Glow Scotland

May 7th, 2008

Glow in Uist

rpitman

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Following Glow Mentor training in Harris in January, two teachers have been working together to bring pupils from Paible(a 5-14 school on North Uist) together with pupils from Sgoil Lionacleit (a community secondary school on Benbecula) using Glow Meet.

Mary Ann MacDonald, a P6/7 teacher at Paible, and Liz MacMillan, a French teacher at Lionacleit, arranged for former pupils of Paible, now at Sgoil Lionacleit, to read eco poems written in French during the school’s climate change week.

‘Having successfully managed this link-up, we decided to take Glow a step further and arranged for Liz to teach our primary 6/7 class a French lesson on pets,’ says Mary Ann.

Liz talked to, and took oral responses from, Paible pupils, as well as interacting with them through the whiteboard.

‘There was great excitement when they would see a big tick appear against their response,’ adds Mary Ann. ‘This was an ideal opportunity to set up links between schools and make the transition from primary to secondary less daunting for our pupils.’

The other components of Glow have also been used by Mary Ann and Liz, for example to share documents, to start and contribute to discussions and to post news items.

April 18th, 2008

Glow Meet Global Day – Western Isles

Anne Ward

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As storms go, it wasn’t the worst the islanders on Harris had experienced, but it did bring down power lines the night before the Glow team flew into the Western Isles for a two-day training session with Glow mentors. The damage blacked out television and radio signals.

As one mentor pointed out, it highlighted the difficulties facing isolated areas. This time, though, wireless access to the internet stayed live. Training went ahead, averting any delay to the launch of Glow.

But the ill-timed storm also highlighted the advantages Glow will bring to the islands. Access to tools such as Glow Meet will enable schools to communicate with one another, despite the weather-induced difficulties. Since the training in January, the mentors have been collaborating with one another using Glow Groups and connecting pupils from various schools using the Glow Meet web conferencing tool.

Glow is now ready to be launched in the Western Isles. Initially it will be introduced in two or three schools to allow the authority to get feedback from P1 through to S2 before extending access. In the spring it is hoped Glow will be made available to the rest of the schools.

Read more about Glow in the Western Isles.