Company Blog

To mark the biennial Taoiseach’s Public Service Excellence Awards, The Irish Times produced an excellent supplement on July 13th which featured the NCCA FÓN project.

Learnosity has partnered with the NCCA to deliver the FÓN project and the two other projects that were part of the same initiative. On July 8th, the NCCA were honoured with a prestigious Taoiseach’s Excellence in Public Service Award at a ceremony in Dublin Castle.

The Irish Times article remarks that mobile phones are normally seem as the enemy of traditional classroom learning but in the case of FÓN they became very much an ally.

The junior certificate level students on the FÓN project used Learnosity Voice to do spoken homework, build their vocabulary by getting new words by text message and chat directly to other students in Irish. With all of their work being recorded, teachers and students could review the work online, identify any weaknesses and address them together.

Learnosity Voice is the solution behind all 3 phases of the initiative: MALL in 2007, FÓN in 2008 to 2009 and most recently in a project that focused on a more formal spoken assessment environment.

The benefits of FÓN are many, and some in particular were recounted by John Hammond, deputy CEO of the NCCA, when he referred to improvements in autonomous learning, opportunities for students from different schools to chat in Irish on the phone using Learnosity Voice and the way in which the project brought Irish to life for students.

We congratulate the NCCA on their recent award and look forward to many more successful partnerships together.

At the recent Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Awards, Judith Ní Mhurchú and Anne Looney of the NCCA gave an excellent presentation about the FÓN Project.

Since the slides from the presentation are available on the awards website, I thought I'd link to them here.

If you're interested in hearing more, check out the FÓN Project case study on the Learnosity website.

Dublin Castle played host to the 2010 Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Awards ceremony on July 8th. We were proud to see our Irish government customers, the NCCA, receive this prestigious accolade for their work on the FÓN Project. Learnosity were delighted to partner with the NCCA for all phases of the project.

The evolution of the Public Service is high on the agenda of the current Irish government. The Taoiseach has gone as far as appointing a Minister of State with Special Responsibility for Public Service Transformation. The strategic emphasis on innovation, improved efficiencies and cost savings were all key themes recognised in this year's awards.

Learnosity CEO, Gavin Cooney, with Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Brian Cowan at the Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Awards 2010.

The Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Awards take place every two years. This year attracted 208 entries that were reviewed by a judging panel chaired by well known broadcaster and successful businessman David Harvey. There were 20 eventual winners from the sizeable original entry. The winners were diverse and ranged from the FÓN project to improvements in process for jobseekers, cost savings for local authorities in the Midlands, systems that have reduced youth crime levels, improvements in communication processes for families with disabled children and many more worthy recipients.

The awards Project Summaries Booklet included a nice write up on the FÓN project.

Our heartiest congratulations to the FÓN project team who are most deserved winners of a 2010 Taoiseach's Public Service Excellence Award.

Learnosity is delighted to announce the appointment of Tom Davy as non-executive Chairman. Tom is a very accomplished and well known industry figure with over 30 years experience in educational publishing, software and services.

During the 1990's he held senior executive positions at Pearson Education including President and Chief Executive Officer EMEA of Addison Wesley Longman, President of Pearson's worldwide English Language Teaching group and Chairman of Longman’s joint venture companies in Germany, Egypt and South Africa.

In 1999 Tom founded Spark Learning a company that developed educational content and services for schools and parents. Amongst the most successful products were Spark Island and educational books and software developed with the BBC and Harper Collins.

In 2006 Tom joined Thomson Learning as CEO of their businesses in EMEA and was part of the team that sold Thomson Learning to Apax Partner for $7.75 billion in 2007.