Online Adult Learning Initiative Launched by Minister Brendan Smith.

Cavan Monaghan Rural Development’s GOAL (Generating Online Adult Learning) project and new Irish language website www.goalasgaeilge.com was officially launched by Mr. Brendan Smith T.D. Minister for Children on the 29th August in the Cavan Institute. This launch was uniquely different because it was delivered bilingually in Irish / English and it highlighted the opportunities for adults to become online trainers. Minister Brendan Smith T.D. stated that he knew ‘that Foras na Gaeilge and the Irish language organisations are greatly in support of the project. Therefore support of this nature may act as template to promote the future development of our native language through on-line training.

Cavan Monaghan Rural Development (CMRD) have been a partner in this project for the last three years with four educational institutions from across Europe, Netherlands, Scotland, Hungary and the lead partner was Belfast Metropolitan College. The project commenced in 2004 with funding from EU Grundtvig programme and one of its key objectives was to develop systems which could be easily accessed and used by non-academic trainers.

CMRD trained and provided supports to individuals from various backgrounds in the wider local community to become online trainers. Two of the fourteen online trainers were present to provide an insight into the skills that they acquired and showed live examples of their interactive training modules which are freely available to everyone on the internet. Evelyn Brady provided an overview of her training modules which included an introduction to the Irish language. Evelyn learned how to upload sound clips to the internet and develop an online quiz. As a result her Irish language training modules are user friendly.

It was also interesting to see how this GOAL project has incorporated various internet platforms as a basis for adult learning. A number of the training modules have used Youtube to upload film clips of their training modules on to the www.cmrd.ie / GOAL website. Mark O’Regan, an Angling Guide from Co Meath explained how he developed his training module on the correct methods for fish handling and unhooking techniques. His module includes a number of expertly filmed clips of landing and unhooking methods which release fish unharmed.

The event concluded with the announcement that CMRD was handing over the newly launched www.goalasgaeilge.com to Ghlór Bhreifne over the coming months. Ghlór Bhreifne is the Cavan based Irish language speaking group. Pádraig ó Cuinneagáin, Rúnaí Ghlór Bhreifne, accepted this offer and stated they were delighted that they would be able to promote the Irish language through this learning medium to the local community and to the wider world audience on the internet.

If you are interested in this online learning project, you should check out the various modules in the GOAL section of this wesite and for the Irish version check out www.goalasgaeilge.com