Glow Scotland

September 20th, 2010

Breaking Guinness World Record on Glow!!

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Cycle Co-op, Glow Meet, Guinness World Record
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Glow Meet, Local authorities, Outdoor Learning, Pupils

Wednesday 22nd September 2010 has been designated European Car Free Day as part of European Mobility Week which aims to encourage the use of public transport, cycling and walking. Over 1,000 cities across Europe will be participating in this year’s event and so will we at SLF!!

East Dunbartonshire’s Cycle Co-op, in partnership with four local authorities across Scotland, aim to set a Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous bike bell ringing in order to celebrate active travel especially cycling and walking. The aim is to get over 1,000 pupils from nursery, primary and secondary schools across Bishopbriggs in East Dunbartonshire, along with partners in East Renfrewshire, Moray, Aberdeenshire and Edinburgh to ring their bike bells to the tune of The Blue Danube at 1pm via a broadcast by Sunny Govan FM and over the internet. The previous record in Scotland was around 500 in 2007.

Why not log in from 12.30pm on Wednesday 22nd September and watch the first record being broken live on Glow Meet? GWR Simultaneous Bike Bells Glow Group.

September 17th, 2010

Walking Within – Langass Woods

Julia Fenby

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Co-Create
 : Categories Co-Create, Curriculum for Excellence, Expressive Arts, Glow, Outdoor Learning, Sciences, Social Studies, Technologies, Western Isles

‘Walking Within – Langass Woods’ is a truly interdisciplinary project which combines outdoor learning and the arts with social subjects, sciences, languages and new technologies. Importantly, it is encouraging children and young people to make a valuable contribution to the care and future of their own natural environment.

I had the pleasure of spending yesterday with Sarah MacIntyre, Cultural Access Officer at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre, north Uist, and meeting some of the pupils and teachers involved in Walking Within, one of ten Co-Create projects for Glow.

S2 pupils from Sgoil Lionacleit, and P5-7 pupils from Carinish and Lochmaddy primary schools, have been working with artist and publisher Alec Finlay, musician Rhodri Davis, poet and naturalist Colin Will, and poet Ken Cockburn to create a ‘Letterbox trail’ for the woodland, with an accompanying digital guide for handheld mobile devices.

This project is a fantastic example of the power of partnership working. Urras nan Craobh Uibhist a Tuath (North Uist Woodland Trust) and Scottish Natural Heritage (South Uist) have spent time with pupils talking about the history and ecology of the woodland and helping with the pupils’ research, identification and interpretation of local species of plants, trees and birds. Graphic designer Lorraine Burke ran a workshop on logo design, and the resulting designs by S2 pupils have been uploaded to the project Glow Group.

Outdoor education specialists, Wild Knowledge, are developing a digital guide to accompany the woodland trail which will be populated by pupils’ photographs, poems, sound recordings and research, giving visitors an even richer experience of this community owned woodland.

Teachers and pupils are clearly getting a huge amount out of this project. Principle teacher of Art and Design at Sgoil Lionacleit, Anne Reid, enthused about having worked in collaboration with the English department on illustrated Haiku. S2, now S3 pupils, who took part in the project last term, are now meeting after school to continue working on their contribution to the digital guides. The pupils I met at Carinish primary had loved using the mobile devices, and had particularly enjoyed writing mesostic poems with Alec Finlay.

For more information on the project see today’s TESS article
or go to the Walking Within Langass Wood presentation at the Scottish Learning Festival on 23 September at 1pm.

May 20th, 2010

Digital art project supports transition stages for Perth pupils

Julia Fenby

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Co-Create, Curriculum for Excellence, Expressive Arts, Glow Groups, Outdoor Learning, Perth and Kinross, Technologies

Secondary pupils from North Inch Community Campus, and primary and nursery pupils from St John’s Academy, have been working with a team of artists and musicians to explore the theme of ‘transition’ as part of the ‘Hooks + Bites’ Co-Create project for Glow. Using creative approaches, learners have investigated what transition means, both in terms of moving on to a new stage, and in terms of their physical journey to a new campus.

The walk to North Inch has been explored from different perspectives, with pupils either gathering found objects in matchboxes; making drawings and maps of their route, or creating sound compositions using recordings they made on the way.

Team work plays an important role in the project with pupils working collaboratively in sound or animation crews, to make short digital art and sound works expressing what ‘transition’ means to them.

The resulting work will be presented at a red carpet launch at digital art gallery Threshold, Horsecross in June, and will also be shown at North Inch Community Campus at the start of the autumn term. It will be uploaded onto the Hooks + Bites Glow Group, forming the basis of a digital art bank for Glow, which other schools in Perth and Kinross and across Scotland can use and to which they can upload their own digital art work.

Plan B Collective is leading this project for Horsecross Arts. An initial CPD day involved teachers from each of the participating schools working together and looking at the Experiences and Outcomes the project could deliver, particularly across Music, Art, ICT and Health and Wellbeing.

Co-Create is funded through a partnership between Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund.

April 22nd, 2010

Revamped Outdoor Learning Glow Group now open

ronnierankin

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories National Groups, Outdoor Learning, Uncategorized

The new look Outdoor Learning Glow Group is now open.

Within you will find content which mirrors the new Outdoor Learning LTS website.

It also contains many forums to get involved with.

Interested in Outdoor Learning, then come on in and have a look around!

Find the Group here: http://tinyurl.com/la33oz

January 11th, 2010

Launch of International Year of Biodiversity

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: biodiversity, Botanic Gardens, Rosanna Cunningham MSP
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Glow Groups, Glow Meet, Midlothian, National Groups, Outdoor Learning

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!

June 30th, 2009

How are others using Glow?

Lorna Arbuckle

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, East Dunbartonshire, East Lothian, Events, Glow Chat, Glow Groups, Glow Meet, National Groups, Outdoor Learning, Pupils, Shetland Islands, West Lothian

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 ?

April 29th, 2009

LTS Outdoor Learning Conference 2009

mbrown

Comments: 1 Comment Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow Groups, Outdoor Learning, Uncategorized

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.