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Laura Pakenham talks about her love for the Irish language, how the language has opened doors of its own in her career, and she encourages young people to use their creativity and skills to achieve the career they want.
A bilingual space where educators, experts and young people explore technology, creativity and learning. In this episode, we explore ideas, stories, and practical insights shaping tech in education and spotlight the people who are reimagining what learning can look like in classrooms and communities. At Kinia, we believe learning is life. Whether you're an educator, a school leader, a youth worker, or just passionate about helping young people thrive, you're in the right place. This episode of Kinia Caint is proudly supported by NTT Data.
Sara Judge:Let's get started. On today's episode, I'm joined by Kiran McGinnis, a collaborative leader in digital transformation, and Marianne Checkley, CEO here at Kinia. Kiran, do you want to start us off by introducing yourself?
Ciaran McGuinness:Yes. Thank you. I'm Kiran McGinnis. I'm a client partner working for NTT Data based here in Ireland and Dublin, working on clients in market as well.
Sara Judge:Fantastic. Thank you, Kiran. And Marianne, would you like to do a short introduction as well?
Marianne Checkley:Sure. So I'm Marianne. I'm CEO with Kinia, and it's great privilege and honor to be leading the organization for the last, oh, I think eight years now at this stage.
Sara Judge:Fantastic. And thank you so much for joining us today on this episode. I think you'll be two extremely fitting guests for today. So just to start us off, Kiro, and I might delve straight in with yourself. Kinia's tagline, as I already mentioned, is learning is life or as we say, as a bilingual organization.
Sara Judge:From your own perspective, why is learning so central to how we live, how we work, and how we grow?
Ciaran McGuinness:I'm a big believer in lifelong learning, and also I'm a learn by doer myself. So I just think that we learn each and every day, and it's so important that we give people the opportunity to learn as well. So what Kinia does, which really inspires, is around giving people access to learning. It's not also the access to the content to be able to learn, it's the access to the people that enable that learning as well. I see it in my own day to day life, you know, in my own house with my own children, in the community around me, and I know that not everybody is as privileged to have that access to people who are good role models, people who care about learning, people who value education and the education system.
Ciaran McGuinness:So it's really key to enable that for the youth here in Ireland and across the board.
Sara Judge:Yeah. And it's so true that access, which is something that we put such emphasis on, I think, here at Kinia. And, you know, even just from initially, you work in, you know, a high level commercial environment, but yet you choose to engage in initiatives like Kinia, like Computer Clubhouse. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that and what drives you, I suppose, to get involved with projects like that?
Ciaran McGuinness:Yeah. Well, ultimately, it's the people. I I really enjoy working with people and, you know, I I am very lucky that I'm I'm able to chat and I'm not averse to, you know, just sticking the hand out and saying hello to people. So that engagement and enabling people is something that's core to whatever I've done. So from when I was in university studying technology through to running a commercial business at this stage, the core in everything is helping people manage projects, helping people work in teams, and helping people be successful and do more than they can on their own.
Ciaran McGuinness:That's something that's been really key to me in whatever I've done, and in my potted experience or employment across the years, I've run the Computer Clubhouse and that's what inspired me and got me involved in that originally, and that was very much in the not for profit sector. So that taught me a great deal around community, education, and giving people an opportunity to excel. I went on then to do advertising. And advertising, again, it was around the core of enabling technology, working with lots of disparate teams and different type of people and bringing them together to create great output. And now that I've got more into sort of the enterprise end of technology, again, it's the same skill set of working with teams, enabling people, problem solving, and helping them learn on the job and learn so they can be successful.
Ciaran McGuinness:So they're the sort of things that inspire me as just as Kiran. Now to help Kinia, it's just so lovely, like while we're day to day working in that big enterprise world where, you know, everything's around commercialization, it's about, you know, doing whatever the bottom line says quarter to quarter, you realize that there's a lot more out there in terms of what you can give to society and what you can get back very selfishly as well. I remember writing many, many years ago an essay in university about I didn't believe in altruism. I still don't think I do believe in altruism, but in fact, I get a lot out of helping Kinia and giving to Kinia and working with the people within Kinia and the people that they're serving too. So that's really what gets me out of bed with regard to this.
Ciaran McGuinness:So hopefully that answers your question, but, you go with that.
Sara Judge:Yeah. It absolutely does. And that's that's so interesting. And we're so lucky to have the likes of your support here at Kinia. And Marianne, do you think that's something that, you know, here at Kinia, we share those values that really, as Kieran says, it really is all about the people.
Marianne Checkley:Yeah, for sure. I think first in case I forget to say as well, I think Kieran's been a little modest in terms of his potted history and his work with the Computer Clubhouse. It kind of resonates very strongly with me that we're sitting around having this chat now because Kinia was part of the origin story really of Kinia and his work in Computer Clubhouse and starting off Tech Space as well. And Kinia as an organization has evolved from that through collaboration and through partnership. So I think just a nod to that, like I'd like to explore Kiran's maybe another day, his comment on altruism, but I know for sure that that's kind of very much at the core of his work and where he's coming from too.
Marianne Checkley:So back to the question then around people, I think it's such an important element that sometimes gets lost in when we're talking about our work around STEM and technology and digital skills, that really when we're talking about learning, is around relationships, it's around warmth, it's around support, and it's really about people opening doors for young people around the country. And I think that's ultimately because we all were involved because we believe that it's the right thing to do for sure. But, you know, we want to see everybody kind of fulfill their potential and really contribute to a better Ireland, you know, and I think that's what we're about essentially. And people in collaboration, we all have our parts to play. So some of us are working in nonprofit, some of us are in schools and youth services, some of us in industry, in government as well, but that's a whole system and everybody has a part to play.
Marianne Checkley:And I think that's where our other part of our tagline comes in terms of collectively creating opportunity. Like everybody has a stake in this. Like everybody has a stake in making sure that all young people have access to the skills that they need to contribute positively to their futures, to take agency in that. AI is obviously the hot topic in education and in industry and everywhere, and really for education, what's coming out as strongest element there is making sure that we keep the human in the loop when it comes to education. And while technology can facilitate more engaging learning experiences, it's people ultimately that will make the magic happen.
Marianne Checkley:And I think that's what speaks as well to our USPs in Kinia. Like we work as you know, in schools and in youth services And that's because we believe that learning doesn't start or stop at school gates. Like everybody is involved in learning in the community. Everyone who has a professional relationship or is in professional work with young people is providing learning opportunities, know, is in a development capacity with the young person. So it's about looking to see where those moments of magic and learning happen and really opening the doors to that And not seeing learning as just taking place in either a room or a classroom or in a particular building, really widening up and thinking of it in a much wider way.
Ciaran McGuinness:I really agree with that as well, just to come in there. I just think people learn in different fashions. There's lots of different ways to learn, but also there's different environments to learn in and there's different people that you'll get engaged with in different environments. Just what you said there in terms of schools, work, after school programs, the home, and just on the street as well, each one of them you can see a different type of learning modality and you're going be engaging with different sorts of people. In some contexts, maybe not the right people to learn from, and sometimes very much great role models as well that you wouldn't have had access to had you not been in that environment.
Ciaran McGuinness:And I think that's really key, and I really love that about Kinia in terms of it doesn't stop at the school gate because I don't think learning does stop at the school gate. Secondary school education, I'm not sure I even got to the school gate half the time. It didn't mean that I go on to be successful because I just didn't find rote learning, a modality that suited me, but learn by doing, learn by engaging. What I have found in university university really did inspire me, and that's why I thought the clubhouse, the model, the computer clubhouse had that stemmed from the lifelong kindergarten was so inspiring and so ahead of its time as well, and then the fact they came up with that in the eighties, And I I even just love the insight as to how they came up with it. It was I don't know if you know the insight on that, but I'll share it here anyway, is that some youth broke into the Boston Museum of Science, and so they some they wanted to work out what do they break in for, and they thought, oh, they broke in to do bad things.
Ciaran McGuinness:No. They broke in to play with Lego. And the insight from the life of a kindergarten, we need to give them access to this Lego. We need to give them people that they want to engage with around this Lego, and then they can enjoy learning and then pursue it themselves. So really inspiring stuff.
Ciaran McGuinness:And it's about those environments, places, spaces, and people.
Sara Judge:Absolutely. Yeah. That's that's really insightful. And it's it was so lovely to hear you both speak about that idea of us not putting a boundary on where that learning is happening. I think that's something that we're definitely trying to do collaboratively, which is really positive.
Sara Judge:And Marianne, I'm really interested by how you worded, you know, keeping the human in the loop, which I think you're kind of looking ahead there, which is something that we tend to do at Kinia. I suppose I'm interested to hear how do you think that we're gonna do that? How do you think that we're going to keep the human in the loop when it comes to the future of education? And how are we gonna do that in a positive way that the learner is going to benefit from it?
Marianne Checkley:Well, I think, you know, technology and industry has gone through a number of cycles now at this stage. And I'm talking about industry in terms of just the technology that's produced and the enabling technologies are produced. You know, if we look at when computers were introduced, when online learning was introduced, they appeared to offer what could potentially be replicating an education environment or replacing teachers. This was always a concern when new technologies were introduced. But each time that happened, pedagogy won out really, you know, and looking back at seeing what actually works in education and learning, it all needs to be grounded in solid pedagogy, solid kind of success for what works for learners.
Marianne Checkley:And really that's what has supported the technology to really facilitate learning. And I think we saw that during lockdown and COVID as well. Like there was a lot of online learning there as well and remote learning for schools. And really, you know, it flipped back very quickly, you know, and it was the technology continues to be used in classrooms, but really the relational aspect of it and the importance of the educator at the core of it, I think that was one of the outcomes of it. I would say I think AI is probably more transformative, but in a way really that what we're seeing now with AI is its capacity to actually draw out the things that we know work for learning, but the challenges that were there for them previously was around just the model of scaling learning at the moment.
Marianne Checkley:So it's one teacher in a classroom with 25 students is not going to be able to facilitate, just it won't have the resources or the capacity to facilitate creative project based learning, engaging technology, digital skill, collaboration, problem solving. All of those things are on paper, the things that we know really lead to deep, effective, engaging, creative learning outcomes. However, there is a challenge to implement them at scale. And this is where certainly I would see that the potential and the opportunity for AI to be transformative in a way that previous technologies weren't. So it's maintaining the human in the loop, but maintaining the human in the loop to do what human does best.
Marianne Checkley:The technology is still supportive, but it can be transformative, I believe, for the next stage of the evolution of education and really allowing the effective pieces of pedagogy that we know work but are challenging to work at scale, to really happen in classrooms for every young person. But also back to the point around learning happening everywhere and anywhere, it's also kind of providing the capacity for young people to access these opportunities and for all of those other educators and positive adults that they're in contact with to really support a young person to move through their learning journey with ease in a facilitative way and to focus on those skills rather than needing to be the content experts that we would see in traditional teaching and learning.
Ciaran McGuinness:And that would be a really interesting shift actually that they're Yeah. Like supporting rather than leading. And I I do think we're gonna have to work hard to keep the human in the loop as well. What I mean by that is you can see a context where young children are all different or people are different. Obviously, introverts, extroverts, everyone's on a spectrum.
Ciaran McGuinness:But, you know, if you're having a rough time and you're not getting on with the humans, you can revert back to the technology, and it'll tell you everything's rosy and you're great, and why would you go back to speak to the human? So I still can't see how we fix that at the moment, and I don't know if anybody can, but we have to make sure that the humans stay in the loop and they have a purpose in that loop because they will be the ones that'll be able to catch some of the vulnerables that could, for instance, just retrench from society because they can just talk to the AI rather than to real humans. So I think it's really important that that digital divide is is seen for many different vehicles, and I think, you know, that dividing people and keeping them hooked into the technology. And I I suppose my last point on that is I'm just thinking I'm baking the two of these together, social media and the darkness of social media and the whole attention game, and then AI. AI is also built to keep your attention and keep you on the tool, and that is where I worry a little about.
Ciaran McGuinness:We have to work hard to make sure the humans stay in the loop on that.
Marianne Checkley:Yeah. I I think that's a a key point, and I think it's it's looking to see how the technology, the AI and the Gen AI technology that's being used in general use isn't necessarily the same apps that should be used in education. I think the capacity of the technology can be used, but it needs to be a different model for education. And that importance of keeping the human in the loop is very close to my heart as well from previous work that I did with an organization, iSchool. And we used online learning at the time, this is going back now a little bit, but we used online learning for early school leavers to create a model where they could have access to mentors and subject experts.
Marianne Checkley:What was key to that when we did a kind of a retrofit of looking at what pedagogy was working at the time and using the technology, it was the social and emotional aspect of what the mentors as humans knew about each individual young person who was part of that program. So it was that composite knowledge that they had an understanding of the needs, the individual needs, the challenges, the vulnerabilities as Kieran would say of that individual young person. And they were able to just use online learning to wrap a learning program around that. But that understanding and that human understanding of the social and emotional aspect of what any person is going through at any particular time, I think is where we need to really make sure that we hold on to that because that's the gold that the technology wraps around.
Sara Judge:Yeah. It's such a good point, that being the main focus definitely. And I suppose just to think back to some of the points you made there, like, you know, it really is an ever evolving, ever changing field that we're working in at the moment. And how do you think here on that educators and organizations like Kinia can continue to create learning experiences that are actually genuinely connecting with people beyond the classroom?
Ciaran McGuinness:That's an interesting question. I I don't know if I have a a a proper answer, but I think kids, they want attention. They're almost like the social media. You'll often see like the child who is seen to be unruly. We know that's just that they are not getting enough attention or they're getting the wrong sort of attention.
Ciaran McGuinness:I remember reading a study many years ago about similarities between the people with socioeconomic problems and people who have zero that, I. E. Very, very rich people. And there were similarities in terms of those children getting in trouble, and you could trouble could be with school or with with police or anything like that. And the correlation between the two parts of society was they weren't getting enough attention from their parents, and they were lashing out to get that attention.
Ciaran McGuinness:So I do believe kids will always want to be attentive. I suppose when you get into the teens, it's a bit different, but I suppose giving them the right access to technology, but coming back to the point from the start, giving them the right access to people that inspire them, that want them to come back, that will engage with them, that show them the right values, that demonstrate the right values, you know, show them the right direction, give them that inspiration. I think it's gonna be a really interesting time because I think we're all learning on the fly here when it comes to AI and how we're going to continue to learn ourselves. Nobody's out of the woods yet. This is why I really believe in lifelong learning.
Ciaran McGuinness:Like, society is going to be impacted by this transformational technology. It is changing at the rate of knots. Like, I'm not young. I'm not extremely old, but I've never seen anything like this technology come out of the traps and change so much. Like, I could write a presentation today for one of my clients.
Ciaran McGuinness:That'll be defunct in less than three months, and that seems mental in terms of how quickly it's changing. So I think stick to what we know, continue engaging with the children on a human level, giving them access to skills that they see that are beneficial to them and that they can do fun things actually with it. Because often my last point of this is know, when I used to learn, it was a bit like learning about stuff I didn't want to really engage with as opposed to in the clubhouse. Yeah. One of the tricks was, you know, when the child came in on the first day, he's like, what are you interested in?
Ciaran McGuinness:And, like, I show my age now, but it used to be Wayne Rooney or Justin Bieber were what all the kids were into back then. It was like, well, do you wanna make a website about that? Yeah. Let's do that. Let's learn HTML then.
Ciaran McGuinness:Great. Because I'm gonna make a web Wayne Rooney website. And, you know, that sort of engagement, I don't think anyone's gonna change from that point of view. They might be able to press a button or hit a prompt or get an agent to build things quicker, but what are you gonna do with it? Again, that comes back to the humans in terms of, okay.
Ciaran McGuinness:You've built your website. You Do have a business idea? Or are gonna bring that to show your granny or whatever it is? It's really that human in the loop and making that big effort to make sure that humans are in the loop and they are those inspirational role models, I think, is key.
Sara Judge:It's such a good point. And the other thing, I think what we keep coming back to again and again, is that role of community and the community approach. It's just such a vast term, I suppose, for all of those people around, say, the young person that is with the educator, but also, you know, the role of the community in general when it comes to their learning. Like, why do you think that idea of shared experiences in community is so central to both of your work?
Marianne Checkley:Yeah, I have a few thoughts on that, but there's just a couple of things that Kieran said has resonated as well that I think relate to it, the creative process for a young person. When we see a young person like that, like if it's building a website, if it's building a robot or whatever it is, it's starting from nothing and at the end of it, there's something that works. And it's that process of taking nothing or a box of stuff and building through it and that creative process. I think that's something that we keep at the core of what we do in Kinia. And I think that's just related to that community piece as well, Sarah.
Marianne Checkley:So I think in any community, you have a range of different people with different interests, with different skills, with different experiences. And that's something we're also trying to unlock is that diversity and that richness that there is in communities so that really everybody can be involved from a community perspective because there's so many different experiences that can feed in to the process of building, of creating, of supporting a young person, of inspiring a young person to really take an idea or a dream and really start from nothing maybe or just a box of ideas or box of stuff and build it to an end product. I think they're the kind of things that we're looking to really provide a platform in Kinia for everybody in the community to be involved in that process. I'd have a question for Kieran though as well and just what he's seeing in terms of the rate of change in industry. In the work that we do at Kinia, we look at pulling out curriculum aligned skills and learning outcomes, and that could be a technical skill.
Marianne Checkley:It could be something that's a computer science learning around coding or something like that. But really at the core of that, we have those skills of collaboration, problem solving, creativity that we're trying to maintain a strong platform on. And my question, Kiran, would be, is there a change in skills demand or is there key skills that you're seeing are now really kind of filtering to the top as really important skills for people to have to navigate the environment and the changing landscape?
Ciaran McGuinness:It's interesting. I I I'm not saying I see it right now, but I do have a few anecdotal pieces of evidence. Like, was speaking to a friend the other day that works on Facebook, and he says the biggest hires at the moment are for two types of people, which I haven't heard of before. One is prompters and the other are labelers. And I was going, what?
Ciaran McGuinness:They're job titles? Prompter, obviously, I think that the the clue is in the name, and the labeler is the person at the other side that says if if it's good or not, as in stamp it, label it so that the feedback loop is that the AI is learning the whole time. The thing I I love what you're talking about in terms of the process, and as you we were talking about the process. The process of creativity doesn't actually change. The tools change.
Ciaran McGuinness:The actual process doesn't change. And one thing we talk about in industry and I I mean, software development essentially. So the software software development life cycle, the SDLC. It's something that's referred to as an acronym all the time. Now in a in a typical fashion, you'd like you'd start with an idea, and then you broaden out and learn everything about something and then come back in the other side in a diamond shape and get to the end point.
Ciaran McGuinness:What is happening now is it's turning into an hourglass. Loads of understanding what you're trying to solve upfront, using the tool to build it very quickly in the middle, and then lots of testing and validating the other side. That hasn't finished. That'll never finish, like, the sense or or that's not changing. We ultimately have to come up with the ideas and we need to validate them at the other side, and it's just the tool in the middle has got quicker.
Ciaran McGuinness:And sometimes we think that the tool now does everything. No, it doesn't. People with agency, they do well. You know, people that have get up and go, people that have traditional, like, skills of good reading and writing, good presenting, good talking, all those sort of typical skills. Nothing has changed.
Ciaran McGuinness:Now will it change in the future? We can't see. We don't know. But at the moment, I'm not seeing any great change in that context of the same people that were hardworking, got out of bed, did their job, you know, cared about their results, were nice to everybody. They're the people that are still succeeding.
Sara Judge:It's such a good point. And those human values being mentioned again, that they seem to be the key to success. Another thing I just want to to jump in on for a brief moment there is I was so glad that diversity was mentioned. And I think that is definitely central to the work being done at Kinia. Like, I suppose, which communities do you both think that are still being left out and how can spaces like Sten feels like we're working in do better to include them?
Ciaran McGuinness:I think Mariana would be better placed, but I'm just gonna go with pop culture at the moment. And pop culture will will inform me that, like, young men are being left behind in certain circumstances or are going down the wrong path. May maybe that's a fair, fair way to put it. Do they have the right role models? Are they feeling connected enough to society?
Ciaran McGuinness:And obviously, I'm a man, so obviously that's caused to my heart. It doesn't mean that no other parts of society need lots of support and are further or or or less behind. You know that way? It's just I'm just seeing things like adolescence, that TV show last year, you know, this whole madosphere type thing. Like, I mean, it it scared me, and I know that there's vulnerable young men out there, and they're probably not the top of the agenda when we we talk about this topic, but they scare me a little.
Marianne Checkley:Yeah. I think that's a fair point, Kieran, because certainly when we would when we'd kind of look at the communities we're looking to reach, they they wouldn't be we wouldn't necessarily say that, you know, as as tough. I think it's it's kind of back to that the key scale of critical thinking or being able to really look at what you're consuming or the media and the news and information that's coming at you with a critical lens or with, I suppose, being grounded with values as well, coming back to community too. And I think that's probably a connectedness that's lacking for a lot of young men. In general, Sara, like the communities that we work with in Kinia are the ones that we would see on paper as having evidence of traditionally not achieving as well in education or learning or progressing to career paths, specifically in technology and industry engineering, yeah, they wouldn't traditionally have the same access or achievement that other communities would have.
Marianne Checkley:And they would be traveler, ethnic minorities, girls in STEM, rural communities as well. Like we're working very hard to really, I think, support a rural regeneration around Ireland and supporting communities and young people to see that they could stay, they could be entrepreneurial in local rural areas. And I think that's another facilitative element of the technology. It's not a sentence either. They don't have to stay.
Marianne Checkley:They can go off and travel and do all of the things that they want to do as well. But I think it's knowing that they can come back or they can stay. It's an option that I think is really positive for communities. Then I think there's areas of socioeconomic disadvantage where there's a growing divide in Ireland as well, that there's less in the middle probably and there's more probably on either side too. They're the kind of communities that we're looking to really evidence on paper that we're hoping to move the needle on in four or five years by 2030 so that everybody has the agency as much as possible to take an active and positive role in that 2030 Justin Green digital transition that we just have as a milestone for ourselves.
Marianne Checkley:However, I would caveat that as well with like, these are the evidence that we're working with based on like that results in paper, you know, the data and the stats. And that can be a couple of years behind if we're looking at academic results too. What we want to focus on is the quality of what we provide, you know. So it's not necessarily just about filling a gap or bridging a gap. It's about providing quality and effective learning solutions for everybody so those digital skills are available.
Marianne Checkley:We know that's not happening in some of the best resource schools around the country as well. So it's just around who can access them if they need to. The other important point that we were talking about there as well that we touched on was reference points. There are communities of young people who just have the social capital to be able to engage in experiences or work experiences or just even through conversations in their families or communities, they'll know that opportunities exist. There's other young people who don't even know what they don't know.
Marianne Checkley:So they don't even know that careers in tech exist or what that might look like. And for us, we really think that Ireland is so well positioned to be a leader when it comes to the next stage of tech development and for that to be really a rich and diverse tech development, like what's happening with AI as well, because we have that fundamental skills of overcoming barriers, of being creative, of really engineering solutions based on very little resources. I think that's kind of quite deep in our DNA as well. We have like bilingual capacity too, so there's a real richness there. And we also have like a range of communities of people who are coming to and really attracted by the community in Ireland as well.
Marianne Checkley:So all of those kind of different languages, different cultures that's grounded in a really strong culture, Kruhiochin, well, I think gives us strong potential to be a leader when it comes to tech development and the next generation of AI.
Sara Judge:Even just to hear that vast profile Kinia are working with, it's so important and so representative of the island we live in today and to make that the best version, it's really insightful. That was fantastic, that section of of the conversation we had there, but we're going to move along now to a section of the episode where we tend to check-in with Marianne, who's our internal guest of the week. And basically, it's an opportunity for our listeners to get a behind the scenes insight into what's going on at Kinia at the moment, whether it's what the team has been working on, any impact stories perhaps that stood out at the moment, or of course, a look to what's coming up at Kinia if you want to take over there, Marianne.
Marianne Checkley:Well, I think this time of the year in Kinia is it's all hands on deck. We're coming up towards our flagship events for creative tech week. So we have Tech Fest and Tech Faila coming up at the April. So Tech Faila is our Irish language creative technology event and Tech Fest, the English language event. And it's our favorite time of the year, as you know, Sarah.
Marianne Checkley:So we work with educators and schools primarily, and this is the time of year when we really get to see the outcomes of all of that work. So we get to see the projects that young people are doing with their equipment, with their kids, that the teachers are supporting them to do, that youth workers are supporting them to do as well. So it's in the Explorium again this year. And at the last look that I had, we actually had we were creeping up to 2,000 young people who have are engaged in doing projects for those events and submitting projects for those events this year. So we're hoping that we'll get to probably around 800 kind of across the two days we'll be attending, but it's amazing for us to see, to be reaching that 2,000 figure for young people submitting projects.
Marianne Checkley:So that's really exciting. So I know the team are working really hard on supporting youth services and schools to get projects over the line and also doing the marking of the projects. So I know there's all of those fights going on in the team now at the moment around who should win in different categories and different events. So that's really exciting. We also have our first hydrogen H2GP Pro national event is coming up at the same week.
Marianne Checkley:So this is our hydrogen education skills program that we've partnered with Horizon Education in Chechnya around. So we have the first Irish team who are going to qualify from that event this year and go to the global world finals in Switzerland at the June. So that's really exciting for us as well. So we have four teams qualified from sprints that have happened around the the country to date. So the sprints are the small hydrogen powered cars, and there's been smaller events happening.
Marianne Checkley:And now it's the larger model cars from those qualifying rounds that are gonna take part in that race in April as well. So we have that coming up. We're also just launched our AI in action course, so we're very excited to see what's gonna come out of that. And that brings me to the impact stories because part of that course was inspired by some of the projects that we had submitted for last year's Creative Tech Fest. So I'm not gonna do any spoilers for this year's submissions, but last year, we had two two standouts for me anyway.
Marianne Checkley:The MIC, So MIC Solar Farm. So MIC was part of that young traveler group in Wexford. And MIC worked on just building a model farm with that was solar powered and wind powered as well. So a really good example case of how the energy powered the lights in the farm and powered the vegetable patches and all of those kinds of things as well. And then the winner was Diana from west who had the flush tracker.
Marianne Checkley:So used a micro:bit and used AI and the data to really see how she could save water in her youth reach in Kappa White. So, based on the inspiration for what young people are giving us, and this is where we have we draw from all of those things that are happening as well. So we have launched an AI in action, and we're sending micro bits out around the country and providing project resources and courses for educators to be able to really see what kind of creativity we can get going with data, with AI, and with sustainability in mind as well. And then with our wonderful partners in NTT Data, we have our social enterprise campaign that was such a huge success there before Christmas. And we also have it's under the hood at the moment, so it's just under wraps, but we're working on a very exciting project that we're looking to see how we can use AI to really support the learning experience and scale access to the work of Kinia.
Marianne Checkley:So really we're trying to bottle some of our USP and some of the wonderful work that is the team do and scale it and really use AI to support young people to unlock more learning and more opportunities as well. So lots going on. It's an exciting time in Kinia.
Sara Judge:Thank you so much for sharing, Marianne. And it's certainly a busy time, but very exciting as you said. To close things out, we're moving into our final section. So these are some questions that I've actually asked every guest, and they're kind of a great way to help us understand yourselves a little bit better and also connecting to the work that we're doing at Kinia. So the first question, we touched on it a little bit earlier, is our learning journey.
Sara Judge:So our tagline is learning is life as we mentioned. What first sparked your interest in learning, Kieran?
Ciaran McGuinness:I've put another say my mother.
Sara Judge:Oh, lovely.
Ciaran McGuinness:Yeah. I don't know if that's a fair answer, but definitely learning starts in the home. And I came from a house that cared about learning, cared about education, I had lots of access to that. But also, not just sitting in the house, getting out there and learning in the environment, going out into nature, learning about your surroundings, learning about the people, the community, all of that. I think that's, again, I'm very tied to people, and I love hearing from people and knowing people and chatting to people and I probably talk to more randomers than people I know, and I've learned so much from that each and every day.
Ciaran McGuinness:So I think it's people that inspire me to learn.
Sara Judge:Absolutely, that's a lovely answer. What about yourself, Marianne? What first sparked your interest in learning?
Marianne Checkley:Oh gosh, it's a big question, isn't it? I was a big reader as a child and reading and just something in one book would lead me to another one. And like that, books being available and just having open access to it was hugely important. So like I would have read anything as a child. It could have been fiction.
Marianne Checkley:It could have been non fiction. Loved maps as well. So I think if it was kind of anything around geography and wanting to find out kind of what happened over there, you know, on part on the map that said there be monsters, that's always what I wanted to find out what was going on there. So I think that like just that curiosity about what was happening in other places, other cultures, other countries, and just wanting to find out and then go there and see how it happened. I think that's my kind of memory of being excited about things and being excited about learning new stuff.
Sara Judge:That's really lovely. And the next one I think is actually going to be very tied into what you just said, Marianne, because obviously we talk so much about literacy skills in Kinia with our Reading Buddy program and our Leylong program, Trigailga, that really supports those young people that need that extra bit of support with their literacy skills. So I suppose the next question that I have is what is the most insightful book you've read?
Ciaran McGuinness:I love Innovator's Dilemma. So it's a book, I think, from the eighties, but it's really just about the dilemma you have around innovation and how it's hard to do it while you're eating your own business. So Apple is a good example of somewhere, you know, where they had the Mac and they brought out the iPhone that ate their business. It's very hard for organizations to do that, and it's defined as innovator's dilemma. And I would even though it's, what, thirty, forty years old now, I'd still recommend everyone read it.
Ciaran McGuinness:It's still relevant and it's still very pertinent, and it's an interesting well written book.
Sara Judge:Fantastic. And yourself, Marianne, does any spring to mind?
Marianne Checkley:I think it it it probably changes for me. I think at the moment, one that I've just finished recently was by Alan Rusbridger, played again. He was an editor in The Guardian, but he was talking about his journey. He also plays the piano, and he was trying to, as an amateur, learn a very difficult classical piece, and he kind of did a diary on us. But at the same time, he was reporting on the phone tapping scandals in The UK and what was coming out as well, and The Guardian wasn't covering a lot of that.
Marianne Checkley:There was also a war, I think, going on somewhere as there ever is. So as Guardian editor, he was covering all of that. So he was just how he was grounded in that one creative process was kind of the red thread through a very difficult professional time in his life as well. And I think that from an insightful perspective, I think just how he continually went back to that, even if it was for like two minutes every day, he tried to find a way to keep practicing it because he had that goal for himself as a personal achievement to make within the whole professional, a very, very complex and busy professional time.
Sara Judge:Okay, fantastic. Well, we have two great book recommendations for our listeners there. Thank you so much for sharing. And as we mentioned earlier, we are a bilingual organization. So we do offer all of our courses through Gaelga as well.
Sara Judge:So when it comes to Gaelga, can you share your favorite words or phrase or memory when it comes to on Gaelga?
Marianne Checkley:My favorite word at the moment, ask Gaelga, is because I I rediscovered it there recently, and I just like the sound of it, is knappa. Is it knappa button?
Sara Judge:Yeah. That's a great one.
Marianne Checkley:Yeah. I just like the sound of it.
Sara Judge:Knappa. It sounds nice. It it's a nice sounding one.
Marianne Checkley:It's a nice sounding one, and it's like it it does what it says in the tin. It just sounds like a button shut, knappa.
Sara Judge:That's a great one. That's really good. And what about yourself, Kiran?
Ciaran McGuinness:Do know, it's an interesting question and you've like you've zapped me back to like first class in school here where somebody says you have to say something in Irish. I don't know if we have an absolute word, but I just I love the culture. I'm not fluent, Aus Gaelge, so kupla fuchel. So I don't know if I have anything a precise word, but that's just what went through my mind as you asked me, what's my favorite thing in Irish? I think it was like, how could I say something to move them on?
Sara Judge:To finish up, we have our desert island pick. So what is the one essential piece of technology you would bring to a desert island? And you can certainly get creative with this one.
Marianne Checkley:Oh, I'm just gonna say my headphones and my phone music. Yeah. Perfect.
Ciaran McGuinness:Yes. You're bit boring. Think Do you know what I really need all the time is podcasts. Yeah. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I'd be lost without them, but I think I'd also have to put music into that as well.
Ciaran McGuinness:But I think, yeah, a gadget that allows me to listen to music and podcasts.
Sara Judge:And you'd be sorted on the desert island.
Ciaran McGuinness:Don't know if it's sorted. I don't know. I think I need a list on a few other bits of bobs.
Marianne Checkley:Did you see the Lord of the Flies, the BBC production there that was on recently?
Ciaran McGuinness:No. But I've read the book, so I know the story. Yeah.
Marianne Checkley:Yeah. It's a good version. It would, yeah, it would bring a few pieces of technology to mind that you might need. Yeah.
Sara Judge:Well, thank you both so much for sharing. And it really was a pleasure to have you both on. It was fantastic to hear your insights and for, you know, two guests of your caliber to be bringing your experience and the area of work that you're in to be bringing that to the forefront was so brilliant. So thank you so, so much.
Marianne Checkley:Thanks a million.
Ciaran McGuinness:You're more than welcome. Always happy to help.
Sara Judge:That's it for this episode of Kinia Ag Caint. If today's conversation sparked an idea or gave you something practical to bring into your work, we'd love for you to share this episode with a colleague or friend. To learn more about Kinia's courses, volunteering opportunities and upcoming events, and how we're supporting educators and young people across Ireland, visit kinia.ie. Thank you so much to our guests today, Ciaran McGinnis and Marianne Checkley. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.