In honour of Europe Day on Monday May 9th, we decided to host a variety of activities. These included a European Food Day, a table quiz and an awareness raising campaign about everything European!

We were very proud that all of our hard work paid off - we especially enjoyed the food :)

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A very big welcome to TY Stars who have just begun the European Schools Ambassador Programme. Our first task is to organise an event for Europe Day on Monday 9th May. We have decided to host a European Food Day, a table quiz and an awareness campaign of all things European!

Here are some photos showing how our preparations are coming along. We're really looking forward to next Monday :)

On the 16th of March, we celebrated International Day in St. Oliver's Community College. The day was hugely successful and great fun too. We were allowed to wear our national dress or something green if we preferred. St. Oliver's is home to many different nationalities and all were represented on March 16th. We got to sample foods from all over the world and the highlight was certainly the Talent Show. Well done to everyone involved!

  

Last Monday, TY Valley organized a European Soccer Match as part of the European Parliament Ambassador Schools Programme.

Our Junior Ambassadors were key in organizing this event so huge thanks to them.

We rounded up thirty students from St Oliver's and named our two teams Germany and Spain. Congratulations to Germany, captained by Pedro, who won 3-1.

We had great fun on the day and raised a lot of awareness about the importance of European Studies and other cultures.

Huge thanks to our Junior Ambassadors Tom, Chuks, Tatenda, Paula, Aoife and Ellen (missing from picture) who organised the hugely successful European Football Match last week. Congrats to the winners Germany!

The Model Council of Europe debate took place in Dublin Castle yesterday. Students from 28 schools in Ireland represented a different member state and debated Europe's number one challenge, migration. 

Well done to our team Joseph Catlett, Jack Synott and Stephen Reid who made St. Oliver's proud. They were helped along by their dedicated teacher, Ms Barbara Carr. 

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Thank you so much to Mairead McGuinness MEP for visiting us in class last Friday to help us with our 'Euroselfie' competition for Euroscola. We really enjoyed having you in our school :)

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Huge thanks to Marian Harkin MEP for dropping into our European Studies class to talk to us about life as an MEP. We also managed to fit in a selfie with Mrs Harkin for our Euroselfie competition for Euroscola! 

For this year's Euroscola compeition, we have been tasked with creating our own competition! Last year, it was a six word challenge, the previous year it was a poster and the year before that, it was a webpage. We wanted to do something that hasn't been done before so we came up with ...
                            
                                    THE EUROSELFIE COMPETITION


Your task is to create an A4 collage of selfies. You must include as many of the following selfies as possible:

1. A selfie with the EU flag.
2. A selfie with an MEP.
3. A selfie with traditional food from another European country. 
4. A selfie with as many other European nationalities as possible. 
5. A selfie with another student in a different school uniform. 
6. A selfie in front of a local business that sells products from another European country. 


GOOD LUCK!

Wednesday 16th September saw the return of the Microsoft CoderDojo in Dublin after the Summer break. I attended in my capacity as Irish Ambassador for EU Code Week. The evening kicked off with a presentation from St. Oliver's very own Cian Bohan. He presented his new app Safewalk. There's no stopping this young man - I hope he remembers us when he's living the high life in Silicon Valley. 

Next on the agenda was a workshop from Derk Breen, author of 'Scratch for Kids'. Derek entertained the kids and mentors with his wacky workshop. He showed us fab features in Scratch, such as 'Vector Graphics'!

Check out our photos of the night below!

This is the link where you can enter The Graduate Quiz to win trips to Strasbourg. 

Five students from St. Oliver's have won the prize in the last three years. We have also been lucky enough to win a free trip to Euroscola in Strasbourg for the whole class! Our prize was sponsored by The Ombudsman for Children and we won through a competition on the European Parliament in Ireland website. 

Huge congrats to Sarah from Transition Year who has won a trip to Euroscola in Strasbourg! Sarah is the second student to win a trip this year and the fifth student from our school to win overall (Not to mention the full class trip we also won!).  Have a great time Sarah and Hannah. 

Here are our presentations on some European Legends ... 

I spoke to attendees at the Refresh Boyne BBQ night in Bru about EU Code Week...

We were fortunate enough to have a past pupil, Barry James, visit us in St. Oliver's and talk to us about the importance of STEM in real life. The TYs loved the experience and were especially grateful for the pizzas and goodies! Thank you so much Bord Gais Energy. 

Huge thanks to everyone who supported EU Code Week 2014! Below are photos from events supported by ...

CoderDojo
Domino's Pizza Ireland
Microsoft Ireland 
Bord Gais Energy

and a ridiculous amount of teachers, schools and ETBs. You'll find more photos here. 

The Excited Digital Learning Festival took place on the 30th May 2014. There were a lot of highlights but meeting Lord David Puttnam certainly topped them! I was also thrilled to speak on the same panel as Marty Mobile ;) Minister Ciaran Cannon and the three rockstars, Sophie Healy Thow, Emer Hickey and Ciara Judge, were inspirational to say the least. 

You can check out my interview with VP Neelie Kroes below too. 

   I recently spoke at the 
   CoderDojo Conference in 
   Sligo. I spoke about EU Code 
   Week and the importance of 
   women in ICT.  
   

    #DojoCon2014

Ms. Cullen was a judge at the CoderDojo Coolest Projects Awards in the Helix. As usual, she was promoting all things CODE! You can see her interview with RTE Digital below.