Glow Scotland

Two very successful Glow events have recently taken place at Stirling Management Centre. These ‘Building Glow Communities’ events focused on getting English Teachers and Primary 4-7 teachers respectively to work together to create Glow groups to support learning and teaching.

These groups will be used by the teachers who created them to share ideas and resources and to allow collaborative activities between their pupils. The groups are also open to all teachers and pupils nationally so that they can follow what’s going on.

Teachers can apply to join the groups with their own classes and take part in the activities.

You can find the P4/7 groups created by the participants under National Groups/Building Glow Communities. Groups include ‘The Victorians’, World War 2, Scotland and European Tour Guide Mission. The English Teacher groups at are at National Groups/Literacy and English/Building Glow Communities and include Transition P7/S1, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and War Poetry.

If you have any problems viewing or applying to join the groups please contact Lesley Dickson at l.dickson@ltscotland.org.uk

We are still taking applications for the next events for early years, maths, the expressive arts, science and social studies. Visit Glow Scotland to apply for a place.

Please note that while the emphasis of the events is very much on sharing and collaboration it would be useful for applicants to have some previous experience of creating Glow groups.

If you would like an event held for your subject area or sector please register your interest with Glow Administration.

New in the Homecoming National Group is ‘Wha’s Like Us?’ This group is aimed at classes where there are pupils who have come from different countries to live in Scotland. It will allow pupils living all over Scotland to talk about their experiences living in this country, along with their classmates.

There will be regular monthly topics for classes to work on together, and a chance for pupils to upload their work, chat, discuss and Glow Meet.

The first topic will be school life, starting next week, Tuesday the 5th of May. The future topics will be chosen by the group members. Any class, primary or secondary, can get involved - just follow the instructions on the group.

Access requests are now open - come in and explore and think about how you’d like to use the group. It’s the intention that the group will change and grow to meet the needs of the classes using it, so essentially it can be designed by the users collaboratively. Hope to see you there soon! Join Wha’s Like Us and start linking across the country!

We are each others best and most under used resource.

On our travels up and down the country we (the Glow team) continue to be thrilled at the innovative and creative ways that staff and pupils are engaging with Glow. We realise too, that having the opportunity to see how others are using Glow can be a valuable experience. With that in mind, the Glow team has created a national Glow Group that allows for this sharing of good and interesting practice. So if you are in Aberdeenshire or Argyll, East Dunbartonshire or East Lothian you can now view Glow groups from all over the country. There is a catch of course - in order to join in and share this wealth of good ideas somebody has to take the initiative and post up their group for sharing. So if you are reading this Blog then that would be YOU!

The process is straightforward and to lead you through it we have uploaded a short guide into the Glowing Potential national group. It’s in this national group that we are encouraging you to allow others to take a peek at what you have been doing. We ‘d love to see groups shared from a variety of levels- classroom groups, school groups, local authority groups. The guide provides simple advice on how to allow others into your group with limited permissions. So if like me, you are particularly nosey and like to know what’s going on this could provide an excellent opportunity for the sharing of ideas and resources on a national scale.

But what if my Glow group isn’t as good as some others that I have seen? Don’t worry! We absolutely understand that Glow groups are constantly evolving and will always be ‘works in progress’ Don’t let this put you off. The more the merrier and as we build upon the each others ideas so we evolve or own practice. If altruism isn’t enough of a worthy incentive then to further encourage those a little more reticent we have decided to award some prizes for the ‘best’ Glow group of the month as voted (X factor style) by you. So if you’d like to win a Glow team member in your school for a week and other equally exciting stuff then you have to be in it to win it.

Go on and do it now. National Site - Glowing Potential glow Group - Sharing Groups tab. See you in there.

I was warmly welcomed at St Martin’s RC Primary and Nursery School, in Tranent, today.

Dave Gilmour,  the East Lothian Council Key Contact for Glow, and I were helping  a small group of primary and nursery teachers get to grips with Glow. It was informal and informative. I was  really impressed with their ‘have a go’ attitude and the way they very quickly came up with questions about Glow groups and how to use them for different teaching and learning purposes.  It was clear to me that while quite a few of the group were trying Glow (hands on) for the first time, they would not be slow in trying it out with children in their classes.

I spoke with Christine Muir, a nursery teacher. I showed her some basic tools or web parts, how to create a Glow group and how to add members to the group. She promised to create a Glow group for her nursery classes.  I assured her she cannot break Glow and look forward to seeing her ideas for using Glow for whole class teaching.  I am sure she will develop some of the ideas we talked about: using the National Site and content for teaching literacy eg Bo Bear, using Glow meet offline with pupils to record speaking and acting etc and sharing digital images of pupil work from her Glow group. 

It would also be great if nursery teachers in ELC could develop Glow groups for outdoor learning, eg Forest Schools projects, and share these links in the National site in the National Parks and Outdoor Learning National Glow Group. I know teachers in ELC have a wealth of experience in this area. If they record what they do outside in Glow groups, then pupils can bring their learning back indoors and enjoy sharing the experience even more.

It was great to visit St Martin’s RC Primary School and great to work with such positive teachers. The fantastic pictures above are by Frank Carty: seen on the walls surrounding the school.

Jim Reid tells us how a Christmas Glow Group has resulted in some teachers using Glow Meet for the first time in their classes:

18 primary schools took part in a Glow Meet session to meet Santa on Thursday 18 December over two sessions. We used one Glow meet link to each school.  In the sessions Santa (who bore a striking resemblance to Ian Hoffman) and his little elf helper (who bore a striking resemblance to Margaret Tracey) spoke to the children about Christmas. It took place form Santa’s Grotto (which bore a striking resemblance to Carluke Primary).

Santa’s elf helper had asked the schools to send emails to Santa at his South Lanarkshire Council (SLC) email account santa@theadvisorslc.rmplc.co.uk.  In their emails they told Santa what they had been doing in class before Christmas and what sort of toys they wanted for Christmas.  Santa then read out these emails and commented on what the pupils had been doing.  He then spoke to some pupils from each school who asked him some very interesting questions;

How does Santa get into the houses that do not have a chimney?  (Answer: Santa’s Special magic which makes a chimney for him to come down and he then makes it disappear when he leaves)

What does Santa want for Christmas? ( Answer : a Wii fit.  He then asked the boy if he had one and when he said No, Santa said he thought his name was on the list for one) So if RM get a bill for a Wii fit from an irate parent just charge it to Mr Hoffman!

The little elf then took over and spoke to all the schools and asked them one by one to shout “Merry Christmas” to Santa, which they all did and one school also sang to him.  Santa then had to leave as he was still busy getting ready for Christmas. We recorded the sessions for future use.

Margaret and I decided to do the project as a Christmas activity for pupils using Glow.  Its main purpose was not to increase usage of Glow but some teachers did use Glow for the first time with their classes. This was a useful spin off. In talking to one particular Head teacher, through this use of Glow she saw a way in which other projects in her school could be enhanced through the use of Glow.  That was encouraging for Margaret and I. This was a major team effort involving:

• Our Central Advisory Service Development Officers who were “out in the field” resolving early teething problems and helping the school with their use if Glow Meet.  It was also they who constructed the Glow Group and the activities on it.
• The SLC business IT team and RM our network managed Service provider, could not have been more helpful and responded immediately when technical problems arose
• Stephen Forsyth, Alistair Fay and the Glow helpdesk who helped out big time when Glow Meet went pear shaped on Monday.

The efforts of all the above meant that not one school pupil was disappointed because of technical issues. That was a big thing for Margaret and I. In the pupil’s eyes this was not just a video conferencing session. This was Santa talking to them through Glow. We knew were taking a risk, but we felt it was worth it, and it was. To hear the children’s voices as they spoke to Santa was magical.  The feedback from our Development Officers who were out in the schools superb, they said the children absolutely loved it.  

Margaret and I wanted to try out running a major central initiative using Glow and Glow Meet.  We learned a lot from the exercise which will help us for future events. Santa will Glow again in South Lanarkshire next Christmas, and we would like to try some other events like this as the year progresses.

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!