Anything that Google makes needs to be GDPR compliant for the same reason that McDonald’s has to make sure that their food is correctly labelled with calorie contents – they are the leaders in their fields and there are millions of people wanting to bring them down! To put it mildly, if Google’s services are … Read more
The Department of Education decided to release a rather odd circular (38/2018) on the use of smartphones and tablet devices in order for them to update or replace their existing whole school policy on ICT. Schools are being asked to decide on a number of issues: The appropriate use, if any, of tablet devices and … Read more
Lots of teachers have blogs today where they share some of their classroom practice. With the new rules around GDPR coming up shortly, like all websites, they will have to ensure that they are compliant. I am not an expert in this area so this guide is merely a starting point to get you going. … Read more
Under GDPR rules, after May 25th, your school website will have to have a notice to say that it uses cookies. If you don’t know what cookies are, in summary, they are something that keeps a little bit of a user’s data on your website. Because it isn’t your data, under GDPR law, you will … Read more
There was a moratorium on Posts of Responsibility for almost a decade and in 2018, they came back, albeit in a reduced form. If your school was lucky enough to get some extra posts, here are some ideas of the types of questions you might be asked. Before I list them, please be aware that … Read more
Firstly, this question is for principals who want to send messages to parents, not for teachers! Teachers should never ever ever set up a WhatsApp group for their parents and have messages coming from their personal WhatsApp account. That is, of course, unless they wish to be contacted by parents at any time during the … Read more
One of the great things about student management information systems (MIS) is the ability to store any documents or files associated with a child. For example, a child might receive a psychological report, and rather than keep it in a physical file, it might be useful to upload it to Aladdin (or any other MIS.) … Read more
Sadly, the short answer to this question, is “no.” However, the PDSTTiE (formerly NCTE) website has some advice, but even more helpfully, it points to one of its sister websites, WebWise, which gives some comprehensive support on creating an AUP. There are even some samples on the WebWise page here which have been recommended. Finally, my … Read more
Getting a new school building is a lovely experience for everyone. Although a lot of work for the principal who needs to remember the building project management module(!) he/she did in teacher training college, once everyone moves in, it’s worth all the phonecalls and screaming matches. New School Buildings in 2018 don’t come with a … Read more
This article is in two parts. The first part summarises/critiques the Digital Learning Planning Guidelines and the second part offers a different solution. The Department of Education released its latest plan, the Digital Learning Planning Guidelines, a few days ago, and I thought I’d go through it to see what they possibly could have forgotten … Read more