Netdays Ireland is a project promoting the use of the internet among school children and at the same time establish contact and understanding between different cultures.
As part of this project a number of primary schools in Co Clare is in the process of posting clips of young musicians from their schools playing traditional tunes on the web. This is part of a competition [who gets the most feedback wins a prize] but the aim is to let children and other interested parties all over the world hear what they are up to. It’s fun and all support is welcome. Take some time and listen to them sing and play, there should be plenty of whistles there anyway. They would love to get feedback from other children around the world. So pass this on to your local school or let your own children contact the schools that posted their clips, there’s a bunch of young Clare boys and girls keen to e-mail back.
As everybody is giving their children their 15 minutes on the board today, check out the entry for Rockmount NS and see my own young fellow play his concertina with the rest of the lads [their clips were recorded today and will be online tomorrow, thursday].
Very good! Wish I had gotten an early start like that. Thanks for posting that. I’ll check in tomorrow again for Rockmount …
In the meantime, for the Ballyvaughn NS there is a tin-whistle entry of “Green Meadows” that sounds like the tune I know as Over the Moor to Maggie. Didn’t know it was called that, too.
Some things are worth the time it takes on a dial up. This is one of them. 10 minutes is not to long when the payoff is pure pleasure. Its to bad you are robing youself of it. What a joy to hear these kids play. Thanks so much for the link. I will be up all night downloading and enjoying every minute.
It struck me as odd they used Wav files but what can you do. Well, I e-mailed them suggesting they’d change it.
I also talked to the teacher at Rockmount NS just now, their clips will go up around lunchtime today, local time. The young crowd is kee nto get e-mailing with other school around the world so pass the word on to your local school.
People (especially in Britain, where the gutter press has most of them convinced that we aim to achieve world domination by the imposition of things like mandatorily straight cucumbers) may be surprised to learn that Netd@ys</a](http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/netdays/index_en.html>Netd@ys</a)> is an initiative of the European Commission, set up by a former colleague of mine, with a view to promoting the use of information technologies as teaching and learning resources in education and culture.
The initial inspiration came from a US initiative associated with Al Gore, but we chose to place the emphasis on international cooperation on educational content rather than on recruiting volunteers to instal hardware in schools, which was the focus of the US initiative. Initially addressed to schools, vocational training centres etc. in the EU, it has become an increasingly open means of people-to-people communication with countries in neighbouring regions including the Mediterranean area, and it seems destined to have a worldwide reach, even if the project promoters have to be based in a country which qualifies for EU support.
Actually I think the surprise might be that the EC has actually done something incredibly valuable and worthwhile for a change. More power to the children and their schools…long may such laudable practices continue, and I wish them every success.
I thought the Annagh entry using dancers to illustrate the rhythm of the music was great, really brought home the ‘feel’ and the purpose of the music for me.
What a great program! I especially enjoyed the timber flute pieces. Unfortunately I don’t know any school aged children to show the site to. But, anyway nice program.
Ok, I may feel dumb after this (well, I suppose I already do), but I have looked all over and I can’t find the downloads. The titles of the songs or tunes are in green, looking like they should be links to the recordings, but on my computer, they are not. Just words. What am I doing wrong?
Hmmm I know it’s OT but… IT is strong in Ireland, but not when it’s related to the internet. Eircom is so SLOW to install DSL lines, and cable high-speed is only in some areas of Dublin. It’s also very expensive, and I think the irish prefer to SMS text anyway Also, don’t forget that the internet is always slower to catch up in countries where you need to pay by the minute for phone calls, unlike america where you get fixed monthly prices.
I give this a final bump to say that one of the people working on the project e mailed me to say some more clips have been posted and more are to follow. Some MP3s there too now [although I still think they could have compressed them a bit more] and they are working on a streaming option.
So which one is he, Peter? Lovely singing from Rockmount, and I loved the concertinas at the end. I’ll share this with my 10-yr-old and ask him to send an email this afternoon.
Btw, my son didn’t exactly have fifteen minutes, but he was asked to play “Ode to Joy” on his cello this morning over the intercom at his school as part of the morning announcements.
The pics weren’t up earlier when I checked so I hadn’t seen them yet, they are constantly adding to the site and there is more music supposed to go up. I tought Kilfenora were the more disciplined singers. Can’t get that song Nora Bheag out of my head, Gus has bee nsingign it for a while too, they learned it in school recently but for now I seem to be stuck with it. :roll:
