EUREKA

whrr, whrr, whrr, WHRR

gathering speed, sparking – click – flick – switch –

oh God I need need need this flooding flooding

BOOM

and the whoosh of juice filling every room

in my brain

on fire fire love this heat

then the questions questions steady the beat

now it slows slows slows slows settles it’s feet

and the thump thump thump

goes into retreat

but it’s just a hush while I feel feel feel

maybe sit real quiet share a drink or a meal

but the oh OH OH

baby soon repeats

gotta gather my

AHHH for a

hot

new

beat.

You’re lying awake at 5 in the morning. Your brain is doing cartwheels, somersaults & backflips. You know – something damn hot is happening inside. Is it really only 5 weeks since I set up this blog? Since I liberated myself from the burden of content to focus on the real stuff?

How we teach.

Three minutes in to the CESI meet (computersineducationsocietyofireland for the uninitiated) and I knew I was in the right place. Stories, stories, everywhere creating echoes of myself. Using computer games to learn, using chess to learn, using podcasts to learn, and facebook and twitter and blogs and life itself invading the classroom and taking over.

But could I do this? A technology virgin. My idiotphone (with buttons! yes, I said buttons – the shame) acting as a chastity belt, keeping me out of the land of tweets and apps and QR codes. Still, I want to learn. I’m here because I want to learn.

And it’s amazing how much you can learn over drinks in the Anner bar with @saorog and the nevermindgames crew and the next morning with a poor night’s sleep caused by feverish creation of some bad beat poetry under my belt the echoes begin again as @documentally shows us his landrover crash telegraph pole (echo, echo) and @donenda demonstrates Edmodo and @catherinecronin reminds me to look for the white spaces and I hear her loud and clear and I see them. Later, for a moment, the dark spaces return with the question ‘what happens to your facebook page when you die?’ but I push that away, that’s for later, after the conference. Keep the juices flowing with kevinorourke after lunch with @donenda and @podubhaigh. Then it’s a really nice chat with @perkypawn as @dermotcasey takes to his feet and I’m oh so sad when it’s time to go because now I know’s the time when the black spaces return.

I drive to see Sarah’s mam and we chat about where I was and why and how Sarah would have loved it with her crazy capacity to embrace change, Birr to Galway to London to Australia to India and home finally to teach ICT in Kilcock and they miss her so – in the school – her mother says because they finally have some money and she had such plans but she’s not there anymore, she’s in the graveyard that I visit now and the echoes come back from the conference, ‘what happens to your facebook page when you die?’  and the image of documentally’s landrover flashing again but she hit a tree and she wasn’t in a jeep and I sit on her grave and weep and weep.

But she’d want this from me. She’d want this for me. I will look for the white spaces. I will lose my virginity.