Digital Strategy for Schools

DIGITAL STRATEGY FOR SCHOOLS – ENHANCING TEACHING, LEARNING & ASSESSMENT
The 75 participants demonstrated enormous clarity and insightfulness on the use of information
and communication technology both in schools and in their daily lives. Young people have a mature
perspective on how technology can be of benefit for living, learning and working in the future. Their
perception is that currently, technology is something that is more relevant to their social lives and
is of limited relevance in school. However, they have some clear ideas as to how ICT can benefit
their education. Their main recommendations of relevance to the Digital Strategy for Schools can
be summarised as follows:
1. Technology needs to become more relevant to learning in school. Currently, technology is
something that is more relevant to their social lives and is of limited relevance in school.
2. Provide access to learning resources on the internet as these are often more up to date than
those provided in textbooks or easier to understand than what has been presented by the
teacher.
3. Use ICT to open up new forms of learning and collaboration and provide greater flexibility for
students with different styles of learning.
4. Provide cloud based services such as email, online resource banks, organisation of teaching
and learning resources, and the administration of homework.
5. Use ICT to record their work on an ongoing basis, accessing it at any time, and using ICT as their
student journal.
6. Use ICT for administration including roll call in each class and the assignment of homework and
homework feedback.
7. Teachers should have access to CPD on how to integrate ICT in the classroom.
8. All teachers in a school should use ICT in their teaching.
9. Use ICT to help students with specific learning needs such as dyslexia or dyspraxia.
10. Raise awareness of technology downsides such as plagiarism, distraction, over reliance on
functions such as spell and grammar check, cyber bullying and access to inappropriate material
and enable students to deal with these.
11. Help filter out unreliable or inappropriate sources and content.
EXCITED Conference
A series of 10 focus group workshops with young people took place on 29th May, 2014 to coincide
with the EXCITED – The Digital Learning Festival held in Dublin Castle. The workshops examined
the following key questions:
1. Why should we use technology in our classrooms?
2. What do you think is the most useful piece of technology to assist you in your learning at school
and at home?
3. If you bring this technology to school, how would you use it to its full potential to learn?
4. How do you think schools/teachers should assist you in finding all the information you need?
5. How would you like to present your work to demonstrate your learning?
6. How do you think teachers should use technology in their teaching?
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