Speakers

Anne Looney is the Executive Dean of Dublin City University’s Institute of Education, Ireland’s largest faculty of education. She also leads DCU’s engagement with the Further Education and Training Sector. From 2001 until 2016 she was the CEO of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the agency responsible for curriculum and assessment for early years, primary and post-primary education in Ireland. She also held the position of Interim CEO at the Higher Education Authority until March 2017.

Her current research interests include assessment policy and practice, curriculum, teacher identity and professional standards for teachers and teaching. She has also published on religious, moral and civic education, and education policy. She chaired the task force on gender-based violence in higher education institutions in Ireland. She has conducted reviews for the OECD on school quality and assessment systems.

She is a member of the boards of Early Childhood Ireland, and the Ark Cultural Centre for Children and the President of the International Professional Development Association. In 2020 she became the first woman to be appointed to the management committee of the GAA.

Dr Eamon Costello is an Associate Professor of Digital Learning at Dublin City University (DCU). He is curious about how we think, learn, and work online, offline, and everywhere in between. He has taught, researched and published on a variety of topics in digital learning, STEM education, open education and postdigital social science fiction. A list of his scholarly publications is available on Google Scholar and you can find him on Twitter: @eam0. He is the project co-ordinator for the AST STEM project.

Deirdre Butler is a Full Professor at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University (DCU). Prior to being a teacher educator, she was a primary school teacher, mathematics resource teacher, teacher for the travelling community and vice-principal of a school. Her passion in life is exploring what being digital in learning can mean and what skills or competencies are needed to live and thrive in today’s complex globally connected world. Deirdre is driven by discovering how using digital technologies can revolutionise learning, examining how we learn and questioning our assumptions about “traditional” models of schooling. She is interested in the field of digital learning, particularly the design and development of innovative sustainable, scalable models of teacher professional learning. She has extensive experience of managing a range of projects / school-based initiatives focusing on creative uses of digital technologies to inform the development of a shared language to describe the learning processes embedded in the use of a wide palette of digital technologies, leading to important grounding for curricula serving both children and teachers’ continued professional growth. Currently Deirdre is Expert Advisor to the Irish Department of Education as they develop the next iteration of the Digital Strategy for Schools.

Dr. Niamh Shaw. Irish engineer, scientist, writer and performer, recently voted one of Ireland’s leading science communicators and STEAM specialists (merging science, technology, engineering, arts and maths). She believes in Dreaming Big and is on a mission to get to Space.

Niamh Shaw- Space & Science Writer & Performer | Presenter | Communicator

Katja Engelhardt is leading on the research aspects of policy experimentations such as Assess@Learning (previously TeachUP, MENTEP) on the design of the field trials, including the data collection and analysis. For the Assess@Learning project, she co-developed a toolkit on digital formative assessment for which practice examples were collected. Moreover, she regularly prepares reports, studies, and briefing papers on topics relevant to school education, such as computational thinking/programming, in particular the JRC CompuThink Study (2022, 2016). Her topics of expertise are assessment and learning, online teacher training (MOOC’s), computational thinking/programming, collaborative learning and inclusive education.

Jarmo Viteli, Research Director of TRIM (2009‐ ) at the University of Tampere received his Doctor of Education In Computers in Education in 1989.

His special interest areas are Learning and Instruction in digital environments. Currently there are several research and development project going on under his supervision about educational living lab, knowledge construction and new network models in co-creation. Viteli has been evaluator of several EU‐programme and he is founder and president of the annual national Educational Technology Conference in Finland since 1990, circa 2000 attendees annually.

Karen Murtagh is an Assistant Principal Officer in Ireland’s Department of Education. Karen, having come from the Houses of the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament), has 15 years’ experience in policy development and implementation within the education sector, most recently within the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Unit where she delivered the STEM Education Policy Statement 2017–2026 and currently oversees implementation of the policy statement.  Karen’s other areas of responsibility include curricular development and implementation at primary school level, development of a new Literacy, Numeracy and Digital Literacy Strategy from early years to post-primary school level, as well as having responsibility for the implementation of national and International testing of children in primary and post-primary school. Karen’s previous policy experience includes the delivery of the ICT Strategy for Schools 2015-2020 and the National Schools’ Broadband Programme. Karen is a member of a number of boards and cross governmental groups in relation to education policy including the National Council for Curriculum in Education Early Childhood and Primary Board, the National Right to Read Steering Group and the Management Guidance Committee for the National Centre for Guidance in Education.

Borut Čampelj (PhD) is a policy maker in the Digital Education Unit at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport Slovenia (from 2001). He is responsible for the development of teacher training, interactive e-materials, and a new development project co-financed by the European Commission (European Social Fund, Recovery and Resilience Fund, Erasmus+, Horizon). He has been a member of different working groups of the European Commission and European Schoolnet in the field of digital education, computer science, AI and STEM.  He is an author of various articles in scientific and professional journals as well as participating at the national and international conferences on computer science and digital education.

Dr Eva Hartell is currently Head of research in Haninge municipality and researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Eva is involved in several national and international practitioner- based research and development projects such as ATSSTEM and K-ULF, working closely with teachers and schools with the purpose of bridging teaching and learning in STEM education.

John Hurley is a digital education consultant and founding partner with H2 Learning. John advise the Department of Education on a number of digital learning and STEM Education strategic projects, including the development of the current STEM Education Policy Statement and recently led the consultation on the new Digital Strategy for Schools to 2027. He was a member of the original NCTE team and was responsible for establishing ScoilNet, the national portal for schools. John manages Discover Primary Science and Maths, a national STEM programme for primary schools funded by Science Foundation Ireland. John leads a number of Erasmus+ funded projects, including ATS STEM, on behalf of H2 Learning.