Glow Scotland

18th March, 1.30pm – 2.15pm

How is your memory? Could it be improved?

Join Drew McAdam, Scotland’s foremost mindreader to find out how to improve your memory and learning techniques.

Join this Glow Meet in collaboration with the BBC and find out how to use systems to make the most of your memory. You can put these to good use for revision or in fact anything else!

Drew will be working with an S4 class at Kirkintilloch High School and allowing everyone else to join using Glow Meet. These techniques can be applied across the curriculum and used by pupils at a range of stages.

Ever wished you could get your brain to work better? Brainsmart can help you discover how to:

* maximise your memory
* get motivated
* achieve your goals

Find out more about the BBC Brainsmart website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/brainsmart/

Sign up and take part in the Brainsmart Glow group:

https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/MINDPLAY%20with%20Drew%20McAdam/default.aspx

11th March, 1.45pm – 2.45pm

Join author Annemarie Allan in Glow Meet to find out more about Breaker, an undersea adventure.

‘Tom and Beth are not happy when they move to North Berwick and find themselves facing a rainy, windswept beach, a house that’s falling apart and a school full or strangers. When they meet Professor Macblain, with his weird and wonderful inventions, little do they know that he has a secret: not only is he a thief, but he has stolen the one thing that can save the Firth of Forth from environmental catastrophe.’

Find out what inspires Annemarie to write, delve in to the wonderful world of sealife in North Berwick and ask her questions. Explore a range of themes such as family, making friends and moving to a new place. Find out more about living by the sea, green energy, science and the environment.

Law Primary will be joining Annemarie at the Scottish Seabird Centre to get some insight into being an author, writing skills and the wonderful book Breaker which is set in North Berwick where they go to school.

This Glow Meet is aimed at pupils from P4 – P7 and is being run in partnership with the Scottish Seabird Centre and Floris Books.

Find out more
To sign up for this Glow Meet click here to visit the Glow group.

Marie-Louise Brogan is Depute Head Teacher at Holy Family Primary school in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire. As part of her remit she is responsible monitoring and supporting learning and teaching within the middle and upper stages. Last year she also shared a class with a Probationer and was responsible for Social Studies and ICT in the P.4 class.

In this cookbook we will look at how Marie-Louise used Glow Learn to develop a short course for the learners in their topic, The Vikings. Marie-Louise found that through using the Glow Learn platform the learners were able to make full use of their allocated ICT time and the learning in this time was purposeful and ensured that ICT was supporting learning.

Various video clips will talk you through the project including how to create learning objectives in Glow Learn, how to add pupils to the course and how to track pupils’ work using monitor and Track.

Visit this Glowing Cookbook to get started.

In this cookbook, find out how Margo Kerr,  seconded from her nursery post at Kirknewton Primary School, is working as the Early Years ICT Development Officer within the West Lothian Council Early Years Team. Margo’s remit is to provide curricular ICT support to all Early Years practitioners (nursery – P3) within the Local Authority and to drive forward and support the implementation of Glow within the Nurseries.

There are five standalone Early Years Centres and eight Nursery Schools in West Lothian. Since these Early Years establishments are not attached to a school, they do not have access to a school Glow establishment site. West Lothian therefore asked to have a separate, single Glow establishment created for the standalone Early Years establishments. The staff in all of these nurseries had their Glow accounts provisioned within this establishment, which is called ‘West Lothian Early Years’ to enable them to all work together.

Visit this Glowing Cookbook and follow Margo’s story including video footage of how to set up a Glow Meet.

All children can do with extra support at some point in their school journey. Whether they’re finding the transition from primary to secondary school hard, they’ve had a big change in the family such as bereavement or a divorce or maybe just need to be challenged more, sometimes extra support is all that is needed to help.

Parents have the right to ‘Just Ask’ for help for their child, either from school or the local authority, to help them navigate their way through whatever issue is affecting them. There are a wide range of reasons why children may need additional support for the learning at school, and these can be temporary as well as long-term. Help is entirely individualised to the child’s needs and parents are fully involved along the way.

Find out more about how you can access additional support for your child in a special Glow Meet to be held on Wednesday 24th March. The event takes place in the Parents Glow Group 11-12pm and again from 7-8pm.

A representative from Enquire, the independent advisory service, will be available to answer your questions and there will also be case studies of young people who have been helped and more information on the range of issues and help that can be provided.

If you think your child may benefit from extra help it is your right to request it. Whatever you think might be affecting them at school; all you have to do is ask. For information on how to make sure your child gets everything they need from their education call the Enquire helpline on 0845 123 2303 or visit infoscotland.com/justask.

If you require further information about this special Glow Meet or you just want some help to access it please contact Jennifer McDougall, Glow Development Officer – j.mcdougall@ltscotland.org.uk

We love Glow because it’s a fantastic educational tool, breaking down geographical barriers and driving forward Curriculum for Excellence. We would like you and your pupils to tell us why you love Glow; do you use it in the classroom as part of a project, at home to help with homework? Perhaps you have a favourite feature? We’d love to hear all about it.

For the chance to win an exclusive bendy Glowing keyboard, simply send a short video clip to the Glow team at: Glowadmin@ltscotland.org.uk starting the video with ‘I love Glow because…’. Every month a new winner will be announced and their video will be uploaded to the GlowScotland website.

We’ve already uploaded some clips of primary and secondary pupils from across Scotland telling us why they love Glow. Visit the GlowScotland website to find out more.

We’d like to announce the launch of our new Glow Cookbooks.

What exactly is a Glow Cookbook I hear you ask? Put simply it is description of how Glow is being used by classroom practitioners and how it has enhanced learning and teaching with their pupils.

Like a traditional cookbook it contains the ingredients, which Glow components have been used, some advice on method, a quick ‘how to’ video, and the end product, a description of the impact from the teacher or pupils.

So if you’d like to know how to use Glow for innovative and successful transitions or use Glow Meet to support conversational French or how to create a Worry Forum or how to embed video as a stimulus for writing or how to use  Glow for Personal Learning Planning or enhancing staff communication or…OK  so you get the point. Go on take a peek and leave us some feedback.

We hope to add many more of these short cookbooks to help generate useful ideas and showcase how Glow is being used around the country.

Glow Cookbooks can be accessed via the Glow national site Help link or linking directly to http://cookbooks.glowscotland.org.uk/ or using a Google search for Glow Cookbooks.

Tell your story and win a Flip video camera

We’d love to hear and share your story. How are you using Glow and what has been the impact on you or your pupils? Please send us your Glow Cookbook for sharing on our cookbook site. From the first fifty we will select three winners to receive a natty Flip video camera. All content should be emailed to glowadmin@ltscotland.org.uk and titled Cookbook competition.

What are we looking for?

Take a look at some of the current cookbooks they follow a similar format. This is a useful template for creating your cookbook. There are some points that you need to bear in mind:

• Your cookbook should include a brief context
• It should include pictures and screen shots – but we don’t expect you to submit any video
• Any graphics etc should be copyright friendly and all photos must have the appropriate permissions granted for sharing over the internet
• The main element of the cookbook will be a description of the impact using Glow has had on facilitating learning
• You do not need to include any instructions on how to add, amend or use specific web parts
• An email address would be most useful to encourage further collaboration
• All submitted cookbooks (subject to a QA process) will be shared on the Glow Cookbook siteSo get writing! We know that there are lots of you using Glow for a whole variety of contexts and curricular areas and we’d love to share these stories!

Not only does South Ayrshire do really well in terms of using Glow to enhance Learning and Teaching but there appear to be advantageous romantic by-products of this great work! In January 2009 2 of the new South Ayrshire mentors met for the first time at their 2 day training for glow mentors.

As part of being mentors they began to test out some of the tools within Glow, Glow Messenger and Glow Meet from home. This extended into working collaboratively on a number of innovative projects using Glow with their respective classes when they were at Pinwherry and Dundonald primary schools: Homecoming presentations, writing lessons, reading groups, open classroom to name but a few!!

It is testament to the innovation that Avril and Richard practiced that they were asked to present at the Curriculum for Excellence festival in South Ayrshire and at the Scottish Learning Festival in September of last year. Avril and Richard moved in together during the summer holidays last year and both took up new teaching posts in Girvan Primary and Forehill respectively.

They continued to use Glow for work with and between their classes. They got engaged this month and their wedding is planned for July.

We wish them all the best but want to know, will Glow be involved on the day?

Higher Chemistry pupils need to know about the Chemical Industry.
Unit 3, part a, is all about the Chemical Industry.
Other chemistry classes will want to hear about career prospects.

Chemical Engineers, Gavin Smith and Gordon Hardie, will be covering this Higher Chemistry topic, and giving a flavour of the life and rewards of a chemical engineer on Thursday, 18th March at 13.45 in a Glow Meet in the National Sciences Glow Group.  Last year, 8 schools took part in the live Glow Meet. Many more are able to take advantage of this Glow Meet opportunity this year. Make sure your pupils can benefit!  If you are not familiar with using Glow Meet, click here.

A career in the chemical industry is exciting and well-rewarded, but both the study required, and the job itself, can be hard work and dangerous. Listen to Gavin, who has decades of experience, and Gordon, a recent graduate recruit, retell their experiences. Kincorth Academy, Aberdeen, is hosting the event, so pupils there will be able to ask Gavin and Gordon questions directly, but classes from around the country will also be able to see and hear the engineers, and ask questions of them via Glow Meet’s tools. Ask them questions about the chemistry, and their jobs.

If you think you will be able to bring your pupils into the Glow Meet, leave a note in the National Sciences Glow Group.

  What pupils need to know:

• The UK chemical industry is a major contributor to both the quality of our life and our national economy.
• Stages in the manufacture of a new product can include research, pilot study, scaling-up, production and review.
• A chemical manufacturing process usually involves a sequence of steps.
• A feedstock is a reactant from which other chemicals can be extracted or synthesised.
• The major raw materials in the chemical industry are fossil fuels, metallic ores and minerals, air and water.
• Chemical manufacturing may be organised as a batch or as a continuous process.
• Process conditions are chosen to maximise economic efficiency.
• Manufacturing costs include capital costs, fixed costs and variable costs.
• The UK chemical industry is, by and large, capital rather than labour intensive.
• Safety and environmental issues are of major importance to the chemical industry.
• Both historical and practical factors affect the location of chemical industries.
• The efficient use of energy is significant in most chemical processes.
• Factors influencing the choice of a particular route include cost, availability and suitability of feedstock(s), yield of product(s), opportunities for the recycling of reactants and marketability of by-products.

This Month’s Puzzle has now been added to the Glow Group, just in the nick of time!

You can access the Group with your username and password by using the link http://tinyurl.com/ycv5xmn

Be warned though, the last one’s a right wee stinker!