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The Digital Learning Den

Gareth Morgan Consultancy has now been going for nearly 7 years, providing advice, support and training to primary schools across Wales. Where did that time go? Throughout those years, I've always had an ICT skills ladder that I've offered to schools. It's been updated continually throughout those years with quite a change in focus when the Digital Competence Framework (DCF) was introduced and with the ubiquitous use of Hwb and its related cloud based applications and digital resources. Initially this skills ladder was paper based and at one stage I had four versions of it as the example activities were focused around specific applications e.g., Google for Education / Purple Mash or Microsoft 365 / Just2easy. The problem I found was keeping these documents up to date. Applications would change or I would have new ideas or web-links would die or change. 

So a couple years ago I moved everything online and created The Digital Den. Schools could buy into the platform for a year. I was able to update the site quickly and easily with any changes. I also created over 160 support videos demonstrating how to carry out particular activity using the highlighted application. I had wonderful feedback from the schools who were using it. However, for me, it was quite a difficult website to update, I was having to create the pages in html which was ok if it was just simple text, but anything more and my html skills were clearly lacking. The help videos were also being hosted on Youtube which wasn't a prefect solution for my site.

Therefore, last summer I invested in a new platform created by a company called Thinkific. I moved all my content from the previous site and created The Digital Learning Den. Extremely simple to build pages (no more html!), add my content and videos are now hosted within the platform. It also allows me to create and sell online courses, definitely something that my previous platform couldn't do. 

The Digital Learning Den screen grab

The Digital Competence School Bundle contains all the year group course solutions from nursery through to Year 6. Each of these solution are split up into six sections:

  • Data, Data Everywhere! - (data handling)
  • It's Good to Talk - (digital communication)
  • Let's Create! - (digital creativity)
  • Put On Your Thinking Caps - (computational thinking)
  • Show Me The Code - (coding)
  • Working Together - (online collaboration / word processing / DTP)

Online safety is also reinforced throughout each of the sections and in each year group. The suggested activities are cross referenced to the DCF, and increasingly to the new Science & Technology AoLE, particularly the coding and computational thinking element. These are being regularly reviewed and updated. There are also packages of video support for specific applications, such as Google applications, 2Simple's Purple Mash and Just2easy. 

Cost for a years access to The Digital Learning Den is £250. If you would like temporary access please contact.

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