The Department of Education and Skills (DES) published their new Digital Learning Frameworks on 14 September last. Invitations from schools to express their interest in trialling these new frameworks, 30 primary and 20 post-primary closed last Monday 2 October 2017. 
These new frameworks are one of the departments key supports for schools in implementing The Digital Strategy for Schools 2015 – 2020 which was first announced nearly two years ago. The Digital Learning Frameworks are also aligned to the domains and standards of Looking at our School 2016 – A Quality Framework for Primary/Post Primary Schools. When designing the Digital Learning Frameworks, the DES and their partners used the UNESCO ICT Competency Frameworks for Teachers and the EU Joint Research Centre’s DigComEdu and DigComOrg Frameworks to guide the development of these frameworks for Primary and Post Primary.
The Digital Learning Framework provides teachers, school leaders and management with statements of effective practise and highly effective practice across the four domains of Teaching and Learning and Leadership and Learning, 32 statements of practice in all.
The four domains of Teaching and Learning include – Learner Outcomes, Learner Experiences, Teachers’ Individual Practice and Teachers’ Collective/Collaborative Practice.
The four domains of Leadership and Learning include – Leading Learning and Teaching, Managing the Organisation, Leading School Development and Developing Leadership Capacity.
The Department of Education and Skills believe that some of the benefits of using the Digital Learning Framework for schools include:
- Getting both primary and post-primary schools prepared and ready for new curricula roll out, increasing pupil engagement and delivering better teaching
- Assist schools in developing a clearer rational for embedding digital technologies in teaching and learning and aiding schools to identify the types of infrastructure required
- facilitate whole school approaches to using constructivist principles for teaching and learning by generating internal discussions on how embedding digital technologies can lead to improvements in teaching and learning
The Department of Education and Skills also belief that using the Digital Learning Framework offers benefits to individual teachers also:
- It can be used as a planning tool to plan and reflect on a teacher’s daily teaching and learning practices at all levels and in all curriculum areas.
- The Framework can be used to identify and plan for an individual teacher’s continuing professional development (CPD) needs and to take ownership of their own development and improvements in the area of the use of digital tools and technologies.
PDST Technology in Education has published a short (7 minutes) video that gives a quick overview of the Digital Learning Framework which readers can access by following on this link. Click Here