For the best experience we recommend uploading videos to YouTube or Vimeo and then embedding them directly onto your DB Primary community page. This way there is no limit on the size or length of the video you can upload and although they are embedded from YouTube/Vimeo, the children will still be able to view the video directly within the community itself.

When uploading a video to YouTube, you can change the privacy settings for that video to Public, Private, or Unlisted.

Public is the default setting and that means anybody can see your video.

Private means only those you invite to view the video can view it (they must have their own YouTube accounts and the maximum number is 50 usernames). Your video will not come up under any search results or your channel list. If you try to share it with someone who wasn’t invited, they will not be able to connect to it.

Unlisted means your video will not come up in search results or on your channel either.  Only those who know the link can view it, and you can share the link with anyone, even those who do not have a YouTube account/username. This means that this video could still be seen by anyone, but only if they guess the link!

Your community page menu can be customised to show/hide links to the various features on offer through DB Primary. We would always recommend hiding any features from this menu that you are not currently using, so that the page is tidy and as easy as possible for the children to navigate.

You can show/hide links offered in the side menu of your community page by clicking on the cogs icon in the top right corner of your community page.

You can then untick/tick any of the features you wish to hide/show in the menu and then click the ‘Update’ button.

This menu also offers to opportunity to add links of your own to sites you think your pupils would benefit from being able to access quickly and easily.

With so much home learning happening at the moment it is important to keep your community page as organised as possible to help the children to easily navigate to the work you want them to complete each day.

One really great way of doing this is to use the option to hide tabs and pages so that the children can only see what is relevant to them at that specific time, but it allows for the teaching staff to be getting organised for the next few days/weeks.

When you hide pages, they will become greyed out. You and other leaders of the community will be able to see them, but the children will not.

When you set a task for the children you are given the option to choose your own image to use as the task icon (which will display on the pupils’ homepages in their ‘Things to Do’ panel).

One great way to use this feature is to create your own simple images by using the Snipping Tool (or similar).

They don’t need to be anything fancy, but one suggestion is to colour code the text for each subject, add the name of the task and the due date.

The children have their own personal files area called ‘My Work’. This is a place where children can upload files and these can be seen by themselves and their teacher.

Over time, the pupils’ ‘My Work’ area will be filled with files they have uploaded and files they have submitted as part of a task response and it can become tricky to find things.

Once files have been uploaded, they can be clicked on and given a ‘tag’. All files which share this same tag will then be grouped together.

Encourage children to get in the habit of adding tags to their files to help keep them organised.

One way of keeping track of which pupils have logged in to DB Primary each day is to set a task (with task type selected as ‘Other’), which acts as a type of attendance register so you can quickly see which children have logged in that day.

DB primary offers the ability to create your own activity to assign to your class, meaning you can create your own unique resources that fit your lesson plans. You can create your own spelling tests, quizzes, sorting activities, missing word activities and more! Our activity builders are self-marked and results are tracked in your class markbook.

When you write your teacher assessment on a task submission from a child the comment gets displayed on their homepage so they can see how they have done. However, if you would like for them to go back to the piece of work and add something more or have another go then you should use the ‘Comments’ feature.

Schools typically just have community pages set up for their class groups or year groups, but did you know that children can be members of multiple communities?

One really great way schools can support their SEND learners on DB Primary is to set up a separate community page for just those children. They will still be part of their whole class community (which will be their default community), but in addition to this they will be part of a community set up just for them! This could include all the children with additional needs in that class or year group, or it could just include children in a specific intervention group.

This way you can run your class page as you normally would, but you will have additional space in which you can support your SEND learners- meaning you can set up the page however you like in order to better suit their needs.

Setting up a daily forum topic for the children to post questions to about the tasks you have set for them that day will mean you avoid answering the same question 10 times via emails with the children. It also provides a great space for the children to discuss the work and provide help and support for each other- helping to facilitate that classroom community feel.