Digital Learning – Page 78 – Digital Learning Dispatches

As 2017 draws to a close it is important to reflect on and highlight the outstanding achievement of our graduates. This year we were delighted to celebrate the success of DCU Connected graduate, Fergal Nealon, who has developed StoryTracks.ie – an award winning tourism app.

StoryTracks1 — DCU President Professor Brian MacCraith presenting award to Fergal Nealon

Fergal’s story is an interesting one. A professional poker player for a number of years, he decided that he wanted to put his career on a more secure footing and so returned to education in 2016. As Fergal lives in Sligo, online study through DCU Connected provided him with the perfect opportunity to complete university study without the need to relocate to Dublin. Fergal graduated in 2017 with the Certificate in Software Systems and Entrepreneurship, funded through the Government’s Springboard scheme.

As part of the Entrepreneurship and Emerging Technologies module, Fergal developed StoryTracks.ie — an app which facilitates local people to upload their stories for tourists to listen to as they travel throughout the country. The local stories connect the tourist in a very real way with the place they are visiting.

Storytracks2

Fergal’s end of year presentation earned him a place on the prestigious DCU Ryan Academy UStart Programme, a DCU student accelerator for entrepreneurial and business development. Fergal further developed the app and went on to win “Best Pitch” at the UStart Accelerator Demo Day in October. Fregal has gone on to work with Enterprise Ireland and the app is available for download on Apple and Android devices.

Check out Fergal’s app: https://storytracks.ie/

Listen to an interview with Fergal on RTE Radio 1 Saturday 14^th October. at: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-business/podcasts/

Last Friday, staff in the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University (DCU) joined together for a whole of team collaborative professional development activity. Notably, this experience was purposefully different with a creative twist. In two teams, combining over 20 people across all three NIDL units, the challenge for the morning was to produce a large piece of urban art (i.e., graffiti) based on two randomly assigned themes.

NIDL 2017a.jpg
As hopefully you can tell from the selected images the two themes were Pirates and Western. At first this was a rather daunting task for people in the face of two large blank canvasses (walls). However, after a brief 101 tutorial on the basics of drawing and painting graffiti from our two expert mentors, each team set about their task by brainstorming possible concepts, sketching out initial designs and learning how to hold and spray a paint can.

Some people took to this task naturally whereas others slowly warmed to the experience, especially given the doors were left open most of the time to avoid paint fumes.

It’s also fair to say that dividing up tasks, learning new artistic skills and working in a team to produce the intended design was not easy. Notably, the two groups responded quite differently to the challenge under the guidance of their respective team leaders.

There was a lot of good banter and healthy competition, nevertheless, between the two teams as the large walls gradually filled and increasingly became alive with colourful imagery.

Over the course of the morning a number of hidden talents emerged and by the end of the experience both teams were rather pleased with their efforts. We believe the final results depicted in the photos immediately above and below illustrate the creative flair, collective problem-solving abilities and collaborative across unit potential of the NIDL team–that is, irrespective of whether you seek treasure or just prefer to have a quiet drink in the saloon.

Of course, the challenge for us in the New Year is to build on this innovative professional development experience to more fully harness our combined talents. We hope through this non digital experience (apart from the photos) that we have set a new benchmark for discovering more creative, distinctive and transformative ways of realising our vision of designing, implementing and researching new Blended, Online and Digitally-enhanced (BOLD) models of education.

In the meantime, the words of Einstein spring to mind and go some way to encapsulating the real spirit and essence of last week’s purposefully different professional development challenge, as we strive in the NIDL to promote talent, creativity, and consistent excellence:

“Creativity is intelligence having fun”

(Albert Einstein)