Cymraeg

Suggested audience: learners, school staff, school digital champions, local authority Hwb administrators, regional education consortia Hwb administrators.

Hwb, the National Digital Learning Platform, hosts a national collection of digital tools and resources to support learning and teaching in Wales.

Hwb has been developed in line with the following key principles:

  • to support a national approach to planning and delivery
  • to enable the sharing of skills, methods and resources between teachers in Wales
  • to support teaching and learning in Welsh and English
  • to offer equal access to free, classroom focused tools and resources for all teachers and learners in Wales.

Hwb enables learners and teachers to access online resources anywhere, at any time, from a range of devices. It also provides tools to help teachers create and share their own resources and assignments. The collection includes:

  • tools and resources created or commissioned by the Welsh Government and/or its agents
  • tools and resources licensed or bought by the Welsh Government
  • tools and resources made available by trusted sources
  • resources created by teachers.

To get started with Hwb, your school’s Digital Champion or Hwb Administrator will need to provide all staff and learners with their Hwb usernames and passwords from the User Management Portal. If your school doesn’t yet have a Digital Champion or if you don’t know who this is, your Head teacher or a member of the SLT will need to contact the Hwb Service Desk: hwb@gov.wales / 03000 25 25 25.

Once staff have their login details, they can access all of the tools and services in Hwb straight away. When learners first log in, they will only have access to Personalised Assessments. To access the full range of tools and services, consent for Hwb Additional Services will need to be obtained and applied via the User Management Portal.

Warning

Before distributing usernames and passwords your school should consider its online safety provision and have current acceptable use policies in place. You can also find further exemplar acceptable use policies and guidance within 360 degree safe Cymru.

Your regional education consortia digital lead will be able to provide further support and training as required.


There are many different approaches to adopting Hwb in your school. However, you need to ensure the following things are in place:

  • Identify your Digital Champions (Hwb administrators) and ensure they have the permissions needed to access the User Management Portal, containing usernames and passwords. Please contact the Hwb Service Desk for support with this: hwb@gov.wales | 03000 25 25 25.
  • Check your username and password list in the User Management Portal is correct.
  • Ensure that acceptable use policies for staff and learners are up to date and signed.
  • Provide information to governors, staff, parents and learners.

The 360 degree safe Cymru tool can help the school benchmark its current policies and practices regarding Online Safety and provides advice and templates to support your school’s approach.

Given the wide range of tools in Hwb we recommend that schools plan their approach in line with local priorities, ideally aligned to the School Improvement Plan.

Further help, advice and training is available from the regional educational consortia.


The supported devices and browsers for Hwb are:

  • Google Chrome
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Safari on Mac
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • iPhone - latest iOS
  • iPad - latest iOS
  • Android mobile and tablet 4.4 (KitKat) and above

Encyclopaedia Britannica is supported on the following browsers:

  • Google Chrome version 52.0 or higher
  • Mozilla Firefox version 45.0 or higher
  • Microsoft Edge version 25.0 or higher
  • Safari version 9.1 or higher

 

Just2easy is supported on any device that can connect to the internet. There is the option to use J2e via the browser or download the mobile or iPad J2launch app.

Microsoft update the prerequisites for Office 365 on a regular basis as new features and applications are made available. You can subscribe to the change log to keep up to date with these changes.

Google outline the G Suite browser requirements and Google Drive firewall and proxy settings in their G Suite Admin Help site, which is updated regularly.

360 degree safe Cymru is supported on the following browsers:

  • Microsoft Edge (Latest 2 versions)
  • Chrome (Latest 2 versions)
  • Firefox (Latest 2 versions)

The 360 degree safe Cymru site is not currently mobile capable, so whilst it may work on mobile browsers (and other non-supported browsers) you may have a degraded user experience.


Hwb accounts are automatically created for learners and staff in maintained schools in Wales using data in your school’s MIS e.g. SIMS or Teacher Centre. Hwb accounts are also available for local authority and regional education consortia staff who are supporting these maintained schools.

Governors can request Hwb accounts from their school.

Supply teachers can request Hwb accounts from the Sign Up button on the homepage of Hwb.

ITE students will receive a Hwb account from their ITE provider for the duration of their course, these are referred to as ITE university accounts. ITE providers can supply you with details about these accounts.

ITE students may also be given a Hwb account at placement schools. These are referred to as ITE school accounts and will be valid for the duration of their placement(s).  ITE school account details will change for each placement school.

We are currently working on several projects to provide Hwb access to other educational institutions in Wales. We will release news articles with further information once available.


Data sharing

In 2018, the Welsh Government changed the way schools provide access to the Hwb education portal and managed learning environment (the Hwb Platform) for their staff and learners.

From September 2018, it is compulsory for all learners in maintained schools in Wales to be provided with a secure login to the Hwb Platform. From that date, Personalised Assessments are being phased in over three years to replace the paper-based National Reading and Numeracy Tests, and certain assessments must be completed online via the Hwb Platform.

For learners and staff to be provided with secure log-ins to the Hwb Platform, schools need to share personal information about them with the Welsh Government. This will be done via the all-Wales Education Identity Provider service.

In order to facilitate the sharing of personal data with the Welsh Government, headteachers or authorised members of the school’s Senior Leadership Team are asked to review and accept the terms in the Hwb data sharing agreement.

Hwb Additional Services

The Welsh Government believes that it is in the public interest to ensure every learner in maintained schools in Wales has full access to Hwb so that schools can use the distance learning tools available. 

Please see our updated guidance on consent.

Further information about data sharing, consent and acceptable use of Hwb can be found here. Please also refer to the Hwb privacy notice and the Hwb terms and conditions.


Suggested audience: School digital champions, School Network Managers and Local Authority Technical Teams.

Overview

This document outlines the options available to migrate from a school G-suite domain or Microsoft O365 tenant to Hwb.  This guidance is suitable for migrating staff accounts only.

Warning

Please speak to your local authority or your IT support provider for advice and support with moving to Hwb.  Please consider carefully what files you really need to move when migrating to Hwb. 

Migrating from School Google Workspace for Education domain.

Schools wishing to migrate from their own School Google Workspace for Education domain can do so with a combination of the following options.

Files

Staff wishing to transfer their files from their school domain to the Hwb domain can use the Google Take Out tool.  This tool can be used by individual staff to transfer files directly from their school account to their Hwb account.  Please consider the following when using this tool:

  • Your school domain admin must configure your School Google Workspace for Education domain accordingly to allow the transfer of files;
  • This tool will transfer your My Drive files only; if you are not the owner of the file, the file will not be transferred. For example, files that have been shared with you will not be moved. If you still need access to these files you can download them manually or copy to your My Drive before transferring;
  • Google Classroom files will not be moved as part of the transfer; any files you wish to keep from Google Classroom need to be copied to your drive first before you transfer.

For learners, we advise that they manually move files they wish to keep from their personal drives to their Hwb Google Workspace for Education Drive.

Gmail

Gmail is not available on the Hwb Google Workspace for Education domain.  The transfer of e-mail files to Hwb is a manual process on a per user basis. Contact your local authority or IT support provider for advice on how to move your email from Gmail to Hwb. 

Moving your email address to Hwb

For staff in schools using their school domain as an e-mail address alias, the e-mail address can be moved to Hwb via our domain name masking process.  Please read more about Domain Name Masking in the support centre. Contact your local authority or IT support provider for support with this change. The following consideration should be given to all dependencies on your current e-mail address before moving:

  • If you’re using your current e-mail address to sign in to other 3rd party apps and services, please consider that, once you move your e-mail alias to Hwb, you may no longer be able to sign in to those services.

Migrating from your School Office 365 Tenant  

If moving files from your school Office 365 tenant to Hwb, staff in your school can use the following tools and methods to transfer files and e-mails:

Personal User Files

For staff wanting to move files from their school OneDrive or personal drive to their Hwb OneDrive they can use the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool.  Users must have permissions on both the source and destination folders to achieve this type of transfer.

Please consider the following when using this tool:

  • This tool will transfer your files only; if you are not the owner of the file it will not be transferred. For example, files that have been shared with you will not be moved. If you still need access to these files you can download them manually.
  • Microsoft Team files will not be moved as part of the transfer; any files you wish to keep from Teams need to be copied to your OneDrive first before you transfer.

For learners, we advise that they manually move files they wish to keep from their personal drives to their Hwb OneDrive.

Shared Drives

Shared drives can also be transferred from your school tenant to Hwb using the SharePoint Migration Tool. Files can be moved to the Hwb SharePoint sites provided and managed by the Local Authority.  Please speak to your local authority to arrange access to this site and to assist with any migration of files.  Users must have permissions on both the source and destination folders to achieve this type of transfer.

Email

The transfer of email files from one mailbox to another can be done manually by individual staff.  This can be done by exporting .pst file from the school email mailbox in the Outlook client and importing the .pst file into the Hwb account mailbox. Contact your local authority or IT support provider for advice on how to do this. 

Moving your email address to Hwb

For staff in schools using their school domain as an e-mail address alias, the e-mail address can be moved to Hwb via our domain name masking process.  Please read more about Domain Name Masking in the support centre.  The following consideration should be given to all dependencies on your current e-mail address before moving:

  • If your e-mail address is connected to your Office 365 tenant, you must disassociate the email from your office 365 tenant before migrating;
  • If you’re using your current e-mail address to sign in to other 3rd party apps and services, please consider that, once you move your e-mail alias to Hwb, you may no longer be able to sign in to those services.

Contact your local authority or IT support provider for support with this change.


Suggested audience: learners, school staff, school digital champions, local authority Hwb administrators, regional education consortia Hwb administrators.

From December 2022, the default language of your Google Workspace interface will change to Welsh if you’re a Welsh learner or work or study at a school which teaches through the Welsh language. You’ll be able to toggle it back to English if you want to switch.

Overview

This document outlines the language options available within Hwb tools and services.

The language toggle currently controls the language for Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace for Education tools and the user management portal.

In order to change your language settings for these tools available through Hwb, you need to follow these steps.

All users can choose their preferred language.

  1. Log in to Hwb and navigate to the User Management Portal.
  2. In the User Management Portal, click My Profile to view Your Details. In the Preferred Language row click the button Change Preferred Language. There are two options:
  3. Choose between English and Cymraeg to set your preferred language.

Changes made to the language toggle should filter through quickly but can take up to 48 hours in some cases.

Setting your browser’s default language will determine if the User Management Portal appears in Welsh or English when you first land on the site.  You can switch easily between Welsh and English on each page by clicking on the language in the navigation bar.

Setting your browser default language setting will also determine which language you see in other Hwb services.  Many other external sites will also use the browser language to determine which language their content is delivered.

For support with setting you browser’s default language please speak to your IT administrator or local authority IT support.

What are my language options for other Hwb services?

The language switching toggle in the User Management Portal will change the language for most Microsoft Office 365 tools and the Hwb User Management Portal.  To switch language for all other Hwb tools please follow the links to the individual guides below.


The process for rolling over Hwb data from one academic year to another is relatively simple. We advise all Digital Champions to read the Hwb rollover guide, which explains the rollover process and actions that may need to be taken to ensure all Hwb accounts are up to date.

Hwb rollover guide


For general enquiries please contact the Welsh Government Hwb Team:

Telephone: 03000 252525 Email: hwb@gov.wales

You can also access support via your regional educational consortia Digital Lead. Please contact them directly for details.