Who's Who introduces youto people who are working in and for education in Ireland Dr. Kevin Marshall Occupation: Academic Programme Manager, Partners in Learning, Microsoft Ireland Where are you from? I was born in Dublin and grew up in Dundrum. Where did you go to school? I went to St Benildus secondary school, Kilmacud. Did you enjoy school? Yes, I loved school. I liked to learn, I liked to study. And I played an awful lot of sports - tennis, badminton, squash, you name it. School was a very good experience for me. What about college? I liked college - meeting lots of new people, studying and playing sport. I spent three years in UCD doing a BA in Psychology, followed by one year at the University of Hull, doing a Masters. Then I went to the States (in 1988) and stayed there for 12 years. I did my PhD in Education in Boston College, which is a fascinating place. I found the course work very interesting and it was directly related to the work I was doing for Boston Public Schools, which made it easier to juggle the dual demands of work and study. Describe your work for Boston Public Schools I did substitute teaching for about a year. Then I got a job in the Research, Assessment and Evaluation Unit. The States put a lot of emphasis on standardised testing, and the Unit I worked for was dedicated to data analysis. I got the job primarily because of my knowledge of statistics and my interest in statistical data analysis. What brought you back to Ireland? Around 2000 I was ready to leave my job in Boston and it was fortuitous that a company called Vision Consulting was recruiting back in Ireland at the time. Vision had a big practice in business and process rearranging, and change of management, and I got a job there doing consulting work. During my last two years in Boston I had done a lot of work in change-of-management, which is a skill to be learned no matter what the profession, and I was able to transfer the knowledge I had gained to my work with Vision. And the beauty about this job was that it gave me some private sector experience, which I hadn't had to date. Did you find it easy to transfer back to Ireland? It was very hard emotionally for the first three years. Boston is a great city, my wife and I were used to it, we had spent a lot of time there, two of our three children had been born there, it was familiar, we were comfortable in it. Coming back was a huge culture shock. We had been away for all of the 90's and had missed the boom and we found that attitudes, culture, ways of doing things had changed dramatically. How long did you work for Vision Consulting? About three years. During the last year I was travelling an awful lot and was spending most of my time in London. The travelling became too difficult for me, so when an option came my way to head up the Irish implementation of Microsoft's Partners in Learning, I applied for the job, went through a series of interviews, was successful, and that's what I'm doing now. What is Partners in Learning? Partners in Learning is Microsoft's 5-year commitment to a global programme which looks at increasing kids' access to technology, empowering kids to use technology, and empowering teachers to use technology. It's also about developing relationships with governments, and partnering with governments. It started in 2003 and $250m have been committed globally to the programme. There are a number of key elements: Fresh Start: This involves helpingschools that have received donated PCs to get them up and running efficiently. These PCs are generally stripped of the operating system – we can get the operating system to schools for free, we just go into the web and do it. The IT Academy: This is a global training and certification programme which involves Microsoft partnering with accredited secondary schools and colleges to deliver Microsoft Office Specialist Certification in either Microsoft Office 2000/2003 and /or Microsoft Office XP. School Agreement under Partners in Learning: This is a programme whereby we have made available low cost software (Windows and Office) to 15% of the schools which are classified as disadvantaged. They can get Windows and Office for 5 euro a desktop per year until 2008. We are currently rolling out that programme to approximately 700 schools which have been chosen by the Department of Education & Science. Innovative Teachers: Microsoft has partnered withTeachnet to help teachers develop professionally and to encourage them to develop digital content. Teachnet has a wonderful programme by teachers for teachers and the Teachnet site is now being developed into a portal. Do you like working for Partners in Learning? Yes. I like the role and the fact that I have a lot of contact with schools and education institutions. I also do some stuff for IBEC and I sit on a number of committees in NCCA. Is the Department doing enough for IT in schools? It started off well in 1997-8 with IT 2000. Since then the work has lagged. It's time for a rethink, time to come up with a strategy that makes sense. What would you like Minister Mary Hanafin to do? I'd like Mary Hanafin's Department to stand back from the moment, to take stock, to ask what have we done, what have we spent, has it been the right thing to do, and where do we go from here. Then I'd like them to go and do some broad consultation – with industry, with teachers, with parents - similar to what has been done in Northern Ireland. I'd like them to develop a strategic plan for five years which we can all sign-up to, and which we can all use as the way forward to re-engage teachers in professional development. Have teachers taken to the new technology? Teachers are disillusioned with technology. So what, they are saying, what's in it for me? We have to show them what's in it. We have to re-educate them. That's a tough task. It's not obvious. It's not enough for a teacher to go in and turn on a computer and say this is going to help my teaching. Teachers need support, training. We have to give them a few exemplars and then it will begin to make sense. That's what Innovative Teachers is about, that's what Teachnet is about - trying to show them this is one way you can do it. Try this, if you don't like it try something else, but give it a go. We are convinced that what we have done will be of benefit for them. What is the best thing about your current job? Being out there engaging with the education community, working with partners like Teachnet, the Digital Hub, IBEC, Intel, and trying to put forward an agenda which says that technology can help teaching, and here is how. It's exciting to be at the cusp of a whole new way of doing things. Have you a message for teachers? Give the stuff a try. If you have tried and failed, try again. Be open to the idea that it may help your teaching. For those of you who are using it already, tell us about what you are doing and we will showcase it. Where might an interested teacher start? Go to the Innovative Teachers website (www.micorsoft.com/ireland/education) and register to receive a 2 CD learning pack which will give you some idea of how to begin. It's a totally free programme. There are ten learning resources attached to the CDs – 5-minute videos on how you use Powerpoint, how you use a digital camera, etc. This would be a good start. Then, if you want to go a bit further, you can sign up for some seminars which we run around the country. Is there anything in the system that frustrates you? I think the pace of change is too slow. I can understand why it is slow, but I think we need to get our act together. We can see from the OECD report which was published six months ago that, in terms of professional development and use of ICT in the classroom, Ireland is in the bottom third of EU countries. I think we are living in a bit of self- delusion about how good things are, how good our system is generally. I think we need a good reality check. You don't stop the education debate because you've got leaking roofs – that's a concern for the Office of Public Works. We extol the values of our system but if we don't take a left to right view of education and follow it through we are going to lose out. Renaissance is required. Have you settled in Ireland now? Yes. We live in Greystones, a wonderful place, we have friends and family close and our third child was born here. Life here is good. Are you a workaholic? Somewhat ... What do you do to chill out? Play tennis, play with the kids, drink a few pints. Any plans for the future? I am a visiting research fellow with CRITE (Centre for Research in Technology) in Trinity College and I would like to do more of that. I plan to write more on the policy side of things, particularly as it pertains to technology implementation over the last decade. Seattle maybe ...