Glow Scotland

Since the Shetland Learning Festival in October, I’ve been keeping in touch with Caroline Breyley, Head Teacher at Burravoe Primary School on Yell. Burravoe is a single teacher school with fourteen pupils from P1 to P7, and all the children love to get on Glow. They have a well-used school Glow site, including a tab for each of the class topics and a packed picture library. I’ve joined in a Glow Meet between the Burravoe children and a class in Dumfries and Galloway where everyone in the class had their own computer and contributed brilliantly, and I look forward to checking in on their site regularly to read the children’s stories and see who’s in the picture of the week.

This week Caroline let me know about the school’s ‘Snow Work’. Last week the school was closed for a few days after the heavy snow, but thanks to Glow the learning didn’t stop. The children were able to log in from home, see their tasks for the day and upload their work once it was finished. What a brilliant way of using Glow to keep in touch and keep learning going when the weather gets in the way!


Glow’s helping hand didn’t stop there though. When the school reopened, Elouise (P3) and her brother Jake (P1) were still unable to get into school, but managed to join in with the class through Glow Chat. While their dad helped Jake out with his contribution, Elouise chatted away with her friends and Ms Breyley easily and confidently, following everyone’s messages despite the speed of the conversation, and telling the story of how she had managed to cut herself – it was all Jake’s fault apparently!

Burravoe is a lovely example of a school where Glow has become part of everyday life for the children and the teacher, and it’s particularly lovely that even the primary one children are on and happily working with the Glow tools. While it’s true that this is a small school, which might make it easier to integrate Glow into whole-school life, the Burravoe model would work equally well with individual primary or secondary classes anywhere. It’s clear that it appeals to the children too, if their eagerness to work on a snow day is anything to go by!

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.