Learning Our Way Forward in eLearning: The Story of Something Fishy

Abstract

This paper describes how a number of unlikely publishing partners unexpectedly found themselves exploring eLearning as a medium for teacher and pupil learning. Blackrock Education Centre supports teachers through professional development programmes and the publication of educational resources under the auspices of the Department of Education and Science (DES) in the Republic of Ireland. This paper describes how the intention to create a standard primary school classroom resource by the Education Centre has been unexpectedly transformed in ways which have enabled us to explore eLearning in partnership with a local Institute of Technology, IADT. In doing so, we have ourselves become learners in unexpected ways with our teachers and students. The paper describes how intentions emerge in conversation in processes of local interaction and that the strategic direction of an organisation (in our case, our unexpected involvement in eLearning) is best understood in retrospect. It is about how our identity is transformed in our learning and how strategy can be viewed as an emergent property of relationships. The learning resource is entitled Something Fishy, a humorous play on an English expression meaning something a little suspicious, even subversive. Somethnig Fishy can be viewed at www.somethingfishy.ie