Setting Up Digital Leaders in Your School

Wanting to set up a group of Digital Leaders in your school, but not sure where to start? The Purple Mash Digital Leaders Scheme helps schools run a Digital Leaders group, with a range of resources, termly challenges, and regular updates.

What are Digital Leaders?

Digital Leaders are children with a passion for technology who want to share their knowledge with others and promote the use of all things digital throughout the school.  Being a Digital Leader is a fantastic opportunity to take on responsibility, learn new skills, develop and demonstrate leadership skills.

Benefits of setting up Digital Leaders in your school

Joining the scheme and becoming a Digital Leader is a fantastic opportunity for children to:

• Take on responsibility
• Meet other children
• Learn new skills
• Develop and demonstrate leadership skills
• Be a real help for busy teachers

Our Digital Leader scheme is completely free for Purple Mash subscribers and all the resources you need are available in the teacher area within Purple Mash.

What's included in the Purple Mash Digital Leaders Scheme?

Inside the Digital Leaders area in the Purple Mash platform, you'll find:

• Digital Leaders Presentation - this can be edited and used in an assembly to recruit new Digital Leaders and explain the work that they can do in school.
• Guide to setting up Digital leaders and how to get started
• Hints and tips
• Application form for pupils
• Posters
• Name cards
• Ideas of what Digital leaders can do
• Termly challenges
• Posters
• Certificates

You can also purchase Digital Leaders merchandise in the shop, including badges, stickers, lanyards and code bugs!

What can Digital Leaders do?

As part of the resources in Purple Mash, there's a list of example jobs and responsibilities for Digital Leaders. Here are just a few:

• Fetch and set up laptops and tablets, ensuring they are kept charged
• Review apps and software and make recommendations
• Write instructions for different pieces of software or apps
• Represent the school at events
• Run or help at a lunch club or after-school club

Termly Digital Leader Challenges

When you get started, you'll also get access to two new challenges each half-term for Digital Leaders to try. These challenges focus on specific tools and applications within Purple Mash.

They are brilliant for Digital Leaders to have a go at and then share their understanding and knowledge with others within your school.

These challenges are uploaded to Purple Mash, but you can also get them sent straight to your inbox - along with other relevant updates - when you sign up to the Digital Leader Scheme.

Castleview Primary School has blogged about the Digital Leader scheme and is a great read for schools considering setting up a similar scheme in their school.
We would also love to see what your Digital Leaders get up to: simply share your work using #PMDLChallenge on our Facebook or Instagram page, or email them to us at community@2Simple.com for a chance to win a goody bag for your Digital Leaders.

We look forward to seeing the completed challenges and the creativity within the Digital Leader community. As well as sharing on the blog, you can also share your work and what you get up to on our Twitter or Facebook pages.