Glow Scotland

November 4th, 2008

Google Earth Glow Meet

mbrown

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Google Earth Training, sponsored by Google facilitated by the Glow team

on the 11th of November and the 19th of January.

This training is aimed at Geography teachers but any teacher involved in teaching with Google Earth or outdoor learning would find it useful. To take part, simply go to the National Site, click on the Glow Groups page tab and then click on the Social Studies National Glow Group in the list.

If you are a member of the group already,  look at the News and the attached Google Earth training program, by clicking on the News and then clicking on the attached file, which is under the main body of text. Then go to the Discussions page and click on Join Glow Meet. Make sure your camera, microphone and speakers or headphones are working correctly before you  participate. More information about how to use Glow Meet can be found in the Glowscotland website.  If you would like to know more about using Glow meet you can contact your local Glow mentor or  myself  m.brown@ltscotland.org.uk.

If you are not a member, be sure to click on the Social Studies National Glow Group  soon to request membership and to give me time to make you a member of the group. It would also be useful to go to the Documents page and click on the Google Earth folder, where there are introductory and advanced guides to using Google Earth. Download these free resources and keep them to hand. If you have time you might like to look at the video clip on the People and Environment page. More information can be found in  Digital Explorer, our presenters web site. Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop will be presenting  in the morning before participants get involved in hands on activitities. You will have the opportunity to ask Jamie questions in Glow meet and later in the day you will see attendees present to each other. I hope you can drop in for a bit.

November 4th, 2008

Glow at SAGT 2008

mbrown

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Last week Andrew Brown and I were at the Scottish Association of  Geography Teachers annual conference in Edinburgh with 270 geography teachers. It was a really well organised conference with well known speakers such as Mark Beaumont  world record holder for cycling round the Globe and Dr Ian Stewart  from BBC 4 program Journeys from the Centre of the Earth. As a geographer it is a privelege to be invited to this event and as a Glow Development Officer it was a really useful opportunity to talk about  Glow. Geographers are well known for teaching with ICT and for being innovative with technology,  so I was prepared for some questions. 

Andrew Brown and I presented twice during the day to a full classroom of geography teachers from across Scotland.  We saw a mixture of experienced teachers and managers, newly qualified teachers and trainee teachers. All very keen to ask questions.  After Andrew explained where Glow was nationally, my presentation was an attempt to answer, what I thought was an important question: What can glow do for me?   This is a big question.  Over 50 minutes I tried to pass on some good ideas for geography teachers, with a live tour of: My Glow, some School Glow Groups, The Social Studies National Glow Group and The National Parks and Outdoor Learning National Glow Group.   It is unlikely that I have answered the question fully, but I hope I have contributed to a discussion that will continue in the Social Studies National Glow Group, where geography teachers can discuss their Glow groups and answer the question  What can glow do for me?  for themselves.

November 4th, 2008

Wildlife in Glow

mbrown

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Recently I have been in North Berwick and Edinburgh discussing Glow with our partners in the National Parks and Outdoor Learning National Glow Group. I met with Emily Dodd, the Education Officer at the Scottish Seabirds Centre (SSC) in North Berwick. She has an amazing classroom at the harbour and some fantastic technology to back it up. Using large screens, linked to web cams on local islands in the Firth of Forth, I watched, recently born baby seals on the Isle of May. Emily and I will work together to share pictures and video of wildlife in Glow. we want to share some of her pictures of seals, dolphins and puffins. We also talked about a Glow meet session where Emily will tell storys about the local wildlife at different times of the year, starting with a story about local puffins in April. Primary and nursery teachers can look out for news of this event in the new year and download information for taking part in these interactive stories.

On the same day I visited Rebekah Stacks who is an Educational Officer with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They are in the process of developing more outdoor learning materials and they want to share more of their great video and web camera material in Glow.  Look out for school projects and pictures of wildlife in the National Parks and Outdoor Learning National Glow Group, or upload a project from your school.

November 4th, 2008

National Glow Groups – Something for Everyone

Katie Barrowman

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: , CfE, Curriculum for Excellence, Glow, Glow Groups, Learning and Teaching Scotland, LTS, National glow groups, National Groups
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events

This week the Glow team met with our colleagues in the Curriculum for Excellence curricular teams to talk about the National Glow Groups. As you’ll know, there is a national level Glow Group for each curricular area, and the Glow and CfE teams, with help from the content managers and communications officers here at LTS, had some great discussions about where we can go with these powerful tools.

Everyone’s keen to make the National Glow Groups inviting and useful for anyone joining them, and the ideas were free-flowing all afternoon, so you can expect to see some exciting developments in the near future. In particular, there are plans for innovative use of Glow Meet, ranging from inviting in outside experts, to having regular informal drop in sessions with people from the CfE and Glow teams. We also looked at the possibility of interdisciplinary projects, and at using the Groups as a place to share real examples of the work being done with the Curriculum for Excellence Draft Experiences and Outcomes in classrooms around Scotland.

Remember, though, the National Groups are for everybody, and it’s important that you have a say too. If there’s anything you’d like to see on a group, or if you’ve done something you’d like to share with the whole country via Glow, get in touch with us – each group will have a place for you to discuss and share ideas, and you can comment here on the Glow blog.

So we’ve got big ideas for the National Glow Groups, and we want to hear yours too!