Mr. Tony Weir:

I thank the Deputy. My colleague, Mr. Grehan, will deal with the future work of the Webwise project. On the guidance for schools around what platform and software to use, etc., the Department of Education and Skills does not get into the space of telling schools to use a particular piece of software or architecture. There would be procurement and competition issues arising were we to advocate an Apple product over a Microsoft product, for example, or a Microsoft product over a Google one. Those decisions are devolved to school authorities.

The Deputy raised an interesting point about schools deciding what technology to buy and use in terms of how they can then integrate it into their teaching. We would view that as putting the cart before the horse slightly at the moment. As part of the digital strategy for schools, which is in place at the moment, funding of €210 million has been allocated to schools by the Department of Education and Skills over the five-year period. Crucially, schools are encouraged to think about their aims in respect of teaching and learning and then to decide what particular piece of ICT architecture, equipment, software, etc., will help them to meet those aims. The other approach is to buy the piece of equipment and then ask what use we can make out of it. That is not what we are doing. We encourage schools to think about what their priorities are with regard to teaching and learning, in line with our school self-evaluation work, and then to decide what particular technology can be used to enable them.

With this in mind, we recently produced the digital learning framework for schools, which features both a primary and post-primary version. This points to the question the Deputy asked about some schools being unsure whether what they are doing is correct or appropriate. The framework has two dimensions, leadership and management and teaching and learning, both of which have subdivisions around particular domains. They also provide standards and feature 64 statements of effective and highly effective practice. Schools can consider how they can aim to reach these standards. If a school decided it needed to do significant work on teachers' collaborative practice, the digital learning framework features statements outlining how it can use technology to achieve greater collaboration among its teachers. There is a statement for effective practice and another for highly effective practice and these serve as a roadmap for schools in aiming towards these standards. The digital learning framework also has significant input on online safety for students and educating them about how to use the Internet wisely.