Glow Scotland

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity and at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh they are celebrating this by staging an exciting programme of events and activities. This special year is designed to celebrate the astonishing biodiversity of life on Earth and the myriad connections between plants, animals, fungi and microscopic life forms that make up the complex web of life. We ourselves are part of this jigsaw. Our daily lives depend upon it for food, fuels, medicines, materials and for nature’s services including the provision of fresh air and clean water. We would be lost without biodiversity, and yet the expansion of human activities has nature on the retreat in ways that make the world a poorer place.

To celebrate the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh will be hosting an event with children from Tynewater Primary School in Midlothian taking part. They will be asking questions of Roseanna Cunningham MSP and taking part in activities surrounding the exhibition.

Why not join them from 10am – 11.30am on Wednesday 13th January? You too can ask questions of the minister and join the Tynewater Primary children in some collaborative fun in Glow Meet! If you want to post a question before the event please feel free to do so on the discussion board on the International Year of Biodiversity page.
You will also find the Glow Meet there as well so join us at 10am on Wednesday!

Did you know that within the Sharing Practice page of the GlowScotland website, schools from across Scotland share their experiences of using Glow?

Log on and find out how pupils  from across Scotland watched leading scientists perform a bird autopsy beamed live into their classrooms from the Scottish Seabird Centre; or how Burravoe Primary School in Shetland used Glow to keep in touch with pupils when bad weather closed the school.

Read about how schools in East Dunbartonshire are using Glow in a project to ease the transition to secondary school, and how James Young school took a phased approach to the roll out of Glow to benefit learning and teaching.

In addition, practitioners from across Scotland, working with children at different ages and stages, share their experiences of using Glow.

Why not log on and see if you can benefit from any of these ideas and stories ?

The LTS Outdoor Learning Conference took place at Crieff Hydro and in Glow. It was organised by Mark Baker our Outdoor Learning Development Officer  and supported by a large number of LTS staff, the Glow team and facilitators from across Scotland.

You can view the comments and discussion notes from facilitators and those who attended the seminars and workshops in the National Site Glow groups by following the link from the National Parks and Outdoor Learning Glow group. 

It was an exciting event ove two days with over three hundred people attending, including some inspiring speakers. The corridors and meeting roms buzzed with conversations about the Scottish outdoors, school projects and Curriculum for Excellence. In the main room we heard powerful messages about the importance of outdoor learning in Curriculum for Excellence and our daily lives from the key note speakers: Bruce Robertson OBE, Director of Education Aberdeenshire talked about his vision  for schools and Heather Reid from the BBC talked passionately about her childhood, camping and exploring next to Loch Tay with her parents. Their presentations were streamed live in Glow and in the LTS Outdoor Learning pages. 

While guests attended 24 seminars on day one and 16 workshops on day two, teachers from across Scotland were able to follow discussions and video in the Outdoor Learning Conference Glow group. Information from these seminars and workshops was fed into the conference Glow group during the conference.  There is also a page in the glow group with photographs of  meeting,  taken over the two days.

Further comments about the conference could be seen in twitterfall (click here to see all the comments) in the Glow group pages.  It became an international event. We had one follower commenting in twitter and watching the video streaming in the LTS pages, from Australia, @mrrobbo: thanks for taking part. Here are some comments, from twitter, about Eddie Broadley’s presentation at the end of the conference on day two:

whereisab #outdoorlearn09 3 things we need for true contentment: Relationships, job worth doing, to make a difference

theokk Retweeting @olliebray: #outdoorlearn09 – ‘A classroom of the future should not be limited to a classroom at all’.

olliebray #outdoorlearn09 Mark Baker (conference coordinator) getting thanks for organising the conference! Great job Mark!

I am looking forward to seeing more outdoor learning in Glow for example in the National Parks and Outdoor Learning National Glow group and in school Glow groups.