Author: Brian Clark

Research and evidence informed practice

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Practitioners should:

  • Engage with the main theoretical perspectives and research in the digital learning domain.

  • Be critically aware of the evidence and impact that digital tools, spaces and cultures can have on childhood and society and how digital learning and teaching can adapt to meet the needs of learners. 

Support and Resources

Digital Education Research Articles from Imperial College
Over 60 collated articles on the topic of digital education, including: “How multimedia can improve learning and instruction”, “Using Cognitive Load Theory to improve slideshow presentations” and “Using technology to promote metacognition”

Digital learning research | Teaching and Learning and Leadership
This collection of research from the Australian Council for Educational Research includes recent papers such as “Rapid review of effective practice principles in the design and delivery of digital resources for teachers” (Syeda Kashfee Ahmed, Pru Mitchell, and Jenny Trevitt) amd “What sources of data did teachers use to inform remote teaching under Covid-19?” (Anne-Marie Chase, Kathryn Richardson, and Nathanael Reinertsen)

Using Digital Technology to Improve Learning 
From 2019, the Educational Endowment Foundation set out 4 recommendations
1. Consider how technology will improve teaching and learning before introducing it
2. Technology can be used to improve the quality of explanations and modelling
3. Technology offers ways to improve the impact of pupil practice
4. Technology can play a role in improving assessment and feedback

Digital Learning and Teaching on the National Improvement Hub
This page from Education Scotland will support policy makers and practitioners from all sectors to embed digital learning and teaching across the curriculum.

Call Scotland
Call Scotland have been a Research and Development centre as well as a working Service unit since 1983, supporting teachers and learners overcome barriers to learning.  This site provides access to support and resources to enable all learners access the curriculum using digital teachnology.

 

You may wish to look at digital learning theories and approaches, such as  RAT, SAMR, TPACK, Digital Blooms, Connectivism, Design Thinking and Peeragogy 

Other Interesting Links

Identifying digital competence gaps 

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Practitioners should be able:

  • To understand where one’s own digital competence needs to be improved or updated.

  • To be able to support others with their digital competence development and be able to advise how to improve.

  • To seek opportunities for self-development and to keep up-to-date with the digital evolution. 

Support and Resources

Many vendors have professional learning programmes, specifically designed to support your understanding and skills of their technologies and services.  

Explore the digilearn.scot site, in particular :

Useful Documents

Features of highly effective digital learning, teaching and assessment in schools is a self evaluation tool that you will find useful when reflecting on your digital practice

What Digital Learning might look like is a document exemplifying possible examples of digital learning in the BGE.

Other Links

Digital Future Programme – Microsoft  UK 

 

Identifying needs and technological responses

Pedagogy in a digitally enabled learning environment Home

Practitioners should be able:

  • To assess the needs of all learners and to identify, evaluate, select and use digital tools and possibly assistive technology to support these
  • To adjust and customise digital environments to personal needs (e.g. accessibility). 

Support and Resources

Explore the accessibility features available on Microsoft, Google and Apple platforms, as well as the advice and resources provided by Call Scotland.

Expertise in Communication and Assistive Technology Call Scotland resources to support learner needs using digital 

Get started with accessibility features on iPad Apple guide to accessibility features available on iPad

Accessibility Features available in Microsoft products

 Google Workspace user guide to accessibility Google home for accessibility features available across the Workspace platform

Video Gallery

Digitally enabled learning environments

Pedagogy in a digitally enabled learning environment Home

Practitioners should be able

  • To make effective use of digital environments in order to increase access to the curriculum. 
  • To provide, and continue to develop, simple and streamlined processes to engage with learners and peers.  
  • To make use of automation when appropriate to process and manage data and repetitive tasks, for example processing digital forms, utilising self-marking tools, resource booking systems, social media alerting/posting.

Support and Examples

School leaders and practitioners make use of the digital environments available to them to increase the curriculum offer.  For example, inclusion and support for local authority / regional virtual school offers, delivery of specialist knowledge via digital services eg national and local code-a-longs and sharing expertise across a cluster.

Practitioners make use of the virtual environment to share learning materials on a regular basis, eg through the use of teams / onenote / google classroom.

Practitioners make use of the metrics and reporting data available via digital platforms to better understand learner engagement.

Practitioners ensure that learners are aware of further support through national offers such as

  • esgoil
  • westOS
  • locally developed anytime learning resources via your local authority or RIC

Use of digital tools to provide effective feedback quickly, such as assignment marking using rubric, pre-prepared feedback based on responses to quiz questions, audio notes

Auto Quiz Feedback

Videos and Forms

Using Rubrics

Digital resilience

Pedagogy in a digitally enabled learning environment Home

Practitioners should be able

  • To have the skills, knowledge and confidence to prepare digital technology for use with learners.

  • To react, respond and recover to problems when operating devices and using digital environments. 

Examples and Support

Developing, Integrating and re-elaborating digital content

Pedagogy in a digitally enabled learning environment Home

Practitioners should be able:

  • To create and edit digital content in different formats.
  • To modify, refine, improve and integrate information and content into an existing body of knowledge to create new, original and relevant content and knowledge. 
  • To be aware of how copyright and licenses apply to data, information and digital content, including whether you have the right to use digital information.
  • To find free to use content and the importance of referencing and attribution.

Examples and Support

Copyright webinar https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/530044188672127503  

Creating Videos for Learners – DigiLearn 

Planning, teaching, learning and assessment

Identifying needs and technological responses

Digitally enabled learning environments

Digital resilience

Developing, Integrating and re-elaborating digital content

Pedagogy in a digitally enabled learning environment Home

Practitioners should have the skills, knowledge and confidence set out in the Features of highly effective digital learning and teaching document to use digital technology to; 

  • plan learning.  

  • deliver teaching and learning. 

  • assess learning. 

Support and examples

Features of highly effective digital learning and teaching document 

Teacher Leadership Enquiry Posters

Examples from digilearnscot community

Digital Quality Assurance of National Qualifications – DigiLearn (glowscotland.org.uk) 

Collaborating through digital technologies

Communication and Collaboration Home

Practitioners should be able:

  • To use digital tools and technologies for collaborative processes, and for co-construction and co-creation of resources and knowledge with learners, other staff and parents /carers. 

Support and resources

As part of networks in school, cluster or wider, teachers participate in collaborative planning and moderation:  

  • Creating and/or sharing lesson plans, resources and activities  
  • Create and/or share learning intentions and success criteria models  
  • Share examples and evidence of learning for moderation purposes, including discussions about standards  

As part of communication with families, documents may be shared to elicit responses and ideas from the school community, this can be used to shape events or papers.

Interact and share through digital technologies

Communication and Collaboration Home

Practitioners should be able:

  • To interact through a variety of digital technologies and to understand appropriate digital communication means for a given context, for example with learners, other teaching staff and/or parents/careers.

  • To share data, information and digital content with others through appropriate digital technologies, for example with learners, other teaching staff and/or parents/carers. To act as an intermediary, to know about referencing and attribution practices. 

Support and Links

Using platforms, such as Teams, Classroom or Showbie etc, to share expectations for learning ahead of time:  

  • Es and Os and context for upcoming topic  
  • Learning Intentions and Success Criteria before lesson  

Setting up and joining networks for collaborating using platforms, such as Teams, to collaborate with colleagues, including:  

  • discussions  
  • File sharing  
  • Video calls  

Using external facing comms platforms, such as twitter, blog or Showbie to communicate learning to families, including:  

  • upcoming learning and support for families on how to help at home  
  • Evidence of learning and feedback  
  • Standards and expectations, like timetables, gym kit, trips or visits  

Managing digital identity

Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety Home

Practitioners should be able:

  • to create and manage one or multiple digital identities (separate work and personal)
  • to be able to protect one’s own reputation
  • to deal with the data that one produces through several digital tools, environments and services. 

Support and Examples

The Common Sense digital citizenship program will look at digital footprint and other topics such as new & media literacy.

Hide My Email lets you create unique random email addresses to use with apps, websites and more so your personal email address can stay private. It’s built in to Sign in with Apple and iCloud+

This information guide from the National Parent Forum of Scotland is for parents and carers.

It’s clear that what we post online can have a real impact on our lives offline. This site helps you understand the long-lasting effects of what you share and empowering you to take control of how your online reputation is created. Created by internetmatters.org This resource is designed to help young people manage their online identity and the understand the Importance of a good online reputation.

Also, internetmatters.org provides information about how to deactivate/delete old social media accounts.  This will enable young people to stay in control of their digital footprint as they move onto new social media platforms 

ThinkUKnow will help you understand how leaners socialising online and how these form part of their digital footprint.