Mayo Science Fair: www.bladair.com

We launced www.bladair.com yesterday at the Mayo Science Fair in The Traveller's Friend Hotel in Castlebar.

The Mayo Education Centre launched one of it's recent projects yesterday as a part of the Mayo Science Fair. I was invited to be a part of the event and therefore I introduced many young budding bloggers to the world of blogging as Gaeilge (through the language of Irish).

The blog is live at www.bladair.com and it is a very easy step-by-step process.

The idea is to engage the language in a fun way that is not "academically" emphasised on the surface but is obviously educational covertly. (There may be a contradiction there - but y'know what I mean).

Each month until next march there will be two prizes of 50E awarded for good (the best) blogs.

So there you go. New technology plus economic prizes, being used to encourage our youth to engage with new technology through the medium of the Irish language.

Now, how else can we use new technology for other positive humanistic projects?

Got to sit as a facilitator/educator for a couple of hours.

As part of the Science Fair in Mayo, a competition is being held for students from the ages of 12-18. They must create a video by capturing the raw footage on a mobile phone, and then the completed product must be between 30 sec.s and 2 min.s long.

The Mayo Education Centre, in conjunction with the County Council has provided the facilities for the editing/uploading etc. of these projects at it's state-of-the-art building in Castlebar.

I have been given the opportunity to advise the students in this setting.

The youth of West Mayo are computer savvy, visually creative and efficient. They are also polite, well mannered and a pleasure to advise.

It's good to be back!