50,000: a story of cross border collaboration
Dissolving Boundaries was set up in 1999 in the aftermath of the signing of the Belfast Agreement. The programme was funded by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland and the Department of Education and Skills in Dublin. It was managed throughout its fifteen-year existence by a joint team in the Education Department, Maynooth University in collaboration with the School of Education, University of Ulster. In July 2014 it was agreed by the current ministers of Education in Northern Ireland and the Republic that the funding for the programme would cease from September 2014.
Dissolving Boundaries involved linking Primary, Secondary and Special schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland using innovative technology. Some 530 schools, 2,600 teachers and as many as 50,000 students have been involved in the programme that uses both real time video-conferencing (Elluminate) and online multi-media learning platform (Moodle) to encourage curricular-based work to promote intercultural learning and collaboration.
Although the programme has officially ended the Dissolving Boundaries website will continue to operate as resource and a reference point for all the work that has been done by the schools and by the Dissolving Boundaries team. This includes the recently created video made up of contributions from participating pupils, entitled 50,000 a story of cross border collaboration which is based on the contributions from schools participating last year.
The site also includes a series of annual research reports, evaluation reports, eight internationally peer reviewed articles and chapters in two books as well as the details of the school-based projects and teachers' reflections on this important work in the YearBooks produced by the team in recent years.