Ideas generated from today

After today's session I have thought about various things that could be implemented in future at school:

 

Pupils:

1. Short Term - Provide lessons for the new year 7 (September) and opportunities to refresh knowledge of other pupils.
2. Medium Term - Continue with safe internet practices workshops and to introduce new technologies.
3. Long Term - Development of a positive footprint showcase.

 

Teachers:

1. Short Term - Continue with Google Classroom training and produce an audit to see highlight what is going on throughout the school. Make staff aware of the Byron Review.
2. Medium Term - Create a Digital competency group to ensure that the topic is delivered throughout the school.
3. Long Term - Development of departmental Blogs, Social Media or Websites.

 

Parents:

1. Short Term - Social media awareness.
2. Medium Term - Produce newsletters / social media feeds.
3. Long Term - Create showcase events on different topics.

 

 

Update

Its been a number of months since we last attended the Wise Kids training however I have been pretty busy trying to implement my ideas at the PRU.

I have been trialing the use of blogging with a couple of pupils at the PRU and hopefully use those pupils to help me introduce and develop blogging with other classes. Given the specific behavioural difficulties that pupils have who attend the PRU, initially it was a difficult task. I found the main barrier to their learning was their low self esteem and the 'I will never be able to do that' attitude. I broke down the sessions into 30 minute workshops with two pupils rather than a more formal lesson structure which allowed myself and the pupils to problem solve together as a group rather than being too teacher led. This built up their self esteem and promoted a culture of trust between us all. There was no stopping them once they had learnt how to set up a blog and understood the purpose of blogging. The pupils chose the topics of 'off road biking' and 'minecraft' I''m sure that you can see that their interest was captured by the ability to blog about a topic which they had a passion for and were very knowledgeable about!

The pupils created their own blogs and enjoyed the whole experience.

My next step is to roll blogging out to staff at the PRU and see where they take it with their own classes. I will update the blog as it develops in the new academic year.

Ideas from today's session.

Where are we now

Since the last time we met things has moved on a bit at Lewis School Pengam.  We ran our safer internet programme with both staff and pupils in February to coincide with the UK's safer internet day in which I developed a PowerPoint quiz based upon the popular social media apps that pupils are using. To compliment this we had our police officer coming in to talk to pupils and staff on certain topics depending upon age and a follow up lesson by myself in PSE lessons to reinforce the issues.
The school has invested money in purchasing 40 Chrome books - developing a mobile IT classroom. With more investment being made for September. Every pupil has been introduced to Google Classroom and all staff has received training on the basics.


Plans for the future is to create a digital competency project for year 7 and for them to create a means to show off a positive digital footprint by the time they leave school by either building a website or a blog.

Updates and further progress made

Hi all,

Its been a while since I've blogged but just to update everyone on what Blackwood has been up to in its quest to raise awareness of digital literacy/citizenship within the school.

First off all we have a PLC 'digital literacy' group, whereby a member of staff from most departments within the school attend a meeting every 6 weeks to discuss ways of moving digital literacy forward within their own department. Some staff have chosen to use 'Hwb' and have created blogs, collaboration projects etc with students. Other departments have chosen to use Ipads within their subject and the use of apps to raise pupils skills within the subject and digital literacy skills. Other staff have chosen to use Chrome Books, this is becoming  increasingly popular in school, with Google classrooms being set up and pupils collaborating on projects. An example is recently when, for an ICT project pupils task was to create a virtual tour of a country of their choice and act as a tour guide, a group decided to do theirs collaboratively using Google Docs, not something they had learnt to do in ICT but in another subject, which shows that pupils are transferring their digital skills learnt from other subjects.  This is all good progress, but the difficultly is getting consistency through all departments, although this could be achieved with the new framework due out in September.

We have also recently sent a group of Year 8 pupils to 'Digital 16', a conference held in the Celtic manor. Pupils enjoyed their time there and took part in some great activities and hopefully would have inspired them for the future.

A group of year 10 pupils also took part in the Young Enterprise Welsh finals last week. They created a defence video and used social media to advertise their business. A great way for pupils to see a different use of social media, unfortunately they didn't manage to win, but a great achievement nonetheless.

Two classes (one year 9 and one year 10) also took part in a three week research project with Oxford University regrading pupils online habits in gaming etc. Only two schools in the UK took part in the research, and it was very pleasing that Blackwood was one of them! I look forward to hearing the outcome of the research as its a great insight to how the pupils use the internet socially.

I am sure there is more but I cant think of anything off the top of my head. I shall re-post if I think of anything.

Digital Leader Programme and Progress Update

It has been a while since I touched base with progress following the initial and follow up training but I thought I would take this opportunity before our next meeting to share some of the exiting collaborative developments that have happened following dissemination of the material to staff and pupils.  This is not an exhaustive list but a flavour of some of the effective working practice that now happens at our centre:

Outstanding National Achievements

Winners of an Into Film Awards 2016, presented in Odeon London at Leicester Square, for a short animation ‘Flow’ which was a collaborative project with University of South Wales.  Press coverage here à http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/two-valleys-schools-won-top-11062997

Winner of 2014 Sigmatak Film competition where one of our first Digital Leaders received an iMac! Details here: http://www.sigmatak.com/film-competition/2014

Digital Safety

For the last two years we have been actively involved in raising awareness of safer internet use via streamlined curriculums and active involvement in the annual Safer Internet Day to which we are now an affiliated supporter: http://www.saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/2016/supporters?q=PQR&lp=4#ABC

One of our special Internet Safety assemblies with yours truly delivering the “Be an Up-Stander NOT a By-Stander” talk as covered in the digital leaders programme.

  

School and Departmental Digital Presence

Along with our school feed EVERY department now has a digital presence via Twitter and other technologies where up-to-date information gets published regularly such as revision tips, useful resources, announcements and opportunities for celebration.  There was even a hashtag for the solar eclipse back in 2015 viewed from pupils in the school grounds!

A sample of some of our departmental tweets from celebrating Welsh Baccalaureate Work, our Award Winning Eco-Squad working with clusters forged initially by digital collaboration,GCSE results and promoting digital competencies across the board via shared STEM Days.

  

As well as some of the developments above we are now fully wirelessly enabled with a plethora of tablets, notebooks, PC suites and BYOD schemes to boot.  Teachers (even the reluctant ones) have and are becoming more fluent with their use of technology every day to create, resource and evaluate their teaching along with informing performance and assessment.

I had a conversation the other day with Sangeet and one of the other original digital leaders (Alan) and I didn’t think as a school we had progressed much.  Standing back and taking a breath however it seems that digitally we are moving forward and trying to share good practice within the school through designated sessions.

I am looking forward to the next groups of days to catch up with everyone and receive some new material...What’s next BBC Microbits across departments maybe?!

Stu