Glow Scotland

March 31st, 2010

April’s Maths Puzzle

ronnierankin

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April’s Puzzles have now been added to the Glow Group, a day early would you believe!

You can access the Group with your username and password by using the link

http://tinyurl.com/aprilpuzzle

The last puzzle, as always, is pretty tough!

March 30th, 2010

Science on Glow and in the Media

J Jelly

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: BBC, biology, chemistry, Events, Glow Meet, physics, problem solving, science
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow Groups, Glow Meet, Local authorities, National Groups, Pupils, Sciences

Have you noticed how many Glow events exploring science there have been recently? Scotland needs to nurture young scientists to ensure our country has a prosperous future - and Glow is doing its best to help. From Doctor Bunhead to the research scientists who took part in last week’s “Too Hot to Handle?” Space Glow Meet, to the Industrial Chemistry Glow Meet engineers, scientists and industrialists have been using Glow to reach our youngsters and share the excitement and rewards of science. There is a buzz about science at the moment. Television is also playing its part. Professor Brian Cox’s “Wonders of the Solar System” is inspiring young physicists. “Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds” sets the imagination alight. “Bang goes the Theory” is encouraging a new generation of Spoofbusters! Pupils can take part in school in live Glow Meets with real scientists and then get reinforcement at home on their TV sets. It will be interesting to see if there is more uptake in the sciences over the next few years as pupils with this sort of stimulus choose their career paths.

Our young people are already fantastic problem solvers. When the JANET link was down on 18^th March and the west of Scotland’s schools had no internet access, one school in Motherwell was able to access the Chemical Industry Glow Meet through a pupil’s laptop and mobile connection. Good thinking!

If you have missed any of the recent Glow Meet science events, or want to access presentations and other files associated with the Glow Meets, click on the hyperlinks in the paragraphs above, or go to the national Sciences Glow Group and explore it to see what’s coming next.

March 29th, 2010

Glow Mail is Live!

Lorna Arbuckle

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We are delighted to announce that Glow Mail is now live.

With its refreshed interface, Glow users can expect a smoother look and feel with many improved features including drag and drop; it is easier to organise your mails and folders. In the previous version of Glow Mail, text could not be formatted, now you can format your text with font, colours and tables to name a few. You can navigate more easily between mails without having to close any windows and a new icon is available to indicate if mails have been replied to, something that wasn’t available in the previous version. Glow Mail will also automatically check for new mails. Sharing address books also is easier to do.

Visit the Glow Mail Glow Group where we talk you through the new features step by step and answer your FAQs.

In addition to the new look Glow Mail, Glow users are now benefiting from other features as part of the Glow refresh. Glow Forums are now live with more efficient and easier to navigate discussions. Two new Glow themes have been delivered making 10 in total so far and choosing your themes is now done with images. Glow users are also benefiting from increased storage capacity; bringing every school and local authority site more space to upload documents, images and videos.

Would you like to find out more? You can log on to the interactive Glow Refresh Glow Group where we talk you through the planned improvements and you can get a sneak preview of what the new functions will look like.
Coming soon… watch this space to find out about even more refreshed features you can expect to see in Glow including additional themes to choose from, new Glow Blogs and new Glow Wikis.

March 24th, 2010

11am, March 29th - Learn to add thrills and chills to your writing with Cathy MacPhail

J Jelly

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 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Dundee City, Events, Glow Meet, Literacy, National Groups

In her books, Cathy MacPhail likes taking young characters into situations which would be challenging for adults. Her writing is full of pace, wit and cliff-hanger moments. She is extremely skilled at creating tension and making the hair on the back of the reader’s neck stand up!

She is willing to share her secrets with children across Scotland via Glow Meet on Monday 29^th March at 11am in the Writers’ Workshop Glow Group. The Glow Meet webpart is at the bottom of the discussions page in the Glow Group. There is more information on Cathy’s page.

Cathy will deliver a writer’s workshop which will include:

• Using language to create atmosphere
• Scaring the pants off your audience!

The workshop is aimed at upper primary but everyone is welcome to join in. Put it in your class planner for an interesting literacy focus.

March 24th, 2010

Don’t miss an exclusive Glowing Thursday’s double bill tomorrow

Lorna Arbuckle

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The first event, Too hot to handle, provides access to scientists in Scotland working on a range of hot topics through a vidcast, teaching materials and a discussion board. In the first session of the Too Hot to Handle project teachers and pupils can ask astronomers questions about space. This Glow Meet will take place tomorrow at 2pm and is aimed at P6-S3.

Join us for the second event at 4pm to find out more about podcasting in the classroom. Podcasting involves the production & distribution of digital media. This can be a motivational classroom activity in any area of the curriculum with a good fit with the CfE or a way of provide media to pupils tat can be accessed on many devices.

We will look at what podcasting is (and is not), a range of ways it can be incorporated into Teaching & Learning and some practical ways to publish podcasts.

Join us on the day in the Glowing Potential Glow Group

March 23rd, 2010

Just Ask – A Special Parent’s Event, is taking place on Wednesday 24 March

Lorna Arbuckle

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Parents have the right to ‘just ask’ for help for their child, either from school or the local authority, to help them navigate their way through whatever issue is affecting them. This event will be of interest to individual parents and parent councils.

Find out more about how parents can access additional support for their children in a special National Glow Chat. A representative from Enquire, the independent advisory service, will be available to answer your questions and there will also be case studies of young people who have been helped and more information on the range of issues and help that can be provided.

To join this event on the day visit the Parents Glow Group.

If you dont have access to Glow and would like to take part, please get in touch directly with your key contact within your Local Authority. To find out who your key contact is, please visit the Glow in your area section of the GlowScotland website and select your local authority. if you ave any questions about the event please contact Jennifer McDougall, Glow Development Officer at [email protected]

March 22nd, 2010

Our Glow Forums are now live

Lorna Arbuckle

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We are delighted to announce that the new Glow Forums are now live.

Bringing users more efficient and easier to navigate discussions, Glow Forums have been designed to allow increased manageability of the various discussions users may be involved with. Rather than having to click back into each individual discussion thread, Glow Users are now also able to view their own board index which will show activity across all the Glow discussions they take part in.

In addition to the new Glow Forums, Glow users are now benefitting from increased storage capacity. This means that every school and local authority site now has more space to upload documents, images and videos. New Glow Mail facilities are also set to be launched soon so watch this space.

For more information on Glow Forum’s and other Glow refresh features, visit out Refresh Glow Group.

If you don’t have access to Glow, visit the Glow in your area page on the GlowScotland Website, select your local authority and you will be provided with details of your Key Contact.

March 19th, 2010

Glowing Cookbook - Parental Involvement

Lorna Arbuckle

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Sumwher school have been using Glow for teaching and learning for 6 months. All students, teachers and staff have Glow log-ins. Parent users for Glow are planned to be introduced during the next school session; Sumwher has an active Parent Council.

To address the findings of the school report the school and Parent Council has decided to use Glow and Glow Groups as a medium to provide relevant information for parents .

Visit this Glowing cookbook to find out how.

March 19th, 2010

Glowing Cookbook - Using Glow to support remote teaching

Lorna Arbuckle

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Richard Burgess is Principal Teacher of ICT Development at Broughton High School in Edinburgh. He is currently seconded as a Glow Development Officer to the City of Edinburgh Council. Due to timetable commitments and lack of specialist cover support, Richard is required to teach an Intermediate 1 Computing Studies class.

For three of the five hours of class commitment, Richard is physically present with the class at Broughton. For the other two hours, when possible, Richard teaches and monitors the class remotely via Glow.

In this cookbook Richard will talk us through how he uses Glow to provide virtual support to his pupils.

Visit this cookbook here

March 19th, 2010

Reminder of Glow Cookbooks Competition

Lesley Dickson

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What exactly is a Glow Cookbook I hear you ask? Put simply it is description of how Glow is being used by classroom practitioners and how it has enhanced learning and teaching with their pupils.

Like a traditional cookbook it contains the ingredients, which Glow components have been used, some advice on method, a quick ‘how to’ video, and the end product, a description of the impact from the teacher or pupils.

So if you’d like to know how to use Glow for innovative and successful transitions or use Glow Meet to support conversational French or how to create a Worry Forum or how to embed video as a stimulus for writing or how to use Glow for Personal Learning Planning or enhancing staff communication or…OK so you get the point. Go on take a peek and leave us some feedback.

We hope to add many more of these short cookbooks to help generate useful ideas and showcase how Glow is being used around the country.

Glow Cookbooks can be accessed via the Glow national site Help link or linking directly to http://cookbooks.glowscotland.org.uk/ or using a Google search for Glow Cookbooks.

Tell your story and win a Flip video camera

We’d love to hear and share your story. How are you using Glow and what has been the impact on you or your pupils? Please send us your Glow Cookbook for sharing on our cookbook site. From the first fifty we will select three winners to receive a natty Flip video camera. All content should be emailed to [email protected] and titled Cookbook competition.

What are we looking for?

Take a look at some of the current cookbooks they follow a similar format. This is a useful template for creating your cookbook. There are some points that you need to bear in mind:

• Your cookbook should include a brief context
• It should include pictures and screen shots – but we don’t expect you to submit any video
• Any graphics etc should be copyright friendly and all photos must have the appropriate permissions granted for sharing over the internet
• The main element of the cookbook will be a description of the impact using Glow has had on facilitating learning
• You do not need to include any instructions on how to add, amend or use specific web parts
• An email address would be most useful to encourage further collaboration
• All submitted cookbooks (subject to a QA process) will be shared on the Glow Cookbook siteSo get writing! We know that there are lots of you using Glow for a whole variety of contexts and curricular areas and we’d love to share these stories!