Glow Scotland

The New Year sees the launch of a new national Glow Group from the Scottish Government.

Keep up to date with news and information on schools policy developments and find out how to sign up to the Schools e-newsletter.

To log in, simply click on the following link. You will need your Glow user name and password to get access:

Take me to the Scottish Government National Glow Group

If you don’t have access to Glow, did you know the GlowScotland website has an interactive map of Scotland where you can keep up to date with what stage your local authority is with Glow? Click here to find out more:

Take me to the interactive map

Ten arts organisations have been offered up to £30,000 each to develop innovative approaches to learning through Glow, thanks to a dynamic partnership project between Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) and the Scottish Arts Council.

In September 2009, the Co-Create Project invited Scottish Arts Council-funded arts organisations to link up with new media companies and local authorities to develop inspiring new projects and resources for Glow, the Scottish schools intranet.

The project received 37 applications for funding from across Scotland, of which ten have been selected by an assessment panel made up of local authority officers, classroom practitioners and representatives from LTS, the Scottish Arts Council and RM, the solution provider for Glow.

The successful partnerships will now go on to deliver pioneering and ambitious demonstration projects which will pilot new ways of learning and teaching. The projects selected will be implemented all over Scotland and represent a wide range of art forms. Successful projects include ‘State of Emergency’, a project which will help pupils to create online dramas broadcast ‘live’ from a fictional country in conflict to explore dilemmas and themes associated with war. Another project seeks to bring together mainstream and disengaged primary pupils and their teachers, learning across the curriculum through traditional arts and new media.

Marie Dougan, Director of Learning and Technology at LTS, said: “I’m delighted that we received such a great response from the arts and technology communities for the Co-Create Project funding.

“Glow is proving to be an invaluable tool in the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence and I’m looking forward to seeing the fantastic ideas put into practice to illustrate the key role that the arts play in supporting this.”

Co-Create projects will take place throughout 2010 and will represent all art forms and engage with a cross section of age levels and target user groups in schools across Scotland.

The ten successful organisations are as follows:

• Citizens Theatre
• Drake Music Scotland
• Fèis Rois Ltd
• Horsecross Arts
• Imaginate
• NVA
• Street Level Photoworks
• Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre
• Visible Fictions
• Y-Dance

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

The UN Climate Change Summit is nearly upon us and people across the globe will be watching as world leaders and government officials meet in Copenhagen from the 7th – 18th December to negotiate new international targets to tackle climate change.

Learning and Teaching Scotland will be bringing you photos, videos, blogs and live feeds from Copenhagen to enable your school to be part of the experience and to participate in the climate change debate.

To kick start our programme of events, we’re giving all schools the chance to take part in a live Glow meet with Heather Reid, BBC weather presenter and professional meteorologist. Heather will be answering your questions on weather, climate and the impact of global warming.

This live Glow meet will take place on Wednesday 9th December 2009 from 11:20am to 11:50am. To take part, visit the
Sustainable Development Education Glow group.

Submit your questions to Heather in advance of the Glow meet by visiting the SDE Discussions Page or by emailing Ian Menzies at I.Menzies@LTScotland.org.uk

Plans are also being finalised for a further Glow meet live from the Copenhagen conference on Fri 11th December 2009. Watch the Sustainable Development Education Glow group or LTS online for further details.

There’s still time to sign up to take part in a nationwide Glow Meet on Tuesday the 15th of September with Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. The Glow Meet starts at 13:00, and will last for an hour. Ms Hyslop will be speaking about why she is proud to be Scottish, and then answering questions from the audience at Gavinburn Primary School, and from the Glow audience.

If your class want to join in and watch or ask questions, you can sign up by clicking this link and reading the Glow page for more details.

Questions should be submitted before the end of the day on Monday the 14th of September.

There will be a chance to log in and test the Glow Meet on Friday and Monday, so please have a try if you’ve never joined a Glow Meet before.

The SLF Extra Glow Group is now live, with things to see before the Scottish Learning Festival, and a preview of what to expect over the two days. One event you can get involved in before the festival is a Glow Meet Session with Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. In advance of her Keynote Speech at SLF, Ms Hyslop will be hosting a Glow Meet for Scottish Schools from Gavinburn Primary School in West Dunbartonshire. The Glow Meet will take place on the 15th of September between 1pm and 2pm.

The cabinet secretary will be talking about what it means to her to be Scottish, and inviting questions from the children at Gavinburn and the Glow audience.

To sign up your class to watch or to take part in the question and answer session, please visit the SLF Extra Glow Group by clicking on this link

Guest Post from Laura Tansley at Learning and Teaching Scotland

Schools across Scotland tuned in on Monday to hear Michelle Paver talk of her experiences and adventures as she researched her series of Stone Age adventure novels, ‘The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness’. She spoke of happening across bears in California and singing ‘Danny Boy’ to distract them, getting close enough to Wolves in Finland to lick muzzles, skinning rabbits and eating Reindeer, all in a quest to discover what life was like for a hunter-gatherer. Michelle read from ‘Ghost Hunter’, the latest instalment of the ‘Ancient Darkness’ series which was tantalising for those who have yet to discover her writing. Through the Glow Meet, pupils were then encouraged to ask Michelle questions – we had so many unfortunately we couldn’t ask them all but we hope to get them all answered by Michelle at a later date. For the schools that missed it, the recording of the talk will be available soon at the Glow Group for the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Guest post from Alan Hamilton, a Business Education Teacher at Stirling High School, and the administrator of the Business Education Glow Group for Teachers.

A National Glow Group for teachers of Business Education is now taking membership. This group will be a place for teachers to share ideas and resources as we begin to drive forward Curriculum for Excellence.

Business Education teachers can access the group via this handy short link – http://tinyurl.com/BusEdGlow - you will need to request access when you first go, but should be added in quickly.

Glow Groups have been created for all Business Education subjects: S1/S2 ICT, Accounting, Administration, Business Management and Economics. Teachers will be able to upload content and request materials from each other. It is hoped this will carry forward the work of the now defunct BEN forums.

Get involved today to meet your colleagues from across the country.

Once again this year, young people from around Scotland have been invited to vote for their favourite shortlisted title in the Royal Mail Scottish Children’s Book Awards. Glow has teamed up with the Scottish Book Trust to bring you a national Glow Group where you can discuss your thoughts on the books with other young judges in schools across Scotland.

Teachers and librarians can click this link to request access to the Glow Group. Once you’re in, you can contact the Glow team via the group, and they will add your class/reading group as members too.

This is an exciting opportunity for readers to have their opinions heard. The shortlisted books come in three age categories – 0-7, 8-11 and 12-16 – so there’s something for readers of all ages to get their teeth into. Schools will need to register with the Scottish Book Trust in the first instance – click here for more details - and voting closes on the 13th of November, so there’s still plenty of time to get involved.

[UPDATE] – we’ve found a much better way to track which themes you liked best – if you voted here already, don’t worry as we’ve moved your vote across. To vote on which theme you like best, visit the updated post here.

For those of you familiar with the look and feel of Glow, there are at present six different themes that you can choose from. We thought it was time for a change, so we’ve drawn up a few possible alternatives that you can have a look at.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to produce all of these themes, but it would be great to see which of them is most popular?

We’re also working on how you select a theme to use in Glow – at the moment, it’s from a drop down list, but it would be good if this was a visual selector. Hopefully we’ll have some more news on this in the near future.

The Scottish Arts Council and Learning and Teaching Scotland have joined forces to bring arts education online through Glow. As a result of this partnership, a new post and project have been created to explore Glow’s potential to support innovative approaches to learning and teaching through the arts.

I have recently joined the Glow Team as Development Officer (Arts) and I’m hugely excited about this project’s potential to enable artists, performers and writers and Scotland’s schools to work and learn together in ways that have never been possible before. Glow is breaking down barriers and making learning experiences and opportunities more widely accessible – the recent Anthony Horowitz and Oscar Stringer Glow Meet events and the Willie Rodger print project are just a few examples of the exciting work that is already going on via Glow.

Over the next 22 months I will be working with selected Scottish Arts Council funded arts organisations on a number of ambitious demonstration projects, to be announced later this year, which will trial new ways of learning and will show how creativity and the arts are a fantastic way of supporting Curriculum for Excellence.

The project will provide CPD opportunities for both teachers and arts practitioners to work together to develop ideas, projects and resources. I am keen to make contact with teachers, cultural co-ordinators and local arts teams who would like to be involved so please do get in touch – I’ll be delighted to hear from you.

Look out for a new national Glow Group for the project which will highlight developments and opportunities providing a focal point for all related activity and a place to collaborate and share good practice. The project will also be showcased at the Scottish Learning Festival on 23 September.

Enquiries: glowenquiries@LTScotland.org.uk

Click here for press-release

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This post and project is funded through a partnership between Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund