The Beginning of the End?

Every week I receive the 'Welsh Government pre-11 Dysg Newsletter' via email. In Issue 156 (9th November) my eye was drawn to the 'Hwb Classes Guide' link (https://goo.gl/6qPKQO). Basically from within the Hwb platform - My Groups area, users can now create their own class area (much like they can in the Hwb Communities area) but can now invite pupils in and share digital resources with them such as Playlists, documents and take part in discussions. Not a full range of social learning tools as yet, but perhaps that's not a million miles away? Back in March I 'gazed into the crystal ball' and predicted the demise of the Hwb+ element of the Hwb platform. With this development are we seeing the beginning of the end for Hwb+?

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Defining Digital Competence

In a couple of previous posts I looked at what was meant by the term digital literacy and what this could mean in the Welsh education context. These were written in response to a recommendation from the ICT Steering Group report , proposing a new statutory Digital Literacy Framework for schools. I attempted to define what digital literacy meant using definitions from groups such as The Royal Society, Becta, Futurelab , Jisc and Common Sense Media. It was very difficult to pin down exactly what it meant but there were certainly commonalities between all of them. This week however, Prof. Graham Donaldson published his report on the curriculum and assessment in Wales, "Successful Futures" , and in it referred not to digital literacy , but to digital competence (which is a term I'm far happier using). I therefore feel it's important for me to try in this post to understand what is meant by this term, look at some definitions and find out if there are any differences ...

Digital Literacy: The Context for Wales & Definitions

At a time when England have introduced digital literacy elements to their new Computing PoS, and with the recommendations from the ICT Steering Group report for a digital literacy framework alongside the new subject of Computing, I’ve been attempting to look closely into what exactly is meant by the term ‘digital literacy’, and ultimately what this could mean for primary and secondary schools in Wales. I intend to put together a series of blogs on the topic, mainly as a way to help me with my understanding around some of the current thinking in this field, but hopefully it will still be of interest to teachers and others. I'd welcome any of your thoughts or comments on this topic. The Context In June 2012, Leighton Andrews, the then Minister for Education and Skills, announced “an additional £3m of funding over the next three years to support a range of measures to improve computer science, digital literacy and ICT in schools and colleges across Wales.” This announcement came ...

MindMup - Free Mind Mapping Software

For a while I've been looking for a free piece of mind mapping software for schools, and so got quite excited when I stumbled across MindMup this evening. What I particularly liked was the fact that you are able to store public mind maps on their own servers, however private mind maps are stored in your Google Drive. There's no need to register or remember accounts, once connected just go to your Google Drive and create your mind map which is then saved back to your drive. Open Mind Map directly from your Google Drive According to their blog, MindMup is "free, opensource, without any marketing, ads or spam" - what more can a school ask for? ;-) It goes on to say that the u ser interface automatically adjusts to touch displays or desktops/laptops systems, and that on desktops, all map operations have keyboard shortcuts . On mobile devices, toolbars convert to touch menus and buttons become larger. I've had a play around with it and it is easy to use and t...

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