Head in the Cloud

Once or twice during my recent visits to schools, confusion has arisen over whether the Digital Competence Framework is a statutory document or not. I've always explained that unlike the literacy and numeracy frameworks, it is not. I've posted below something on this from the National Digital Learning Council minutes from June 22nd 2017. Jane Peffers - Welsh Government lead for the DCF was presenting to the NDLC on the Digital Competence Framework: 4.5 The potential for the DCF to be made statutory was raised. At this time, this is considered unlikely and it is hoped that encouraging its use, rather than prescribing it, will support and encourage a more significant change in culture, for teachers to adapt to the new ways of working.

Last Monday, Chris Owen (head of digital learning unit, Welsh Government) announced at a Google Leadership Symposium in Cardiff, that G Suite for Education will be included in the Hwb platform possibly from April 2018. For those schools in the room this was great news, many feeling finally vindicated that their Google approach to developing cloud student learning was finally being recognised by the Welsh Government. Up until this announcement, several local authorities and regional consortia had made it quite clear to schools in their areas that they didn't want them using G Suite for Education, that basically Hwb was the only show in town and Google "wasn't safe". Chris Owen - Google Leadership Symposium, Cardiff As you might have picked up from my previous posts, that's fine as long as what is being provided through Hwb are the best set of digital tools and resources that are available. In some instances this has arguably not been the case. Hwb+ being th...