Eoin Butler's Q&A

BERNARD KIRK, director of the Galway Education Centre, looks forward to a weekend of 'books, challenges, Lego and tantrums'

Your organisation provides continuing personal development for primary and post-primary teachers. How much of your time is spent showing middle-aged people how to double-click?A certain amount for sure. This morning I took 15 teachers, of all ages, over to Hewlett-Packard and taught them how to use a programme called Scratch, which is for working with kids in class. Looking after teachers is the day job. It was only more recently that we began straying into other areas.

This weekend you're hosting an educational bank holiday challenge for kids at the Radisson in Galway. If there's one thing kids like, it's more school on weekends. Right?I know, I know. My in-laws invited us over for dinner and I had to tell them "Sorry, I'm working again". But we're hosting the Write a Book awards, the Medtronic Knex Challenge and the Junior First Lego League.

In terms of the staging, lighting and numbers, it really only made sense to do it all over a single bank holiday weekend.

Tell us about the Write a Book competition first. Each September I write to primary schools in Co Galway and invite them to participate. We also offer training in how to write, decorate and illustrate a book if that's required.

Each child makes their own book, except in the case of infants, where they might do one class book, and invite each child to contribute a word or a drawing each.

Don't you find that writing by committee tends to compromises the artistic integrity of the work?Haha. When we read out the winner in the infants category, we'll read that out as a citation from you. I promise.

I'm looking at some past entries here. "Three spies set out to find a tiger who went missing from the zoo..." I think this child misunderstands the role of espionage slightly. Yes, we get all sorts of entries. It used to be all soccer books about Manchester United. This year we have titles like The Eerie Cupboard, An Alien in a Racing Car, Wheelchairs and Mars Bars, Best Wedding Ever, Rage in the Vegetable Patch...

The Disney Corporations would probably be interested in talking to the author of this Hannah Montana book. There is a whole spectrum there, from children who write about what's happening in their own lives – "Our Farm" is a very common entry – to books that reflect more what they see on television, such as Hannah Montana. In any case, it's a great way for the children to express themselves. The books we honour are called Books of Merit. The child is given a certificate and a medal and we make a day out of it.

Tell us about the First Lego League.This is something I set up with David Conroy from SAP, here in Galway. SAP were sponsoring First Lego Leagues all over the world, so we decided to bring it to Ireland. We have 25 teams competing this year. This year's winners will be travelling to Germany for the European finals.

Last year’s winners, from Castlebar, made it as far as the World Finals in St Louis, Missouri, where they came third. It just goes to show that kids from Ireland can compete on the world stage.

It isn't dolls houses they're making — these are some complex feats of engineering.Absolutely. The competition here is something similar to robot wars.

Each team are given 10 tasks that they have to perform on the table in front of an audience.

For the final, we turn the Radisson into, well, it’s almost a disco. There are bright lights and loud music. The kids love it, but there’s a serious side to it too. The teams are marked for what they do on the board, but also for project and team work.

The Galway Education Centre is responsible for promoting healthy living in schools. Are kids in the west, by and large, healthy eaters?They are. But recently a lot of schools have stopped letting children run in the school yard. So we've been doing a lot of work promoting skipping in schools. Skipping is healthy, it doesn't cost money and it doesn't involve running. We also organise interventions in gymnastics, healthy eating and gardening.

What's a gardening intervention? Do I come home and Gerry Daly is sitting in my living room with a baseball bat?No, it means we send someone into a particular school for six weeks to help the children build a school garden, or to give them gymnastics lesson, or teach them to eat healthily. Are there skipping interventions? Yes, absolutely. We have a guy who'll go in and skip with you for three months.

I’m serious!