Glow Scotland

October 31st, 2008

Aberdeen Mentors Sparkle

J Jelly

Comments: none Tags: Tags: collaborating, Glow, howto, mentors, searching
 : Categories Aberdeen City, Uncategorized

On 28/29 October, Martin Brown and I were working with a new wave of Glow Mentors in Aberdeen this week. Martin did the bulk of the sessions, mentoring me in my new role as Glow D.O., as well as mentoring the mentors! The new mentors are a great bunch and will make a real impact on Aberdeen’s uptake and use of Glow. They raised several points worth mentioning here for a wider audience to ponder…

Glow refinements –
Could a way be devised to search for Glow Groups by topic?
When we complete our profiles cn we also note down our interests. This should make it easier to connect users interested in the same subjects by searching Glow using the “area of interest” field. There are also areas of Glow where teachers can have a look to see who wants to get involved in collaboration. Mentors suggested the ability to search for existing Glow Groups by topic would be an additional refinement to the search facilities in Glow: that it would be very valuable. One for the developers!
Also could web-based companies be persuaded to have links which lead to embedding in Glow such as some do for MySpace and Facebook?

It’s not surprising this was suggested, since Glow’s existence is Scotland’s way of bringing learning into the digital world in which our learners live and feel at home. They are used to these links being generated by their favourite websites for their social network spaces – so why not for Glow too?

Working together –
What is the best way to share local authority projects nationally? If some good L.A. projects get off the ground, should url links be placed in the national Staffroom glow group with short descriptors? The idea would be that teachers who want to “see into” the glow group, would then click on the url and complete the request entry box with their details (email address very important as well as name, school etc) and what their interest is in the glow group.

The local ICT Support team have managed to get funding for cover for up to a week out of school to allow some mentors to develop Glow projects! When Glow is getting off the ground, this is such a great situation – being able to step back, reflect, develop, create and go back to school with a Glow Group to use with pupils both in the individual mentors’ own schools and across the city.

Some of the Glow Groups created over the two day training session would be very worthwhile to take further. From environmental sustainability to the opportunities in Curriculum for Excellence of studying the world of the black pudding , there was no lack of imagination or creativity in Aberdeen..
Click on each thumbnail to see more detail.

Glow how to -
One piece of information that may be useful regarding the mechanics of Glow came up a couple of times when the Mentors were helping us clear down the training school site which we had used for the two days (How I remember the sad looks on the mentors faces as they deleted their Glow Groups!):
If a sub-group is created, it needs to be deleted before the parent group can go. Both groups, however, can be deleted from the parent group in the following way: (Deleting a Sub Glow Group)

October 30th, 2008

Shetland Shines with Glow

Katie Barrowman

Comments: none Tags: Tags: good practice, In Service, mentors, Shetland, training
 : Categories Events, Local authorities, Shetland Islands

Hot on the heels of the Orkney Learning Festival came the Shetland Islands Council two-day In Service event at Anderson High School in Lerwick. The event was well attended on both days, even with lying snow, high winds and ferry cancellations taking their toll. The Glow team ran two training events, one an introduction to Glow and the other a session for advanced users. Both were successful, and we were delighted to have the help of some of the Shetland Islands Glow Mentors, who assisted in the introductory session.

A real highlight of the sessions was seeing the work being done within the local authority, including collaboration between Nesting and Tingwall schools, who had arranged a joint trip to London earlier this year. They planned, discussed and documented the trip via a shared Glow Group, with impressive results.

Also impressive was the school Glow Group of Burravoe School, a fourteen-pupil primary. Each of the school’s projects has its own area on the group, as do each of the pupils. In addition, Glow’s being well used in the ICT department of Anderson High School, where they’re venturing into the world of Glow Learn.

All in all, Shetland seems to be embracing Glow, from small one-teacher establishments to large secondaries, with enthusiasm and imagination, and it’ll be great to see what the newly trained attendees who came to the In Service get up to now they’re back in school.