Chalktalk: News and views in education

Many directions

Following criticism of the data from FÁ S on its Career Directions website, FÁ S withdrew course information from the site and instead referred visitors looking for education information to the qualifax.ie website.

Now the entire Career Directions site has been closed and enquiries to FÁ S/Solas about occupations, qualifications and employment are directed to the Careers Portal website careersportal.ie, an Irish public- private operation.

Careersp ortal.ie , recently recognised internationally for best practice in online guidance resources, has self-assessment tools and a more complete, up-to-date occupational database. It pulls together the strands of information for students, adult learners and job seekers, and has information on labour market trends, further and higher education courses, job vacancies, and hundreds of job videos, with Irish people talking about their work, education path and salary scales.

Going foreign

A new free app aims to make job hunting much easier for teachers. The TIC R ecruitment a pp (free for iPhones and Android on App Store and Google Play) allows teachers to apply quickly and easily for international positions vacant around the world.

More than 7,000 international schools – private, English-language schools often attended by expat children – are recruiting now for teachers for 2014-2015 academic year. Information at ticrecruitment.com.

For teachers working abroad in the shorter term there’s € 10,000 up for grabs for primary and post-primary teachers teaching abroad this summer.

Folens has launched an overseas teaching fund for primary and post-primary teachers who are working abroad with charities. The € 10,000 goes to 10 winners, with each getting € 500 towards the overseas charity, school or organisation they will be teaching with and € 500 towards their own costs. To apply, log on to folens.ie/fotf.

In the m eantime, the first professional organisation for private-sector English l anguage teachers here, ELT Ireland, has been set up; up until now there has been no Irish-based professional organisation promoting best practice, something that is well-established in the UK.

The English-language teaching industry was worth about € 300 million to the Irish economy in 2010.

Maths help online

How long does it take for a snowball to melt? The Project Maths question demonstrates how to apply the principles of differentiation. But for students still coming to grips with the new syllabus, mocks.ie has free video content that may be helpful in the run up to the exams. M ocks.ie apps are also on the Windows 8 platform.

Tom Nolan, a maths teacher at St Mary's College, Galway, and an innovator of e-learning content for students, has released more than 300 hours of free content with m ocks.ie to help students with Project Maths and how to answer exam questions.

It started with video recordings of his classes he put on the school website.

“The results from my students have been excellent and the feedback has been great. Other classes in the school started to use them,” and it grew from there, he said.

The content is now free for students throughout the country .