Glow Scotland

September 29th, 2009

Glow Planned Maintenance Update

Joan Martin

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: Helpdesk
 : Categories Uncategorized

Here’s a quick update on the Maintenance planned for Glow!
Sat 26 Sep
The upgrade work that was scheduled for Sat 26 Sep was completed successfully. We did overrun slightly, but Glow was back up, fully functioning by 18:30 - apologies if that caused any inconvenience!

Sat 03 Oct
On Sat 03 Oct we are planning to apply some fixes to Glow. While we do not expect any downtime during this period there is a risk that you may experience some intermittent issues during the maintenance window.
The Glow Known Issues that these fixes will resolve are associated with provisioning and are as follows

2443171 A replace action on a user with ASM rights causes them to lose these rights.

2465741 Approval screens are not correctly filtering on user type causing duplicate users.

2453468 Error when clicking on Accounts awaiting approval or rejected by other establishments. This will fix most instances, but will still show an error when multiple id matches are involved. We are continuing to work on a final solution.

2310671 The order in which user types and registration groups are returned is random, rather than alphabetical.

Sat 17 Oct

On Sat 17 Oct we are planning to carry out some work between 08:00 and 18:00. Again, we don’t expect any downtime, but there is an increased risk of disruption to Glow during this period

We will be carrying out resiliency testing on the SAN (Storage Area Network) that was upgraded at the weekend. We try to ensure that Glow is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When Glow was designed, we identified critical services and components and implemented ways of reducing the likelihood of any disruption, for example by duplicating equipment so that if one bit fails there are others that will continue to run. However, we don’t just rely on this working and need to test it out on a regular basis. On this Saturday we will be basically simulating failures in the connections between the servers and the SAN, to make sure that the alternative routes work and that Glow continues to be available.

That’s everything we have scheduled so far!

September 25th, 2009

And the winners are…

Andrew Brown

Comments: 4 Comments » Tags: Tags: competition, design, themes
 : Categories Development

Thanks to everyone that took part in the poll to choose the new themes that we had designed for Glow. Without further ado, the ones that you gave the most votes to are theme 15 and theme 3, shown below.

But we’re not finished yet! Although you’ve now chosen the professionally designed themes, we’d love you to get involved in designing your own - the competition to design your own theme runs until the end of October, so please get involved - fabulous prizes to be won!

September 22nd, 2009

The Glowing Lounge at the Scottish Learning Festival

ronnierankin

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Glow Meet, glowing lounge, Glowscotland, Scottish Learning Festival
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events

The Scottish Learning Festival is nearly here and the Glowing Lounge returns – bigger and better than before!

This year in addition to the presentations by practitioners there will also be a Showcase area where recent and forthcoming attractions will be unveiled and you will have the chance to see and use them first. Why not come in during our ‘drop in sessions’, enjoy a cake with some tea/coffee and see what’s new in Glow?

For the first time this year we will also be unveiling ‘The Brilliance Bar’ where you can come and ask questions and test out new ideas along with the Glow Development Team. The team will be on hand in the lounge over the two days of SLF to help you with any queries that you may have and pointers to help you get the most out of your experience of Glow.

If you cannot make it along you can still take part by joining the live Glow Meets that will take place during the two days of SLF. Access to these can be found via the SLF Extra Glow Group.

September 20th, 2009

Glow Development Needs You!

Andrew Brown

Comments: 8 Comments » Tags: Tags: discussion, Glowscotland
 : Categories Development

As you know, the National Glow team are dedicated to making Glow better, and we’ve been listening to your feedback in the National Help Glow group, and across the other National Glow groups.

One area where you’d like to see some change is in the discussion forums tool that Glow has inside it. On Friday the 25th of September, we’re hosting a special event to look at possible alterations and enhancements to the discussion forum tool that’s used inside Glow, and we’d love you to be involved! The first 20 people to say they’d like to come along to a two hour session at 11am in the Optima, 58 Robertson street Glasgow will be able to join in the discussions with the National Glow team. If you can’t make it in person, but would love to be involved, then we’ll also run the event through Glow Meet.

How do you let us know you’d like to be involved? Simply say you’d like to come along in the comments section of this blog post.

September 10th, 2009

Reminder - Join in a National Glow Meet!

Katie Barrowman

Comments: 3 Comments » Tags: Tags: Events, Fiona Hyslop, Glow, Glow Meet
 : Categories Events, Glow Meet

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.

September 10th, 2009

Which theme would you choose?

Andrew Brown

Comments: 33 Comments » Tags: Tags: competition, glow themes, slf09
 : Categories Expressive Arts, Technologies

We thought it was time for a change, so we’ve drawn up a few possible new themes for Glow that we’d love your opinion on.

There are 15 in total, and we’d like to gauge which ones are the most popular. The two that are the most popular, we’ll develop into themes that users of Glow can select to use. We’ll announce which two are the winners at SLF this year.

[NOTE: the poll has now closed - thanks to all who took part ]

If you want to find out more about the competition to design your own theme for Glow, then visit this page on the main GlowScotland site.

September 9th, 2009

Glow Planned Maintenance - Sat 26 Sep

Joan Martin

Comments: 12 Comments » Tags: Tags: Helpdesk
 : Categories Uncategorized

Just to let you know that we’ll be carrying out maintenance work to Glow on Saturday 26 September. Glow will be unavailable from 08:00 until approximately 18:00 that day.

The Glow National Helpdesk will now also be using twitter to communicate about planned maintenance etc, and you can find us at http://twitter.com/glowhelpdesk.

September 7th, 2009

Building Glow Communities with Social Studies

mbrown

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow Groups, Uncategorized

The Building Glow Communities event for Social Studies teachers took place on Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd of September at the Stirling Mangement centre. It was a very successful event with six new sub Glow groups being created and added to the Social Studies National Glow group.

Katie Barrowman and Sat Bance from the LTS Glow team did an excellent job presenting over the two days. We were also joined by Bob Hill from Dundee and Richard Elliot from Aberdeen who shared their Glow expertise. they both helped discussion throughout the event. Bob also showed his innovative Weather and Googlemaps Glow group and Richard took notes for his own local building community event in Aberdeen. There was a useful mix of teachers with a wide range of Glow experience in the room: Geography, History Modern Studies, Business Studies, ASN, Primary, and Secondary teachers. Check out the six new sub Glow groups at the bottom of the Noticeboard/ first page in the SSNGg at: https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/default.aspx

Fairtrade Use this site to develop your pupils’ knowledge of and attitudes towards the fair trade movement and its products. These resources have been produced with S1/2 pupils in mind. https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/BGC%20ss1/default.aspx

Geography Higher The purpose of this site is to assist teachers to deliver revision in Higher Geography. Contains sub-groups for Physical, Human and Environmental Interactions. If anyone would like to contribute, contact Colin Inverarity at [email protected]

https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/BGC%20ss2/default.aspx

Higher History Help, discussion and resources for teachers and pupils who are doing the new Higher History Paper from 2010/11. Administrator M.McMinn ([email protected])

https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/BGC%20ss4/default.aspx

Modern Studies This site is for teachers and pupils of Modern Studies throughout the country. This will be an area where everyone involved in Modern Studies will be able to share, contribute and ask questions. Contact Sarah Clement [email protected]

https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/BGC%20ss3/default.aspx?IDSIP=EXT

Scotland: People, Past Events and Societies The purpose of this site is to provide Social Studies teachers with a resource bank of materials for an S1/S2 project which facilitate CfE outcomes and focus on Scotland as its theme. Adiministrators: Vincent Raeburn (gw09raeburnvincent) and Vicki Carlile (gw08lockvicki)

https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/BGC%20ss5/default.aspx

SeASoNs

https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Social%20Studies/BGC%20ss6/default.aspx

These groups add to a growing list of Glow groups in SSNGg:

Conflict of Choice A group offering teachers the opportunity to contribute to an exciting new project at Culloden battlefield exploring moral and ethical dilemmas of war throughout the ages. NEW discussion: tell us which conflicts you are studying!

Seismology School Seismology Project for Geographers and Physicists

Urban Photography A Glow group to share photographs of the changing urban landscape

For Twitter users check out the tweets at #bgccss. All of the above groups are or will be open to pupils and teachers soon. We are looking forward to seing your contributions in the Social Studies National glow groups.

See #bgcss twitter

Membership to be updated shortly from reader to contribution rights……..

September 4th, 2009

Early Years/P1-3 BGC Event

Lesley Dickson

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Local authorities, National Groups

They say that ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’ and here’s the picture that describes what the participants thought of the recent Building Glow Communities Events at Storling Management Centre! To look at the groups they created at the event click here.

September 4th, 2009

Glow Meet with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning

Katie Barrowman

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Events, Fiona Hyslop, Glow, Glow Groups, Glow Meet, National glow groups, National Groups
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow Meet, National Groups, West Dunbartonshire

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