Good Practice Guide: Hwb+ Centre of Excellence – Sharing Good Practice Matthew Vickery, Acting Headteacher Andrew Saunders, Digital Champion Ben Williams, Digital Champion Ysgol John Bright, Conwy

Aims

 To develop a Hwb+ consortium Network to include all consortium schools, partners and local authorities  To develop and share best practice with a mentoring programme to assist and promote excellence in the use of Hwb+  To appoint a Digital Champion who will oversee the network and facilitate school engagement with Hwb+  To hold Hwb events to meet with and share best practice from a wider range of teaching staff across the consortium  To develop a YouTube channel to include shorter videos of developments and support to provide assistance to students, staff and parents  To create a Twitter feed to promote the use of Hwb+ and share best practice across .

What was done? In addition to the stated aims and successes of the project, two main highlights of the project were:

o the focus on transition with feeder schools o a Hwb celebration event that spanned all of the north Wales local authorities.

Transition Days  The Digital Champion invited the feeder schools to be involved in a transition project involving Hwb+. A one day course was run for teachers from feeder schools and they were enthused by the additional toolset available in Hwb. The delegates, Digital Champion and Digital Leader agreed that the way forward was to establish a transition site and invite all feeder schools to participate in a digital event using Hwb+  A transition day involving the future Year 7 pupils was set up by the Digital Champions. A Welsh Government Digital Leader attended the event and ran a discussion workshop throughout the day with all future Year 7 form groups, using Hwb+. All pupils were able to access the Ysgol John Bright transition site and could respond to each other about the hopes, aspirations and concerns they had on moving to secondary education at Ysgol John Bright  Pupils quickly engaged with the tools and it gave them opportunities for discussion with new classmates. The Digital Leader focused on the literacy aspects, ensuring that the pupils used punctuation and constructed sentences properly to complete the task  A transition wiki was also set up with information for the pupils to access as they enter Year 7. This will be developed over the next academic year and provide students with essential information for their studies and pastoral activities that they can accessed anywhere. Hwb Celebration Day

 In addition, a Hwb Celebration event was held at Ysgol John Bright involving all north Wales Centres of Excellence and invited schools from across the region. The event was a tremendous success in terms of pupil and staff involvement. Staff from other schools went away with a renewed enthusiasm for Hwb+ and the associated tools available through the Hwb log in  The Hwb+ Centres of Excellence presented their approach to Hwb+ and how they have embedded the platform in their schools. The presentations, which spanned primary to secondary, showed many different and exciting uses of the platform. The Welsh Government e-Safety adviser presented to the delegates and pupils and staff went away with key messages about how to stay safe on the internet  Blogging and wiki activities were available for the pupils who attended and this provided engagement opportunities for teachers and pupils. Feedback was excellent and schools are keen to repeat this model in the future  In addition, Ysgol John Bright has trained ten of their staff members to become Hwb+ accredited trainers in courses led by a Welsh Government Digital Leader. As part of the course, the delegates had the opportunity to discuss Hwb+ usage and activities with staff from Ysgol Syr , , to see the activities they had undertaken in supporting the within their school. Delegates found this beneficial in planning an approach to supporting others beyond the training course

What were the outcomes?

 The impact on feeder schools was very positive and this was reflected in the transition day involving pupils and staff  As a Hwb+ Centre of Excellence, Ysgol John Bright has raised awareness of Hwb+ across the region and has promoted Hwb and Hwb+ in various ways, including Twitter to share good practice  Ysgol John Bright has established a popular Hwb Network to share good practice with other educators across Wales. By using this and their dedicated YouTube channel, they are aiming to continue to develop the ethos of becoming a Hwb+ Centre of Excellence.