The LGfL Digital Excellence Awards 2020 announcements have been made via Twitter this year, due to Lockdown. Each category was announced on a separate day this week and included a video from the winning schools (and in some cases a highly commended school's video too). The Awards celebrate the best practice and innovative approaches in using the wide range of learning resources and services provided by LGfL. This year a cash prize of £1000 was included, as well as the schools receiving a trophy and an image to display on their school’s website.
The Categories and Winners
Category 1 - Innovative Use of LGfL Content
The winners were Colville Primary; they showed evidence of broad use of LGfL resources across the school with some interesting projects cited; this included creative and innovative use of Minecraft across KS2. Staff members had also been part of an LGfL Pilot Project and the entry demonstrated how LGfL training had been used in the school to develop the use of resources including across the humanities subjects.
*Highly Commended were Trafalagar Infants and Exning Primary.
Category 2 - Inclusive Practice Using LGfL Resources
Lessness Heath’s entry showed good practice for ensuring the pupils’ mental health and wellbeing. They have a Designated Mental Health Lead in post, who has provided staff training on using LGfL resources for promoting personal development.
Category 3 - Keeping Children Safe Online - A Joined-up Safeguarding and Curriculum Approach
Manor Park Academy demonstrated that the whole school makes great use of the LGfL Safeguarding materials. These are owned by the teachers since they adapt to suit their cohort and use within PSHE lessons and others.
Category 4- Whole School Cloud Transformation
Cheam Common Junior Academy provided strong evidence and a detailed implementation plan of how cloud transformation has been utilised with pupils and staff to make their work more efficient, make cost savings and for safeguarding (through a cloud-based safeguarding system). Their 1:1 Chromebook deployment in Year 4 and 5 has allowed great innovation in terms of pupils' learning experiences; Slides and Classroom are used consistently as the main teaching platform, being supported by LGfL and other third party applications.
*Highly Commended were St Fidelis. Their entry provided strong evidence of using cloud with ALL stakeholders (including Governors). They demonstrated innovation in the classroom including the use of Adobe, aiding classflow and a 1:2 deployment of devices in KS2 - having made use of LGfL’s Neverware licenses. (St Fidelis were also Highly Commended in this category in 2019).
Category 5 - Innovative Use of Adobe Creative Cloud
Burnt Oak Junior provided extensive and outstanding evidence of their use of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Pupils across the school use the Adobe tools in various subject areas and on any topic; the school newspaper (produced by Journalism Club) is a further example where they fully utilise the tools offered by Adobe Creative Cloud.
Winners In Receipt of Their Trophy
(Left to right: Colville Primary, Lessness Heath, Manor Park Academy, Cheam Common Junior Academy and Burnt Oak Junior)
We hope to collate some case studies from the winning and highly commended schools after Lockdown has ended, to enable all LGfL schools to learn from and adapt to your own context. Watch this space! In the meantime you can visit the awards page.
The LGfL Digital Excellence Awards for 2021 will be open early next year, providing more opportunities for LGfL schools (in London and elsewhere) to get involved. We look forward to you sharing your successes and having the opportunity to gain recognition for the great work that goes on in every school, every day.
Ed Tech Demonstrator Programme
If you would like support with developing Ed Tech Use in your school, have you considered registering your interest with the Ed Tech Demonstrator Programme?
This programme is fully funded by the DfE and the aim is to help schools and colleges with support for remote learning/belnded learning, powered by a national newtrok of Deomonstrator Schools and Colleges and supported by a consortium of Delivery Partners (of which LGfL is one). We recently published a blog about it. Read it here.
Even if you feel your school is not currently in the position to get fully involved with being paired with a Demonstrator school, you can still register to attend the scheduled webinars/Think Tank events and watch previous recordings of events.
Remember, if you need any support with our learning content you can contact the Inspire Team by emailing us on contentsupport@lgfl.net or contacting the LGfL Switchboard: 020 82 555 555.
If you do use any LGfL content in your school to inspire your students do let us know by posting them on LGfL’s Twitter or Facebook.