EU Talent Day is Gathering Steam

As we move towards EU Talent Day on 9th April and Ireland's first National Gifted Education Awareness Day on 8th April, things are looking good and it's time for a progress report.

We are in the process of finalising details of events which are being held for EU Talent Day on 9th April. This is not a centrally organised "event". It is day of  national awareness and celebration. If you would like to celebrate your talent in your area, go for it! It doesn't have to be big or elaborate. It can be celebrated by individuals, clubs, classes or organisations. Take a look at the list for ideas. We would  be delighted to include details of any events planned for the day. Particularly, we would like to see events outside the Dublin/Wicklow area!

National Gifted Education Awareness Day will be focused primarily on schools and will include the dissemination of a leaflet and poster to all schools in advance of 8th April. 

Having started out with the support  and encouragement of The Centre for Talented Youth in Ireland (CTYI) and The Institute for Child Education and Psychology (ICEPE), we now have an impressive list of official supporters:

• NAPD: The National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals
• IPPN: The Irish Primary Principals Network
• NPCpp: The National Parents' Council Post-Primary
• PACCS: The Parents' Associations of Community and Comprehensive Schools
• FEDCBS: The Federation of Parents Councils Christian Brothers and other Catholic Secondary Schools 
• ASTI: The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland
• ISSU: The Irish Second Level Students Union
• ELSTA: English Language Support Teachers Association
• Scoilnet: Portal for Irish Education
• Wicklow School of Music and Drama
• FYI Dance Club
• Dara Black

It's wonderful to see parents, principals, teachers and students all come together and we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support of this very worthwhile initiative. It is surely by working together that we will make progress toward a better future for all.

And thank you to Hungary for lighting the spark. Exciting times ahead!

Give Your Kids’ Imagination Wings

 Guest Post by Natalie Butler of GAS

Storybird, a free online collaborative storytelling service, is an ideal way for parents, children and teachers to celebrate both EU Talent Day and National Gifted Education Awareness Day.

It’s free, social, fun, safe, interactive and very easy to use. With Storybird, any child can be a published author. Here’s a quick tour explaining the basics.

It’s great for parents to play with at home with their kids, but it lends itself equally to use in schools, and has its own area for teachers, with three brief tutorials to add and manage students, classes and assignments. Storybird can be used to create individual or class/whole school projects and libraries.

And it suits all levels - kids who can’t yet read or write can dictate their stories through fellow students, parents and teachers.

Storybird has no chat function or personal profiles, and administrators moderate all public books and comments, so it’s secure.

Storybird can also help foster teacher-student relationships, and parent-teacher communication, which can only be a good thing!

Once signed up for an account, users create a storybird by selecting artwork from an enormous library, dragging and dropping it on to a page, and then writing their own words. You can search artwork by theme, or choose to work with a particular artist. Changing artwork, and editing words and pages, is simple.

Once finished, you have the option of sharing the finished product either privately or publicly online.

Making, sharing, reading and commenting on storybirds online is free. Stories can be viewed on your computer screen, emailed to family, friends or teachers, shared globally through a worldwide library, or printed (for a small fee). Users are encouraged to share their own stories, and to read and comment on other people’s storybirds.

It’s designed to be a collaborative tool to connect people and encourage them to take turns to create stories together, but each child can work independently if preferred. Co-authors can be sitting right beside each other, or at opposite ends of the globe. And there’s no age limit to participation (here’s one I co-wrote with my 7-year-old daughter).

You can purchase PDF downloads of your books the moment they're published. They cost US$1.99 and can be printed at home, displayed on devices like the iPad, and used to create an offline back-up/archive of your stories.

The Storybird team tell me: “We hope to release ‘personal uploads’ later this year. We're currently working on our voice prototype. By late summer we'll have the feature in open beta.” So pretty soon kids will be able to use their own illustrations and narrate their own storybirds!

Future plans include an iPad app, a bigger class/school footprint, a shop featuring handpicked stories and art, and more artists.

As the Storybird website says: ‘Our goal is to be an advocate for the imagination.’