exterior with all the icons stitched on, the lining with the poetry and prayers written across it.
Of course my eye was first drawn to “my” own sunflower of fabric paint and floss …
Then I stood for a while admiring the work that had gone into assembling the cloak …
However it was a frustrating and somewhat disappointing experience, having seen the various parts as separate pieces of work, and knowing the extent of them, to find them diminished by being cramped into a space far too narrow for the context of a Brigid’s cloak.
It was better to look at the photographs of the cloak in the wild …
I would much prefer to see the cloak hung on display fully extended, and visible from both sides, to showcase all of the contributions – it was, after all, a national community effort to honour the legend of the woman whose cloak spread far and wide.
The legend told of Brigid’s cloak is illustrated here by artist Barrie Maguire
*the Ballyjamesduff of “Come back Paddy Reilly to”, one of the most sung songs of Percy French.
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This weekend three weeks ago, families were turning up to spend the day at the Junior track at FOSDEM, an annual ‘two-day event organised by volunteers to promote the widespread use of free and open source software’. This is the third year that the Mathijssen team of Peter and Bart have organised two days of hands on workshops for young people, accompanied by their adults, within the wider event which is for adults. Families from 25 countries signed up to the 18 workshops on offer, delivered by volunteers from (I think) more than 12 countries. Quite a positive achievement and a definite addition to the giant event that is FOSDEM – who know how many thousand open source enthusiasts gathered in one place – visibly changing the ratio in terms of age and gender. For the future, this can only be a good thing.
I was there for the second year with the Turtlestitch volunteers as a helper – the nature of a Turtlestitch workshop means the teaching and coding element can work with one ‘teacher’ demonstrating, then it can be mayhem when it comes to the time for file saving and transfer to machines for stitching output time, so extra hands are useful. Our Turtlestitch tutors were Margaret Low, Pauline Maas, and Joek von Montfort, pictured here among the team at the end of the day …
At the end of the workshop the youngsters seemed happy with the items coded, stitched, and decorated.
It wasn’t just Turtlestitch on offer – there was Microblocks, Co Cubes, Snap!, Sonic Pi, Hedy, Python, and more – the full two-day programme is listed here. It was especially nice to see some families from last year return.
The social and community aspect of the FOSDEM cannot be overestimated. Although we meet online once a month, arriving early Friday meant some our Turtlestitch group could have a useful in-person community discussion while relaxing in the hotel lobby in the afternoon.
As well as us ‘turtles’ from either side of the Atlantic getting together, meeting across the weekend with the global Microblocks and SNAP! folk [from USA, Germany, and Catalunya] was as good for the soul as ever. It is important to be reminded of the good things each other are doing.
Although the city was very very busy, we managed to find a place to relax and catch up a little with each other in the Wolf sharing food market both evenings. Although it was beyond noisy, the food was terrific, and the company was delightful.
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… reflecting on the TeachMeet at #BETT26 this year … it is now the only reason I go to BETT; carbon-footprint wise it might be something I will need to phase out soon. The TeachMeet at Olympia BETT in January 2009 was the second one I attended and it copperfastened the feeling I had at my first event in Glascow at the Scottish Leanring Festival in September 2008 – this is the way to learn with colleagues. Side by side, presentations from the congregation not the preacher.
Thanks to Danny Nicholson for canvassing collecting and curating the volunteer speakers, and making the tech more or less invisible; the same with Dawn Hallybone, who’s light touch compèring kept the focus on the speakers and audience, and the TeachMeet itself – reminding us why we were gathered, and of the importance of each of us in the room determining to have an event this year to celebrate the fact it is now 20 years since the first instance in Scotland 2006. Servant leadership* at its best. The space we were given was perfect this year, what is called the Table Talks area has had a makeover and it suited TeachMeet perfectly – large round tables, comfy chairs, space to move about, refreshments, good audio, screen large enought but not dominating the space. Dawn tells us this is thanks to her contact at HYVE, a good woman called EJ (is it because EJ is Scottish we wonder idly?), who visited the event to check we were ok. Corporate Social Responsibility at it best.
Danny’s slideset with all the presenter slides is here – thank you Ben Davies, Carol Allen, Claire Wamsley, Danny Nicholson, Emma Goto, Euan Morrison, Frank Sabaté, Joe Wilson, Mags Amond, Pauline Maas, Selcuk Arstan, Stephen Lockyer, Tim & Henry – you were the perfect mix of presentations (short and shorter, provocatve, informative, and helpful, sending each of us away with ‘something for Monday’.
My own nanopresentation (2 mins) was focussed on the fact we don’t have a definite definition for TeachMeet, and that’s ok. Shout out to Doug Belshaw for a blog post in which he reminded me of Hannah Arendt on how strories trump definitions, and Trish Greenhalgh (on Twitter when it was a good place for education, sigh) for helping my thoughts on this; and thanks to Richard Millwood for designing the delightful Definitionometer.
My main point was to be a reminder that more important than defining TeachMeet it was to do it. The 4 Ps that emerged when I researched among the TeachMeet community – for them it is personal, purposeful, practical, political – has been joined by another P recently – there is a precarity in the air as it is so easily appropriated and turned into something it is not (and that is happening recently). What it is in essence is a humble thing, open, social, built on trust; it is time to return to that. So I echoed Dawn’s call for rewilding it as it turns 20. The lyrics from Hamilton come to mind … ‘name a time and place, face to face‘ …. the rest will happen.
As for me, I’m looking forward to annual CESIcon TeachMeet returning face to face in Limerick Ireland on February 27th – having become a fixiture from 2009 till 2020, it is a good to see it return.
*The 5 pillars of servant leadership as listed in a million sources – empowerment, humility, authenticy, foresight, stewardship – are intrinsic to the way I’ve observed the good folx of the first 20 years of TeachMeet do things. Let’s keep it that way.
PS – editing to add my surprise and delight to find out I’ve made my TikTok debut 
thanks to Martin Bailey’s ‘selfie reel’! There we are picture below, me holding the timekeeping toy that was virtually redundant, best behaved presenters ever we had.
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This little piece of Tatreez work design started on Culture Night last Sept 20th, but our lovely Palestinian teacher over-estimated our speed and we took them home to finish. (Reminder here)
Then my right thumb became temporarily unavailable for fine motor skills while some surgery was undergone and recovered from. Finally, this week saw it finished and ready for a tiny frame.
Tatreez cross stitch is more difficult than it looks to keep it looking consistent – peer into the orange stitches you might see the one dreadful stitch that a nun of old would have made me unpick to fix.
Once I found out that the Perl no. 8 yarn favoured in Tatreez work was ideal for other embroideries, I tried the sashiko-inspired border for framing. There’s no “give” in it, you have to keep at eye, and a finger, on the tension all the time.
A good learning curve, and a delight to be able to stitch again with my recently repaired and recovered thumb.
A good learning curve, and a delight to be able to stitch again with my recently repaired and recovered thumb.
Being diagnosed with Sjögren’s Disease brings along with it a whole new set of acronyms.
SjD – the recently adopted short hand for what can be an unpronounceable condition. SjD is an autoimmune disease that causes the patient’s white blood cells to attack the body’s mucous membranes; it manifests in up to 1% of the population, predominantly women. In Ireland, there is a lively patient community (thanks to the prescience of co-founders Deirdre Collins, Gráinne Tynan, Monika Lauder, and Eileen Sheey) hosted by Sjögren’s Ireland.
PPI – Ireland’s medical research community has a strong commitment to public and patient involvement and SjD happens to be well served in this regard. This is a good thing for a patient to find out very soon after a diagnosis; the hint of a siver lining in the cloud.
SYNERG-IE at RCSI -there is a dynamic SjD PPI research project hosted at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. SYNERG-IE is a multidisciplinary research programme designed in partnership with Sjögren’s Ireland that aims to address longstanding challenges in the recognition, diagnosis, and management of SjD. An important of this programme has been the annual Knowledge Exchange, a hybrid event bringing together healthcare professionals, patients, researchers, and carers. Last year I tuned in from afar, this year I took part in person. This year’s event took place, at RCSI and online, on Sat Nov 22nd.
This hybrid brought together over 130 participants. We had a mix of people living with Sjögren’s and their families, healthcare professionals and other interest holders in attendance to hear from our informative guest speakers Consultant Rheumatologist Dr Natasha Jordan and Ophthalmologist Dr Emily Greenan. You can watch it all back here: https://youtu.be/lseYfuphH04?si=wJvcxuDTlQCHKBc_
Programme manager Dr Nikki Dunne presented segments from the recent Photovoice resarch project, which had invited 11 people living in Ireland with Sjögren’s disease to document their experiences through photography and personal reflection, capturing the daily realities, challenges and adaptations involved in managing this systemic and serious autoimmune disease. The booklet had been launched on World Sjögren’s Day at RCSI in the summer; here we got to hear more about the process and the findings. There is a pfd of the booklet here
The day ended with a Q&A session with all the speakers fielding questions that had been invited in as many ways as feasible – there was a physical question box in the room all morning – there were online queries in the zoom chat, questions had been called for in advance from those registered, and questions came from the floor – this could have gone on for the rest of the day! This was a very dynamic end to a really well planned event. The secret sauce was the mixture of ‘Doctor Doctors’ – health care professionals who research – and patient’s whose experience is the subject of the event. The surroundings were comfortable – yeah for the round tables!-, and the pace was relaxed but focussed. There was time for conversation and comparison with each other, there was exactly what it said on the tin … knowledge exchange.
and just one last acronym
GRMA – Go Raibh Maith Agaibh, thank you to everyone involved. The agency of knowledge is hugely important to patients navigating an SjD life; knowledge exchange can be a silver lining in a cloud of doubt.
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I took just three pictures at Congregation 2025, where we huddled and talked and listened to each others’ thoughts and feeling on the theme of chaos. [mine]
10.26 – heading in to the first huddle – the welcoming poster …
13:50 a moment between the huddles when the time on the camera matched the time on the stone monument in the centre of the village (1350) …
17:15 the peaceful while between the huddles of the day and the hooleys of the night …
Cong at the end of November is the ultimate chaordic unconference, conceived and curated by Eoin Kennedy – make of it what you will. I make a weekend retreat of it, a rest and a reset, (forget touching grass – this is touching stone, stones which have gathered moss). Roll on 2026.
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