This Months Newsletter

Newsletter September 2024

Digital Lead for 2024/2025

Digital Lead 2024/2025

So that I can keep my contact details up to date. If you are continuing as your school's Digital Lead for this academic year, please complete this form.

I am also looking to create a working group to look at developing a 'digital skills' map for us as a county. This is because often primary schools feed into several secondary schools.

The need for parity of digital competence is paramount for digital skills to progress once learners enter the secondary setting. If you are interested in helping with this please note on the relevant question.

As always if you feel you would benefit from me visiting your school please get in touch.

New support on this Website

Cynefin Flintshire

'The place where we feel we belong, where the people and landscape around us are familiar, and the sights and sounds are reassuringly recognisable. Though often translated as 'habitat', cynefin is not just a place in a physical or geographical sense: it is the historic, cultural and social place which has shaped and continues to shape the community which inhabits it.'

This page has links to several websites which may be useful to teachers and their learners.

How a project could look- Ewloe Castle

This page goes through how a project to research a local Point-of-interest could look.

Research practices, apps that may be useful

Links to AOLEs

How assessment could look

ALN Support

Make the most of the devices your school has, links to the accessibility features for your most common devices can be found here.

Windows11 Operating System

ChromeOS on Chromebooks, and

iOS for your iPads

iPad Support

Schools often have iPads in them, there are several features which can support and enhance their use in the classroom.

Here is some support for those features, along with some tutorials on Apple's own applications.

Training for Office365 Apps

For schools that use Office 365, training is now available to introduce them to the app suite.

Office365 also has a replacement for 'Flip' and has reading assessment and well-being assessment as part of the options within Microsoft Teams.

What is being used in other schools??

Primary schools- 58 of our 64 Primary schools responded to a survey of the use of the apps they use through Hwb.

It would be hoped that schools make full use of the applications available to them. The results of this survey show that there is these apps can be used across the progression steps.

It is pleasing to see that there is an increase in the use of applications as learners progress through year groups.

If schools who are not making use of these applications need support in how they can be used by year groups to support their topics, please get in touch with me at gavin.oloughlin@flintshire.gov.uk

Secondary schools- 9 of our 11 Secondary schools responded to a survey of the use of the apps they use through Hwb

There is a significant drop in the range of digital apps used in our secondary schools in comparison to the primary sector.

If Schools/Subjects/AOLEs wish to make more use of the apps available to them and would like more support in how they could be implemented, please get in touch at gavin.oloughlin@flinthsire.gov.uk