About
about the site
Philosophy Short Course is Daniel Mccrea.
Daniel has worked in Education Technology for the last 10 years delivering AI digital projects for the largest educational publishers in Spain, North America, Germany and Ireland.
He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy and regularly teaches philosophy at Gonzaga College SJ secondary school in South Dublin.
He is also a veteran new schools campaigner having served as Secretary to the Educate Together Shellybanks Primary and on the steering committees for both the Dun Laoghaire Primary Educate Together and South Dublin ET campaigns.
When not working on Philosophy (or being jumped on by his two children) he works as Head of Publisher Services for Dublin-Based Adaptive Learning Company: Adaptemy. Adaptemy specialise in using AI to create personalised learning applications.
Education and Training in Philosophy
2020 - Stage 1 Specialist Philosopher Training with Foundation for Philosophy (UK)
2019 - Philosophy Group Facilitator Training with Socrates Cafe Group
2019 - NCCA P4C Training Workshop with Marelle Rice
2018 - DES Certified Training in Teaching Ethics with Educate Together
2009 - PhD in Philosophy at University of Warwick (Discontinued)
2002 - M.A. (Hons) Philosophy at University College Dublin
2001 - B.A. (Hons) Literature and Philosophy (Hons) at University of East Anglia
Recent Speaking Engagements
2021 - Guest Philosophy Podcast: The Philosophists "Corrupting Youth"
2021 - Creator and Host: GADFLYᴵᴱ
2021 - Judge for Irish Ethics Bowl 2021
2021 - Facilitator for "Philosopher's Hat" Online Event
2021 - Host Socrates Cafe Online Event
2020 - Educate Together Public Information Evening
2020 - Guest Speaker Gonzaga Student Retreat with Peter McVerry
2020 - Guest Philosophy Podcast: The Things You Thought You Knew: "The Philosophical Method"
2020 - Guest Philosophy Podcast: The Things You Thought You Knew: "The Concept of God and Arguments for it's Incoherence
2020 - Guest Philosophy Podcast: Free Thought Prophet "The Irish Philosophy Short Course"
2019 - Invited Speaker UCD Law Society debate on Faith and Rationalism (we won)
2019 - ConTech Conference London - "Applying Machine Learning to derive Actionable Data"
2018 - ConTech Conference London - "Transforming Content through data science, AI and emerging technologies”
Professional Profile and CV
My CV is available here - PDF
My professional profile is available on LinkedIn here - Link
Approach to Resources
The key criteria I use when choosing material are:
(i) Fun – Would I have loved covering these ideas in this way when I was a student?
(ii) Real World Artefacts – Again, where possible, I try to find primary resources which are not specifically designed for teaching. This, I hope, reinforces the notion that Philosophical ideas are very much at play in “The Real World”.
(iii) Gender & Race – Where possible I choose female authors or people of color in the material. Philosophy, like many disciplines, has work to do here.
Note: This site is not affiliated in any official (or unofficial) way with the NCCA, JCT, Department of Education etc.. This is purely a personal project.
