Become a Digital School

Register

Primary and Secondary schools across Europe are invited to register for the Digital Schools Awards programme.

Introduction to Digital Schools Awards Europe ppt.

SELFIE (Self-reflection on Effective Learning by Fostering the use of Innovative Educational Technologies)

Schools are invited to assess their developments in digital technology under the SELFIE tool: Registration procedure | European Education Area (europa.eu)

The tool is designed to help schools embed digital technologies into teaching, learning and student assessment. It can highlight what’s working well, where improvement is needed and what the priorities should be.

Each school will evaluate and reflect on their performance against common practice areas of Leadership and Vision, Digital Technology for Learning and Teaching, School Culture, Professional Development, Resources and Infrastructure and Additional Digital Technology Uses.                                                                                                                                                              ‘How to’ guide to creating your school SELFIE survey

Action Plan

Where SELFIE has been used by schools to identify what’s working well and where improvement is needed, this programme provides dedicated supports and resources to help schools plan and action their developments and reward their positive and ongoing digital journey.

Throughout the programme, schools will be offered the unique opportunity to link with others in the schools community for learning and shared experiences.

Supporting references to relevant national and local policy initiatives are provided as a useful guide to support development and planning.

Some schools will find it beneficial to speak to our dedicated digital education experts who are appointed to help schools on their development journey. Our team can help schools interpret their SELFIE results and support materials and may broker links with other schools.

Share Evidence

The school is ready to apply for the Digital Schools Award when it has undergone a SELFIE review and submitted supporting documentation and evidence of practice.

When selecting evidence, schools should seek examples from several contexts. For example, when proving evidence of Leadership in relation to consulting teachers, evidence might include an extract from the policy, an extract from the consultation and examples of actions resulting from that consultation.

Evidence selected should represent a broad spectrum of practice as much as possible. For example, schools may submit examples of digital teaching and learning from one class but demonstrate that the example provided is common across.

Evidence should provide a rounded view of the school’s provision. Typically, schools are encouraged to provide evidence that includes:

• Policy statements;
• Lesson or other teaching plans;
• Logs, minute or records showing how they have or are implementing strategies;
• Pupil work or other evidence of classroom practice.

Schools can use a range of media in their submissions including documents, moving images, screenshots, hyperlinks, etc.

This stage can be completed over time.

Apply

The school is ready to apply for the Digital Schools Award when;

• The school has undergone a self-review of common practice areas using SELFIE.
• Copy of school’s SELFIE report is added to the school profile
• All required indicators on programme framework are addressed
• Any optional indicators on programme framework are addressed
• The school has submitted supporting documentation and evidence against each of the required and any optional indicators.
• The school has submitted their application for review.

Achieve Award

An independent expert or ‘validator’ is assigned to review the school’s submission and supporting evidence online. If everything is in order, a validation visit will be scheduled. The validator will give the school guidance in preparation for the visit.

A validation can be online or face-to-face and will typically include;

• Initial discussion with the school leader, digital technology coordinator (if present) or other designated staff to review online evidence;
• Examples of digital learning and teaching in action, normally through discussions with staff and/or pupil representatives;
• Plenary discussion around initial findings and any issues raised from the validation.

Where there is a clear case for an award, the recommendation for award will be made to the school.

Where the school is clearly on a positive journey towards meeting a criteria, a recommendation of award with targets may be made. Where this is the case, the report recommendation will outline agreed achievable and defined targets and a timeframe for submission of further evidence.

If there is a clear case for not recommending the award, the validator may wish to recommend further review. In such cases, the validator should explain where the significant gaps are or where the school needs to develop digital learning and teaching strategy and/or practice.

A key objective of the Digital Schools Awards is to help best-practice sharing across schools and to grow the community of innovative teachers. To facilitate this aim, schools that successfully achieve an award are invited to become a Mentor Digital School.