A little about the name, could be seen as a little grandiose, but has been very useful to us in framing the philosophy of the group.

Some of you may be familiar with the concept of the Meitheal which stems from an ancient Irish agricultural tradition whereby at key times of the year, farmers in a community would come together to help each other out. It could happen with labour-intensive tasks such as haymaking, turf gathering, or potato picking for example as the picture illustrates.

A Meitheal was done in a spirit of support. It was about getting work done but there was no payment for those involved, and there was no expectation of direct recompense.

It is this same spirit of mutual co-operation, community, and support (without obvious individual benefit) that we like to think influences our modern-day Meitheal.

(Suzanne, I wonder if this slide should be called 'What is this Meitheal?' or something similar??)

Our Meitheal (which obviously does not have a farming focus!) provides a form of support for sustained conversations, experimentation, and idea-exchange around educational technology. It is a community of practice which includes learning technologists, teachers and academic developers from across the three DCU campuses.

There are two key strands to our Meitheal:

1. The synchronous/live meetings which are run through Adobe Connect or Google Hangouts
2. The synchronous activity which takes place between meetings via a private Google Plus community

We will describe both of those in a little more detail now.


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2 strands here
Regular online synchronous and asynchronous support and practice in Adobe Connect and Hangouts.
Maintaining the life of Meitheal.

Meeting face to face on occasion.

Space for staff members to test break out rooms.

Suzanne - wonder if we should take a screenshot of one of our events? I will try to take one from one of the recorded sesssions.

We meet regularly (about once a fortnight) via Adobe Connect or Google Hangouts. Meeting in this way has a number of benefits:
- It gives people at different geographical locations a chance to connect
- It gives all of us the opportunity to get much-needed practice on live classroom/webinar technologies - be that either as hosting a session or attending as a student
- It highlights potential technical issues and challenges with those same technologies!
- And it is not just about the technical factors - we have also used these sessions to provide a space to test Break Out rooms so that people get a chance to try them out with a group and build their confidence in usage.

To complement those virtual meetings, we also have a Google Plus community that allows conversations to continue in between scheduled sessions.

Members use this space to share useful links, alert to new technologies, and ask questions about educational approaches and tools. Frequently 'mini discussions' take place as a result of an individual's postings.

We believe that the combination of these two 'spaces' help to sustain the sense of community and keep both aspects alive. It is important too to mention that we often meet face to face also and undoubtedly, that also contributes to the life of this group.

Time and schedules.
Workloads.
Some technical issues but this is part of the learning!
Shared leadership - certain level of informality can be challenging and also wonderful.
Agendas....

Supporting the regular meetings with asychnronous support.

While keeping informality, put some form of structure on the meetings. informality = community builing BUT some form of structure needed.

Do try this out! Anyone can get started with a Google Community in the morning. If you have a group of people with a common interest in technology and pedagogy, this may be an opportunity - all it takes is one person to get the ball rolling.