Glow Scotland

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.

There are so many ways to view and use a Glow Group. The prime role may be for teaching and learning with a class, for collaboration among staff, for distribution of information. This week I met Lynne Bowie, Curriculum for Excellence Officer in Aberdeen City. Lynne is developing a Glow Group as a CPD resource. The Sharing of Good Practice Glow Group is designed to ensure all staff have access to resources, research and examples of effective practice, that will prepare them to teach within the Curriculum Framework.

When Lynne attended a Glow awareness-raising session run by the Aberdeen ICT Team, she realised what an opportunity Glow offers to deliver the materials she is developing to all Aberdeen teachers. In the present financial and environmental climate, Glow has many benefits. Using Glow reduces the need for lots of paper based resources. Using Glow to host the materials means everyone can access them, unlike conferences where only those lucky to attend are fully provided for (…and who can get out to go to conferences when there is so little class cover available?). Using Glow means that the project, which brings together good practice advice and examples, will be sustainable since the Glow Group can continue to develop as practices improve and more guidance comes out about delivering Scotland’s curriculum.

The Glow Group itself is really a mini-collection of sites. The parent group has the Curriculum Framework at its heart, in particular the Learning & Teaching portion. There are subgroups covering AifL, Active Learning, Co-operative Learning and Critical Skills – all tools that have been highlighted for Curriculum for Excellence. Each of these also has subgroups to ensure all the elements involved are given good coverage and allow staff interaction in discussion pages. Lynne is standardising the layout of each area so staff will become familiar with the template and know where to look for the research, key features and local exemplification that is on each noticeboard page.
The Glow Group is still in development but there is no doubt that Aberdeen practitioners will be well served by it when it launches at summer.