Education Scotland Digital Learning Week Logo

Thought I’d assign some homework for schools in Digital Learning Week 

This principally aimed at senior phase. 

In no particular order. 

1. How good is your school wifi and are you ready for learners to bring their own devices ?

2. Have you got a clear policy that encourages learners and teachers  to use their own devices in class and around the school  ?

3. Have you worked out how to close the digital divide – can you supply learners,  who don’t have access to a device that can reliably at least browse the internet with a suitable device – ideally for school time and to take home ? hint –  Kindle Fires are good value at moment.

4. How confident are your teachers in making the best use of GLOW – blogging , sharing , publishing their learning and teaching resources, working collaboratively with learners to create content with teacher and learners in other schools across Scotland and internationally ?

5. Have you worked out a policy or mechanism for making the best use of massive open on-line courses for staff and for pupil development ?

6. How much learning content created under Creative Commons Licences do your teachers and pupils produce each year and what platforms are you publishing this on ?

7. How good is your learning community at defining and describing your local area – do you use Google and other maps and suitable review sites as opportunities for teachers and learners to produce content.

8. Have you trained any Wikipedians – what are the Wikipedia entries like for your school and for the region that surrounds your school ?  How can you improve these ?

9. Digital literacy – have you a mechanism for measuring this across your learning community and a means of developing this for teachers and learners on an ongoing basis ?

10. Do you use technology to give learners an opportunity to showcase their work – and do you use it to cut down on meetings and use it for useful things like internal verification, across your school , across the local authority , nationally ?

11. How many on-line courses are your learners using as a supplement to or as an addition to normal classes and are you timetabling these to increase the choice available to senior phase learners and to make non-viable subject choices viable in your school ?

12. E-Books – have you worked out that many of the classic texts are now freely available as they are out of copyright and have you a strategy for making sure teachers and learners make the most of resources like this ?

13. Do most subject teachers have their own YouTube channel with a stream of helpful revision clips from a range of sources to support learners and/or what social platforms are they doing this on ?

14. Have you opened up a lot of your on-line learning to help and support parents – who would benefit from access to this learning ?

15. How many Microsoft Innovator Teachers , Google Certified , Apple or Intel or other trained teachers do you have and do you value your digital leaders ?

16. Do you know what an open badge is and have you worked out ways for your teachers and learners to build some open badges and award these ?

17. Has your school organised or supported a teachmeet ? Do you encourage teachers to contribute to #Pedagoo – do you regularly talk about how digital learning is changing the face of learning – talking about the pedagogy and the on-line resources freely available ?

18. If you think digital learning is still about – composing and sending emails , opening , creating and saving a document and using presentation software , a data projector or an electronic whiteboard and that phones are a needless distraction in school.  Then please ignore  1-17