Glow Scotland

The voting is over, the discussions have taken place – the only thing left is to find out the winners!

The Royal Mail Book Awards ceremony takes place on Tuesday the 24th of November, and we’re now able to confirm that we will be broadcasting the ceremony via Glow Meet. Why not drop in and watch? The event takes place at 13:30 and ends at 14:45. You can access the Glow Meet by joining the Royal Mail Book Awards Group – make sure you request access in advance.

Drop in and see if your favourite has won!

Alan Bissett is returning to his and Adam Spark’s old school, Falkirk High, to speak to pupils about his books and you and your class can also be there with Glow.

A Glow Meet with Alan will be held in the Literacy and English National Glow Group on Thursday December 10th at 2pm.

Alan invites S4-S6 to join him to hear him read from his books and to ask him questions about his work.

It promises to be a great event both for pupils and staff as you get to watch, hear and question one of Scotland’s most versatile talents.

You can register your interest and post questions for Alan to answer by replying to the post Here on the Glow group.

The English teachers’ national Glow group presents another fantastic free masterclass. The November session will run on Monday, 30th November from 4-5pm and will focus on practical steps to help teachers become more confident in using audio devices and recordings in their classroom.
The masterclass will be delivered by David Noble, a Chartered Teacher at a residential school in Fife experienced in using ICT across the curriculum. David produces the fortnightly educational podcast, Booruch, and is a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh. He also co-produces the EDUtalk website, (http://edutalk.cc/) a space for teachers and students to use mobile technology to create and share educational audio.

During the session participants will learn how to:

Set-up a computer to create digital audio recordings

Record, edit, save, and even publish recordings

Use existing digital audio resources on the web

Use mobile devices to capture, distribute, and use voice recordings

Project ideas will also be discussed, connecting digital audio to the Literacy
Experiences and Outcomes. A list of useful links and a ‘How to get started’ guide will also be available.

All the English teacher group masterclasses have an English and/or Literacy focus but they are open to all and you do not need to be an English teacher to join the group and participate. Membership requests are welcomed from all stages and sectors of education. Click HERE to request membership. Full details of how to join a Glow Meet masterclass session are posted in the group.

The Glow Team is asking for your help in implementing an ambitious programme to build an overall picture of how practitioners are using Glow across Scotland and the benefits that are being achieved as a result. We are keen to receive input from those new to Glow or who are using Glow in a relatively simple way to provide a useful outcome as well as those with more experience. We want to represent as many different aspects of Glow usage as possible so we’d like to hear about anything you have done. Some examples might be:

• I have eliminated some paperwork or costs by using Glow to disseminate information on-line
• I have shared materials, ideas, thoughts or practice with my colleagues using Glow
• I have found that my class are more motivated when we use Glow for class work
• I set tasks for learners to complete within Glow
• I allow pupils to post their work in a Glow group which then provides a rich record of work
• My class have joined a national Glow Meet event which provided a focus for our topic work

The list is endless….if you’ve done it; we want you to tell us about it. It doesn’t have to be particularly innovative or best practice; we simply want you to share how you are using it.

We recognise that your time is extremely valuable, so we’ve created an on-line questionnaire within Glow which will take less than ten minutes for most people to complete and the displayed results will be anonymous.  Once we have sufficient responses, the plan is to publish the results within the Glow community and so you should bear in mind that your comments may be viewed by colleagues,  head teachers, school management teams, pupils, and in some authorities, parents.

We would very much appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to share your experiences of using Glow with us. There are three ways to access the questionnaire.

The survey can be found here.

Or ….you can access from www.glowhelp.me/experiences

Or ….Log in to Glow, go to National Site, National Groups, Glowing Potential, Glow Groups, Benefits Management and Realisation, Sharing Glow Experiences.

If you are interested in further discussion of the benefits of using Glow, there is a dedicated Glow Group for Benefits Management and Realisation here.

I’m delighted to let you know that the first part of Glow Refresh – an upgrade to the Glow Portal Storage – will take place on Sat 14 Nov.

Users can store documentation in the portal in establishment sites, their associated Glow groups, and in their own area – My Glow. The new default space allocation levels are

• For staff sites storage will increase to 200MB (this was 100MB)
• For establishment sites storage will increase to 5GB (this was 400MB)
• For Local Authority sites storage will increase to 10GB (this was 400MB)

Pupil sites remain at 20MB, and as Glow Learn and Video Streaming use their own separate space they do not count towards this space allocation.

You can get more information from the Glow Refresh Group at  https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Glow%20Refresh/default.aspx, which will tell you what’s happening and how you can get involved.

We will start to implement the storage upgrade at 08:30 on Sat 14 Nov 09, and estimate that we will finish at 13:00. We don’t expect there to be any downtime associated with the work, but as ever there is always a risk that there might be some disruption to the service. If you do have anything planned for Sat 14 Nov please let us know as soon as possible.

“I am inspired”.

‘great fun … and very impressive’.

“It was great. I am from a primary background and could easily adapt this. Thanks so much”.

“A great success. My first Glow Meet and I’ve left with lots of good ideas”.

On 29th October teachers from as far afield as Stirling and Thurso logged into Glow to listen to David Miller from St Ninian’s High School East Dunbartonshire deliver a fantastic masterclass session entitled ‘Literacy in Action’.

During the session David explained how an S1 poetry unit he was working on led to a cross-curricular project with the Art Department and resulted in the pupils making a short animation film. As well as sharing his own teaching approaches and the Curriculum for Excellence outcomes the project covered, David showed examples of the work produced by the pupils and gave the participants of the session practical advice on how the project was organised. Some of those taking part in the Glow Meet also offered their own hints about the best software they had found for animation projects. All those who took part agreed that the masterclass was, ‘inspiring’.

Every month the national English teachers’ Glow group runs a session just like this one on a variety of Literacy/English topics. If you have a Glow log-in, an internet connection and speakers attached to your PC then you can take part. These sessions are free and are always timed for after school so no cover is needed – you can even join in from the comfort of your own living room!

You do not have to be an English teacher to participate but you must be a member of the national English teachers’ Glow group. Click HERE to request membership. Detailed instructions on how to join a Glow Meet masterclass are posted in the group.

Another masterclass session will be running in November – details coming soon!

Glow and the Edinburgh International Book Festival brought you two exciting events in August via Glow Meet- a CPD session with Dr. Mel Gibson, an authority on the use of comics and graphic novels, and an author talk and question and answer session with Michelle Paver.

The videos of both of these Glow Meets are now available to watch in the Edinburgh International Festival Glow Group - feel free to drop in and watch at any time.

PS – If you and your class watched the Michelle Paver event through Glow, we’d love you to fill in a survey for us about the event, to help us plan similar work in future. Click here to fill in the survey.

Have you read these books? Could you write a story in the Scots language?

The author, James Robertson, is a founder editor and a contributing author to the Scots language children’s imprint Itchy Coo.  As an Itchy Coo author he has translated Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox into Scots and A. A. Milne’s classic Winnie The Pooh.

A Glow Meet with James will be held in the Writer’s Workshop Glow Group on November 5^th at 10am.  James hopes S2 pupils will be interested in this session about writing in Scots.  There will be a follow-up session on 19^th November at 10am.  Menzieshill High School in Dundee is hosting the event and S2 pupils there will have the chance to meet James face to face, but pupils across Scotland will be able to join in via Glow Meet.

His first Glow Meet will look at the background to his translation of Winnie the Pooh into Scots, and include: short readings from the original and the translated editions; a general discussion about dialogue, names changes and the impact on the tone of the writing; and a  challenge for pupils.  James’ second Glow Meet will be a feedback session, looking at the pupils’ responses to his challenge.
Join the Glow Meets and learn to write well in Scots.

After a long summer break I am pleased to announce that the English teacher masterclass sessions have once again resumed. These one hour sessions offer teachers all over the country the opportunity -through Glow Meet- to increase their knowledge through participation in on-line CPD sessions run by ‘experts’ in a variety of fields.

Returning in the first of our autumn sessions is 2008 UK Teacher of the year David Miller who delivered a fantastic masterclass on Robert Frost Poetry way back in March.
His latest session – entitled ‘Literacy in Action’ will focus on an Interdisciplinary Learning project between English and Art & Design called Poetry in Motion. As well as exemplifying the Outcomes and Experiences in English, Literacy and Expressive Arts at Level 3, the session will also illustrate examples of Literacy in Action across a range of other subjects.

The session will take place on Thursday 29th October at 4.30 and is open to all teachers with a Glow log-in. You do not have to be an English teacher but you must be a member of the national English Teachers glow group to participate. Click on this LINK to go to the group and request membership.
The masterclasses will cover a wide variety of subjects and will run once a month as before – watch this space for more exciting events coming soon!

Guest post from David Noble, teacher at Hillside School and Chartered Teacher

The Association of Chartered Teachers Scotland committee members are involved in establishing and running the Chartered Teacher Glow Group. One tool which the Chartered Teacher Glow group will attempt to make full use of is Glow Meet. The schedule for the coming session is:
October Glow Meet – 29/10/09 17:30: Discussion on the Revised Standard for Chartered Teacher.

November Glow Meet – 17/11/09 16:15: Discussion on the Code of Practice for Chartered Teachers
December Glow Meet – 02/12/09 16:30: CPD for Chartered Teachers
January Glow Meet – 18/01/10 19:30: Chartered Teacher – Getting Started
February Glow Meet – 06/02/10 16:00: ACTS AGM
March Glow Meet – 06/03/10 10:00: International Perspectives on Chartered Teacher
April Glow Meet – 28/04/10 16:30: Chartered Teacher and Leadership
June Glow Meet – 10/06/10 20:30: “CTMeet”

To join the Chartered Teacher Glow group click here

The first session takes place on Thursday, 29th October from 7.30pm to 8.15pm, and is a Discussion on the Revised Standard for Chartered Teachers.

David Noble and Dorothy Coe from the Association of Chartered Teachers Scotland will chair this discussion session. In preparation, the Standard for Chartered Teacher is available for download here.

To enter the Glow Meet, click on the link in the Chartered Teacher Glow Group before 7.30pm on the 29th. We hope to see lots of you there!