The PGS Digital Council

by Hywel Stayte

The Portsmouth Grammar School Digital Council is made up from pupils from all year groups in the Senior School. The meetings are held once every half term where matters relating to everything digital can be discussed. 

The Digital Council is a great way for pupils to feed back their opinions to staff to influence the decisions that are yet to be made and to make their own suggestions for how they would like to see the use of technology develop within their school. The group provides a good link between staff and the pupil about changes in technology that are taking place and it also allows pupils to present research that they have carried out into different areas of technology. 

During last year's six meetings, the topics discussed varied considerably with the focus at the beginning of the year being very much to do with the introduction of mobile devices for pupils in Years 9 and 12. The Digital Council were able to feed back their positive experiences of the devices as well as raising some possibilities for improvement.

The Digital Council members have conducted a review of our existing VLE and discussed ideas for how we can get more out of the tools available to us. Gemma Webb also conducted a research investigation into the possibility of using Digital Planners to manage workload and it was concluded that the most suitable piece of software available to us would be the use of Google Calendar as this is automatically populated via Google Classroom. This research has influenced the decision to make Google Calendar part of the nucleus of apps all with mobile devices will be using. 


The Digital Council has also produced help sheets for Google Classroom, reviewed existing revisions apps, reviewed and approved the Pupil Charter: Using Social Media and Digital Devices and began to look into what it means to be digitally literate at PGS.

With all of the changes in technology and the introduction of mobile devices to Years 9 and 12, this year the need for the Digital Council has grown and will continue to support the school. 

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