Spark your creativity with Dream Space

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. As technology permeates every aspect of our lives, it is critical that the next generation has the skills for the jobs of the future. With this mission in mind, Microsoft developed its innovative digital skills experience – Dream Space.

Launched in 2018, Dream Space enables primary and secondary school students to engage in a digital skills experience that inspires them to unbox their ambition, spark their creativity and supercharge their ideas. Grounded in innovative teaching practice, Dream Space was developed by and is led by teachers. With an estimated 70% of future jobs requiring skills in the field of STEM, coding, computer science, data analytics, AI and computational thinking, it’s important we rethink education and prepare students for their future.

Our team of qualified teachers work closely with parents, teachers and young people across Ireland to provide experiences that suitably match their school context and complement the Irish curricula.

The current suite of Dream Space experiences include:

1. Dream Space Virtual Field Trips: The virtual field trips utilise the power of Microsoft Teams to deliver the Dream Space Experience live from Dream Space in One Microsoft Place (our Irish HQ!). We deliver two x 2-hour sessions to schools across the island of Ireland every single day. The experience excites students but also empowers teachers by showcasing that any classroom, in any school, can deliver a Dream Space-style experience.

2. Our Dream Space Teacher package aims to empower teachers to deliver DreamSpace to their students during their classroom time or as independent learning modules. With registration available for two packages at both primary and post-primary level, our team of teachers have worked hard to make these as accessible and easy to implement as possible. Each package contains a structured scheme of work, classroom resources including tutorial videos, worksheets, challenge activities and extension activities so that students can work at a pace suitable to them. Dream Space Teacher is also a community that the team supports through regular check-in calls and with additional resources where possible. Through Dream Space Techer, teachers across the country are empowered to bring the Dream Space experience of computer science into their own classroom.

3. Dream Space TV, for both primary and post-primary schools, brings students on a learning journey with a focus on computational thinking, creativity and problem-solving. With makers and coding challenges, teachers and students have access to a number of 20–30-minute weekly episodes, which are all aligned to both the primary and post-primary curriculums respectively. Each episode leaves time for students to plan their idea, create their design, and finally review it all at the end. This experience gives both parents and teachers the confidence, direction and resources needed to bring their students on an interactive and on-demand STEM journey.

Microsoft Ireland’s Dream Space is an example of research in action. Through our work with Maynooth University, our team is focused on continuous learning and evolution of our experiences so that we can continue to support and positively impact school communities across Ireland. Come and learn with us.