Welcome to the Irish Learning Technology Association Conference 2026
Civics of Technology Announcements
Curriculum Crowdsourcing: One of the most popular activities in our Curriculum is our Critical Tech Quote Activity because the lessons offers a quick way to introduce a range of critical perspectives to students. We have decided to create a Critical AI Quote Activity and we want your help. Please share your favorite quotes about AI with the author and source via our Contact page. We will collect them, write the lesson, and share when it is ready!
Next Tech Talk: Please join us for our next Tech Talk where we meet to discuss whatever critical tech issues are on people’s minds. It’s a great way to connect, learn from colleagues, and get energized about the work. Our next Tech Talk will be held on Tuesday, December 2nd at 8PM Eastern Time. Register here or visit our Events page.
December Book Club: Michelle Levesly is leading a book club of Resisting AI by Dan McQuillan. Join us to discuss at 10:30 AM EST on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025. Head to the events page to register!
By Eamon Costello
There is a saying in the Indigenous Irish language: tá céad míle fáilte romhat - a hundred thousand welcomes lie before you. The first of these is that you are welcome to this blog post! Welcome to these words. Especially stalwarts, allies and friends of the amazing Civics of Technology project - though if you are simply CivTech curious, that is no problem; you are welcome too.
Curiosity is a curious thing. It involves gently bringing kind and skilful attention to bear upon a phenomenon, so that an outcome or a judgement is held, for a time, in abeyance. Curiosity keeps moving, suspends our calculative and evaluative tendencies to affix and to fix. But the fundamental fact of your innate human goodness is not like this. It is unchanging. Stable. As solid as the simple fact that human beings are inherently good. People are not neutral.
But the question arises: if people are good, why do they do bad things? The short answer is that people do bad things, not because they are bad people, but simply because they are confused. And it is to dispelling confusion, and to giving people greater clarity of thought, that education is dedicated, which is why teachers have the best job in the world.
The good work of teaching is not confined to individual teachers; it is rather a distributed activity enacted across and through many touchpoints, edtech supply chains, support services and people. That is why the Irish Learning Technolog Association’s 25th annual EdTech conference in June 2026 in Dublin City University, Ireland, is dedicated to people and specifically one very important person: you!
At this conference, you can join educational practitioners, teachers, researchers and interested others in the company of some great keynote speakers:
Dr Abebe Birhane, of Trinity College Dublin
Dr Ben Williamson of Edinburgh University
Prof Dr Felicitas Macgilchrist, University of Oldenberg
The call for appears is now open: “EdTech You: Digital Learning from How to Who”
The following diss track from the Irish Learning Technology Association, directed to the Civics of Technology collective (and other American edtech communities), calls out the values and activities we engage in as a professional community of practice: