Dissolving boundaries: building communities of practice

Abstract

Dr. Roger Austin and Dr. Aidan Mulkeen in 1999 identified the opportunity that the growth of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) presented to schools and founded the Dissolving Boundaries programme from an initial successful project entitled “This Island we live on” (http://www.ulst.ac.uk/thisisland/). The Dissolving Boundaries programme was designed to promote: the integration of technology in a meaningful way in curricular work, educationally valuable collaborative work in schools and cross-national links promoting cultural awareness. The Dissolving Boundaries programme was developed as a crossborder initiative involving schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Department of Education in Northern Ireland and the Department of Education and Science in the Republic of Ireland jointly fund the programme. The programme is now in its fifth year and since its inception has attracted over 170 schools in both the north and south of Ireland. This year (2004-2005) 154 schools were involved, which created 42 partnerships at primary level, 22 between post-primary schools and 13 involving special schools.