Digital Learning Clusters
School Excellence Fund - Digital: (Digital Learning Clusters) - Overview
“The Minister for Education Norma Foley TD today invites primary and post-primary schools across Ireland to apply for Creative Clusters, an initiative taking place as part of Creative Ireland and under the Schools Excellence Fund. The Department of Education’s bget for Creative Clusters in 2022 is €595,000
Under this scheme to support schools to build capacity in creativity, schools in each cluster will enjoy access to a specialist facilitator, artist or creative expertise in whatever their chosen area of interest or theme might be. These resources will help the schools to build a project of learning and activities tailor-made for their students. As part of this funding allocation, a cluster may receive up to €15,000 funding to help bring their plans and ideas to fruition in 2022-2024.
Minister Foley said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for schools to work together on a project of their choice. Schools are given complete freedom to design and develop their own project, with support from a local facilitator and their local education centre.
“I hope that this exciting initiative will help schools to further enhance creativity in their classrooms. It is important that our children are enabled to express themselves and learn to adapt and collaborate. ‘Creative Clusters’ gives students of all ages the opportunity to develop these essential skills, enjoy and explore artistic and creative expression.”
To date, the Creative Clusters initiative has seen schools around the country work together to develop creative projects and collaborate on new ideas based on their local experience and unique perspective.
To date, the Creative Clusters initiative has seen schools around the country work together to develop creative projects and collaborate on new ideas based on their local experience and unique perspective.
The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the innovative use of digital technologies in teaching, learning and assessment, through clusters of schools collaborating on specific projects.
Digital Learning Clusters 2021-2022
Embed Digital Technologies in Teaching, Learning and Assessment for the Community of Practice of Music teachers “Pobal Ceoil” of Waterford and Wexford ETB.
Lead School
Bunclody Vocational College (71620H)
Participating Schools
Bridgetown College (71610E), Creagh College 76127D, Colaiste Abbain 71600B, Colaiste an Atha 71650Q, Selskar College 71680C, St Paul's Community College
72241E, Enniscorthy Vocational College 71630K, Meanscoil San Nioclas 76066J, St. Declan's Community College 72230W.
Project Title
Embed Digital Technologies in Teaching, Learning and Assessment for the Community of Practice of Music teachers “Pobal Ceoil” of Waterford and Wexford ETB.
Brief Summary of Project
This project aims to o provide infrastructure and a targeted training program for teachers who are members of “Pobal Ceoil”. This will include training in the use of additional music software, video conferencing for student and teacher collaboration and creation of Class Notebooks as Digital Portfolios as part of assessment. Project participants will also identify further potential areas for integration and collaboration in both teaching, learning and performance.
Demonstrating Excellence in the use of digital technologies in the creation, presentation, assessment and storage of CBAs across different curricular areas within the new Junior Cycle.
Lead school
Ardscoil Na Mara Secondary School, Tramore, Co Waterford, Sancta Maria College, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, St. Mary’s Secondary School, Glasnevin Dublin 11,
Presentation College, Carlow, Loreto Secondary School, Bray,Co Wicklow.
Project title
Demonstrating Excellence in the use of digital technologies in the creation, presentation, assessment and storage of CBAs across different curricular areas within the new Junior Cycle.
Brief outline of the project
The use of digital technologies, including ePortfolios, for recording, storing, presenting and assessing the new Junior Cycle specifications is an evolving area of enormous potential benefit to learners and educators.
This project aims to demonstrate excellence in the use of these technologies across different curricular areas using a variety of platforms.
Digital technology can greatly enhance both formative and summative Assessment within the Classroom Based Assessments in the New Junior Cycle. We aim to use digital technology to Record, Store, Present and Assess our students. Our proposed approach will include the following benefits:
Our cluster schools aim to use different platforms across different subject areas to meet the assessment specifications, in particular, the CBAs, for the new Junior Cycle.
The strength in this project is the diversity of technologies used to solve common goals; information and expertise arising from the use of these technologies will then inform other schools in their application of technology.
