by Gaelscoil Philib Barún is the name of an Irish-language school in my home town of Tramore, Ireland. The term Gaelscoil comes from the Irish word “Gaeilge”, meaning Irish and the word “Scoil”, meanin school. Philib Barún is the Irish translation of Philip Barron, after whom the school was name (see below).
Anyway, the school will be launching a new campaign over the coming weeks to highlight the fact that, since its creation in 1985, the school has been without a permanent home (that’s 24 years to you and me). The title of this article means, “A Permanent School for Gaelscoil Philib Barún”, and this is the official tag-line for the new building campaign.
Since my daughter is attending this school, I have volunteered some of my time to help out with the campaign. Thus far, my main contribution has been in the form of redesigning the school website – www.pilibbarun.com – in an effort to provide improved communications to both parents and the wider digital community. This has proved to be a rather interesting journey.
The website was built using WordPress which enables it to have its own blog and RSS feed, allowing readers to comment on the various articles on the site as well as enabling them to subscribe to the website from the likes of Google Reader (or any other feed reader). Also, thanks to a marvelous WordPress plugin called xLanguage, the site is available to view in either English or Irish (Gaeilge to be more precise). I’ve used a number of other WordPress plugins on the site and will be posting a separate article on my experiences with those at a later date.
As mentioned above, the school itself was named after a local man called Philip Barron, who was a pioneer of Irish nationalism from the 1800’s. His life story is documented on the school website and makes for fascinating reading if you have a few spare minutes.
