Digital Professional Learning Journey: structure

This essential component in the DPLJ consists of:

• a vision for digital learning, supported by stakeholders.
• effective leadership of digital learning.
• strategic planning, including EdTech plans, policies, etc.
• communicating with stakeholders and collaborating within and beyond the school.
• monitoring, evaluation and review.

The Welsh Government is committed to delivering a national approach to EdTech by implementing a strategic and sustainable approach to embed digital services in all maintained schools.

The Hwb programme, in conjunction with each local authority EdTech change programme, aims to support maintained schools in Wales to exploit the transformational benefits which digital and technology can have on education and help realise the programme’s long term strategic aims.

Local authorities play a key role in providing advice for schools around development of infrastructure, providing access to a national procurement framework and supporting schools with sustainability of digital developments.

Regional consortia provide support for professional learning and networking between schools.

Vision

Having a clear whole school vision for digital learning is an essential starting point for successful long-term implementation and development of the digital agenda.

A vision for digital learning is more than a statement. It has a clear impact on the way the school operates and can be seen both in day-to-day teaching and in learning outcomes.

The digital vision should:

• align with the whole school vision
• inform the school development plan
• align with national models and developments
• focus on digital learning
• embrace new developments in technology
• involve education technology partners and stakeholders in its development and monitoring
• lead to clear positive impact on teaching and learner experiences
• lead to improved learner digital competence

The school’s digital vision can only be realised if there is commitment from all levels within the school as well as stakeholders and wider partners to its success. It should be led by senior management and supported by relevant specialist staff, working with relevant support partners (for example Local Authority EdTech partners and Regional Consortia) and owned by the whole school.

Digital leadership

Although it is recommended that schools have a nominated lead for digital learning, leadership of digital learning should be considered as a whole school function and not the responsibility of an individual for its implementation. The digital lead should have the full support of the headteacher and governing body to make relevant decisions to implement the school’s vision for digital learning.

Too often in schools, digital learning is seen as a technical issue and delegated to an individual who has some technical expertise but little authority to make whole school decisions in relation to the major aspects of digital learning. The leadership of digital learning, working with relevant stakeholders and support partners should consider the following aspects.

• Whole-school vision.
• Staff structure and responsibilities.
• Requirements for education technology requirements and digital services.
• Curriculum model and planning.
• Pedagogy, learning and teaching.
• Digital resilience and cyber security.
• Working with stakeholders within and beyond the school.

All staff should have ongoing professional learning to ensure they have the relevant skills to use education technology effectively, as well as the understanding of how to best use technology to support learning and teaching. This could be via a combination of supported self-study, in-school support or regionally delivered programmes. Please refer to the relevant pages of your regional consortium web pages for more details of what is offered by the regional consortia to support digital learning.

Effective digital leadership should also include collaboration with key stakeholders, including local authority EdTech Leads, Safeguard Leads, Data Protection Officers, to ensure the seamless integration of the school’s digital and technology and compliance with the relevant legislative requirements, specifically data protection law. Learner voice, staff voice and the views of parents and governors are also important to capture to inform policy and development.

Strategic planning

Additional information on strategic planning, procurement, hardware and software, can be found in the Planning and management guidance section on Hwb. Schools are recommended to consult with their Local Authority Education Technology partner for advice as part of their strategic planning.

Effective plans, with input from staff, learners, governors, parents/carers and the wider community, supported by the school’s education technology partner are essential in ensuring effective, coherent and sustainable implementation of the digital agenda in schools.

It is essential that planning for digital learning should form part of the whole school development planning process.

Budgeting

Developing the school’s education technology capacity and capability is an important aspect of the DPLJ. Decisions need to be made that will affect how the school delivers digital learning and enables learners and teachers to use technology effectively to develop their digital competence and improve their learning and teaching.

Education technology is one of the highest costs in school budgets after staffing. Equipment, software and services have a defined lifespan and require ongoing maintenance, support and replacement.

Education technology developments require careful thought and significant ongoing investment, therefore it is important that schools make informed decisions to implement their digital vision. Schools should seek advice from their education technology support partners, and other schools in the cluster and beyond, when reviewing or defining new digital services and ensure that any solution takes into account appropriate management of data and safeguarding of learners.

With the average costs of ICT around £15,000 per primary school and £62,000 per secondary school (BESA, 2019-20), schools need to strategically consider their investment in education technology and should engage with their education technology partner before investing in significant developments or upgrades to their ICT infrastructure. Any planned developments should be considered in light of their overall vision for digital learning and how this will improve working practices in the school as well as learner outcomes. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted the need to ensure that the school’s education technology and associated practices enable remote synchronous and asynchronous access for learners, while staff should have the confidence and capability to use relevant technologies to enable effective learning and teaching to take place.

Developments should be sustainable, inclusive and designed with the end goal of enhancing the learner experience both in the development of their digital skills and in the use of digital technologies to improve their overall learning.

Plans should consider the total cost of ownership of any education technology equipment or services and be fully supported with relevant professional learning for staff to ensure effective use and exploitation.

Significant investment from the Welsh Government, via the Hwb programme, has provided schools with a unique opportunity to support the development of digital learning across Wales. Such investments need to be considered alongside school’s own budgeting for digital learning. Plans should consider:

• priority
• relevance
• impact
• sustainability

Monitoring, evaluation and review

Ongoing monitoring and evaluation are essential to ensure that the school’s digital vision is fit for purpose and is being implemented effectively. This should form part of the school’s overall self-evaluation, focusing on processes and outcomes.

The National Resource: Evaluation and Improvement has been developed to support schools with their self-evaluation processes. Schools should engage with this resource when considering their evaluation and review of digital learning alongside learning, teaching and blended learning aspects of the national resource.

Support and resources

The regional consortia are a key partner in supporting schools with their digital learning. Each region has a digital learning offer and associated programmes. Please refer to the regional consortia web pages for further details.

A growing set of resources have been produced by schools and regional consortia and will be presented for access by all schools in Wales. These resources are provided as examples of what schools are doing or provide ideas for how schools could develop leadership of digital learning. Schools are not expected to follow all the examples provided and any developments around digital learning should be the decision of individual schools, in consultation with their governing body and education technology support partner.

In the further education and higher education sectors, a similar support programme has been developed, Digital 2030. A number of supporting resources from digital 2030 are relevant to schools and are referenced in the pages on each strand of the DPLJ. How to shape your digital strategy in the Digital 2030 framework may prove useful when considering vision and leadership aspects of the DPLJ.

Welsh Ministers have made a firm commitment to improve education technology (EdTech) across Wales with over £160m invested in the Hwb programme to date.

Through this investment, the Hwb programme has initiated and successfully delivered several initiatives since 2012, to help transform the way digital technology is used for learning and teaching in schools across Wales. This pivotal programme of work provides stakeholders with consistent access to a range of standardised digital infrastructure, tools and resources, which are built on sustainable principles.

The programme is widely recognised as having a significant impact on the transformation of education services, as well as providing a national platform capable of supporting and delivering real transformation to the education sector, most notably providing learners in Wales with easy access to tools and services to facilitate digital learning.

The following areas provide an insight into the activities being undertaken through the Hwb programme, in collaboration with various sector representatives.

EdTech Commercial Service

Caerphilly CBC, in collaboration with the Welsh Government and all 22 local authorities in Wales, have developed the ‘sector owned, sector led’ EdTech Service to ensure schools and local authorities can achieve the best value for money when purchasing digital equipment, software and services. The EdTech Service can deliver these opportunities due to standardised requirements; aggregating demand across Wales and undertaking national negotiations with global supply chains.

To date, the Hwb EdTech programme has provided over £92 million to local authorities to invest through this service. This investment has resulted in local authorities being able to purchase a wide range of digital equipment at an unrivalled price point. It has facilitated the ability for all maintained schools in Wales to ensure their ICT network infrastructure is able to meet the growing EdTech demand in the classroom, as well as purchase in excess of 185,000 new end user devices.

Hwb Cloud and Education Digital Standards

The Welsh Government has developed the Hwb digital learning platform which aims to improve the use of digital technology for teaching and learning in all schools across Wales.  It provides a single national digital identity for all learners, teachers (including trainee and supply teachers) and governors in maintained schools to access a range of digital infrastructure and bilingual tools and resources.

Furthermore, the Welsh Government has worked collaboratively with the 22 local authorities to develop the Education Digital Standards. These standards assist schools in understanding how to manage, implement and future proof their digital environment in accordance with the Curriculum for Wales. The standards will also support schools to generally exploit the transformational benefits which digital and technology can have on education and schools’ administration.

Bilingual services and content

The national digital resource repository on Hwb hosts a collection of open, bilingual, free to use digital tools and resources which enables learners and teachers to access online resources anywhere, at any time, from any web-enabled device to support teaching and learning in Wales.

In conjunction with a range of sector representatives, the Welsh Government provides a range of bilingual guidance, resources and case studies that can be easily shared via Hwb to help teachers create and share their own resources and assignments which are relevant to the Curriculum for Wales.

During the pandemic, Hwb has been pivotal in supporting schools embrace blended learning with a range information, guidance and resources.

Digital resilience

The Digital Resilience programme builds on existing expertise and activities to develop sustainable activities across Wales, including: development of bilingual content and resources (particularly Welsh language content); providing a self-evaluation tool as well as a broad programme of training for education practitioners and governors.

For further information, please visit Keeping safe online and in particular view the 360° Safe Cymru self-evaluation tool and the national digital resilience in education action plan.

Ongoing professional learning in the effective use of technology is essential to securing developments that ensure that digital resources are used to their best effect. The professional learning resources provided through the DPLJ provide some exemplification, but schools should access the support provided by local authorities and regional education consortia, and should collaborate with other schools to share expertise and enhance professional learning.

This strand of the digital professional learning journey consists of the following components.

• Professional learning.
• Collaboration.
• Communication.
• Innovation.

The National Pedagogy Project, specifically through ‘Talk Pedagogy’, provides the opportunity for professionals to discuss and reflect on pedagogy and digital learning, share current research and to explore ideas for further innovation. This will also draw upon and be informed through the work of the Wales Collaborative for Learning Design (WCLD) in the development of remote asynchronous learning design.

Schools should consider upcoming developments and how these would benefit the school to realise its digital vision. However, schools should consider such developments carefully and shouldn’t follow every new trend and try to embrace every development. Schools should consider how new developments fit in with the school's vision for digital learning and embrace new practices through the school’s development plan. Long term sustainability and total cost of ownership should be considered as well as the short-term use that will be made in relation to any solutions purchased. Some devices such as tablets have a high obsolescence and any expensive investment should have a positive impact.

Effective ongoing professional learning is key to the development and implementation of the digital agenda in schools.

With technology changing rapidly and with new education technology solutions becoming available, it is imperative that schools have a planned approach to ensure staff are aware of developments and are trained in their use to improve the learning experience. The SAMR model (see below curriculum, provision and pedagogy section) provides a useful approach to implement change and innovation.

This cannot be done in isolation. Schools should provide opportunities for collaboration within and beyond the school to develop staff skills and share ideas on digital learning and using technology effectively. The Hwb platform hosts a peer support page where professionals across Wales can share ideas and good practice. There are a variety of tools available via Hwb to support this, e.g. Hwb networks, use of collaborative tools within Office 365 and Google for Education.

Schools should consider the professional learning offer from the regional consortia, the education technology developments and opportunities available via their local authority and how this will be implemented to realise their vision for digital learning and ensure appropriate training and time for development is made available for staff.

Digital competence is a mandatory cross-curricular skill and must be embedded in the school’s curriculum. As such, staff need to be equipped to be able to support the development of learners' digital competence and deepen their learning and sophistication as learners' progress through their schooling.

Supporting exemplar resources on schools’ digital development journeys across Wales are made available to share ideas and approaches and will be added over the coming months.

This strand of the DPLJ consists of the following aspects.

• Provision for developing digital competence and use of technology.
• Planning and embedding relevant opportunities for the development of digital learning across the curriculum.
• Curriculum and learning design.
• Developing learners’ digital competence and effective learning using technology.
• Using technology to support learning across the curriculum and developing effective digital learning experiences.

Developing provision and pedagogy in relation to the Digital Competence Framework

Schools have been developing their provision in relation to the Digital Competence Framework since its publication in 2016. This work needs to align with the school’s wider digital agenda, resulting in its digital vision, education technology and digital resilience developments supporting the effective implementation and embedding of digital competence.

Schools should consider their overall provision for digital learning and how the digital infrastructure supports this. It is recommended that schools engage with their Local Authority Education Technology Partner to provide advice on solutions that support development of the relevant digital learning environments within the school to enable all aspects of digital competence to be development effectively.

Continuing professional learning needs to build confidence and competence in order to make informed decisions regarding the effective use of technology as a teaching tool. This will support schools in planning meaningful and authentic digital learning experiences across the curriculum and staff will be increasingly able to support the development of learners’ digital skills.

In a rapidly evolving field teachers should be updated and made aware of new developments in education technology which can support improved learning and teaching in the classroom and continue to realise the school’s overall vision for digital learning.

Reflecting on the effective use of digital learning within the context of the 12 pedagogical principles will also lead to the development of strategies to support learning, especially with regards to regularly reinforcing the cross-curricular skill of digital competence.

Curriculum and learning design

When considering how to implement digital competence across the curriculum, schools should consider how this will fit within the overall curriculum for the school and ensure that learners have the opportunities to develop their digital skills within meaningful and authentic contexts.

The Welsh Government guidance on designing your curriculum should be considered when approaching this task. It is important to consider how learners’ digital competence can be developed within the school’s curriculum and digital learning experiences should be mapped and planned accordingly. A resource to support mapping of the cross-curricula Digital Competence Framework skills framework is available on Hwb.

Although schools have freedom to design their own curriculum and implement digital competence as they see fit, the following aspects should be considered.

• What is the school’s vision for digital learning and how will this be realised through the curriculum?
• How will digital competence be developed through the areas of learning and experience?
• How do we ensure a continuity of learner skills to realise the requirements within the Digital Competence Framework within the school and between primary and secondary settings?
• How do we ensure that learners are able to use technology effectively to enable effective progression across all aspects of their learning?
• What models of learning design fit best within the school’s curriculum and through associated learning experiences?

Having the technical ability to use education technology tools to design and deliver learning content does not necessarily mean that quality learning will take place. Schools should apply effective learning design principles alongside any use of technology, especially where there are any expectations for independent or asynchronous learning. The Welsh Government has commissioned a series of playlist resources to support schools with asynchronous learning design which may be of use for schools to consider.

A useful resource has been developed by the regional consortia on blended learning which complements the blended learning information hosted on Hwb.

Models of implementation

The following structures provide an outline of possible methods of organising and developing learner digital competence and show the benefits and aspects to consider in relation to the different approaches. They are presented as points on a continuum and schools should adopt approaches that are appropriate to their needs.

Discrete

Digital competence is delivered through dedicated ICT lessons with a subject specialist, usually in a room dedicated to this purpose. Content is mostly abstract and focuses on skills development with some or no input from other subjects across the curriculum.

Cross-curricular

Digital competence is delivered by staff through the medium of delivering subject content. Authentic contexts are provided for the learning and digital competence development is undertaken side by side with progression within the subject or area of learning and experience.

The digital competence framework is available to support coverage and quality of authentic experiences. Staff require regular training to deliver digital competence and ensure deepening of learning as learners progress throughout their school life.

Extending more able learners is sometimes difficult and requires regular input from the digital lead in the school to ensure that experiences are of the appropriate level of challenge.

Hybrid

This approach combines the features of the two models above into a continuum of possible cross-curricular delivery. Digital competence is delivered either fully across the curriculum or specific competencies are focused upon within specific areas of learning. Specialist lessons are provided by a subject specialist but using authentic contexts from the remainder of the curriculum either in a subject or thematic approach. Please refer to the Digital Competence Framework for supporting guidance.

Management of timings is important, especially in the secondary school to ensure that there is alignment between content and skills developed within discrete lessons and lessons covered by a different teacher.

Developing learning experiences and use of technology

Another aspect to consider is the effective use of technology to support learning and teaching within other aspects of the curriculum beyond digital competence. There are a variety of models that can be used for developing technology effectively. One such example that schools could consider is the SAMR model. This model consists of the following components.

• Substitution.
• Augmentation.
• Modification.
• Redefinition.

This method provides a phased approach to help schools in adopting digital solutions to embrace change and innovation and support effective learning and teaching.

There are a number of websites that provide more detail around SAMR. The following site, from the Digital 2030 resource for further education, provides a useful starting point in using SAMR.

Supporting resources

Support is also available through Hwb for digital capability and skills. A range of webinars are available for practitioners to understand how to access and use the tools provided through Hwb to transform the teaching and learning experience.

In addition, there are also a number of external partner providers schools may wish to consider in supporting learner skills and experiences in the digital arena.

• Cracking the code
• Technocamps
• NCSC Cyber Girls campaign