Glow Scotland

September 15th, 2010

Have your say on the future of Glow

Gail Cairns

Comments: 4 Comments » Tags: Tags: Glow
 : Categories Benefits, Development, Glow

Glow is the world’s first national intranet for education. It is transforming the way the curriculum is delivered in Scotland. Now, Glow is looking to the future to ensure that it equips practitioners and learners with the tools they need today and tomorrow.

School staff, pupils, parents and other stakeholders are invited to help shape the future of Glow by having their say on how they would like to see it developed.

We would like to hear from all these groups, it doesn’t matter if they haven’t used Glow very much or have not yet had the opportunity to use it at all, we would like everyone to complete the survey to help us understand all views.

September 10th, 2010

Glowing Cookbook - Developing confident and independent learners

Gail Cairns

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Angus, Benefits, Curriculum for Excellence, Development, Glow Groups, Glow Learn

Lisa Chalmers is a Support for Learning teacher at Arbroath High School. Lisa was keen to explore how Glow could enrich learning for a small group of S1 pupils who need additional support with English, Maths and Social Skills.
Glow was introduced at Arbroath High School just a few years ago and is now used widely throughout the school. Last year, a very successful Transition Glow Group linked the school with its associate primaries: this work is featured in the cookbook Transition Glow Groups in Angus schools.

Lisa felt that Glow was the perfect tool for her S1 Social Skills class. This small group of pupils required additional support to consolidate basic skills in English and Maths. Individual needs range from a pupil who had recently arrived in Scotland and required time developing her skills in English as a second language, to pupils with poor reading skills or mild dyslexia.

Many of the pupils also required time and support to develop independent learning skills, such as developing confidence in their own ability, taking responsibility for their learning, staying on task, and interacting and supporting their peers.

With such a diversity of abilities and needs, it was often impractical to teach pupils together as a class. Lisa aimed to find time and space in each session to work in a focused way with one or two pupils at a time. This required providing pupils with the skills to work unaided and remain focused.

As Lisa has access to 4 computers in her room, she was able to rotate pupils around a number of activities, including using Glow.

Visit this Cookbook.

February 28th, 2010

The Chemical Industry - Glow Meet, 18th March

J Jelly

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: careers, chemistry, industry, NQ Higher
 : Categories Aberdeen City, Benefits, Events, Glow Meet, National Groups, Pupils, Sciences

Higher Chemistry pupils need to know about the Chemical Industry.
Unit 3, part a, is all about the Chemical Industry.
Other chemistry classes will want to hear about career prospects.

Chemical Engineers, Gavin Smith and Gordon Hardie, will be covering this Higher Chemistry topic, and giving a flavour of the life and rewards of a chemical engineer on Thursday, 18th March at 13.45 in a Glow Meet in the National Sciences Glow Group. Last year, 8 schools took part in the live Glow Meet. Many more are able to take advantage of this Glow Meet opportunity this year. Make sure your pupils can benefit! If you are not familiar with using Glow Meet, click here.

A career in the chemical industry is exciting and well-rewarded, but both the study required, and the job itself, can be hard work and dangerous. Listen to Gavin, who has decades of experience, and Gordon, a recent graduate recruit, retell their experiences. Kincorth Academy, Aberdeen, is hosting the event, so pupils there will be able to ask Gavin and Gordon questions directly, but classes from around the country will also be able to see and hear the engineers, and ask questions of them via Glow Meet’s tools. Ask them questions about the chemistry, and their jobs.

If you think you will be able to bring your pupils into the Glow Meet, leave a note in the National Sciences Glow Group.

What pupils need to know:

• The UK chemical industry is a major contributor to both the quality of our life and our national economy.
• Stages in the manufacture of a new product can include research, pilot study, scaling-up, production and review.
• A chemical manufacturing process usually involves a sequence of steps.
• A feedstock is a reactant from which other chemicals can be extracted or synthesised.
• The major raw materials in the chemical industry are fossil fuels, metallic ores and minerals, air and water.
• Chemical manufacturing may be organised as a batch or as a continuous process.
• Process conditions are chosen to maximise economic efficiency.
• Manufacturing costs include capital costs, fixed costs and variable costs.
• The UK chemical industry is, by and large, capital rather than labour intensive.
• Safety and environmental issues are of major importance to the chemical industry.
• Both historical and practical factors affect the location of chemical industries.
• The efficient use of energy is significant in most chemical processes.
• Factors influencing the choice of a particular route include cost, availability and suitability of feedstock(s), yield of product(s), opportunities for the recycling of reactants and marketability of by-products.

January 28th, 2010

Sharing Glow Experiences - View Responses

Dougie Eustace

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Benefits

You can now see what other Glow users are doing with Glow by browsing through the 100+ responses we’ve received to the Sharing Glow Experiences questionnaire. This can be accessed at http://bit.ly/d1MkGa. (You will need your Glow login details).

This basic viewer allows you to browse sequentially through the responses or look at the summary information. We are hoping to provide a better version later in the spring which will retain response formatting and allow selection by authority and stage.

If you haven’t told us about your experiences yet, please consider doing so now. If you respond by the end of February, you have the chance to win an Ipod. You can see more details here http://bit.ly/dkTMyu.

December 17th, 2009

Glider challenge a Glowing success

Lorna Arbuckle

Comments: 1 Comment Tags:  : Categories Benefits, Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow Chat, Glow Groups, Local authorities, National Groups, Sciences, Uncategorized

The Glider Challenge Glow Meet took place on 15th December live from the Concorde hangar at the National Museum of Flight, East Fortune. The Glow Meet was run by the central Glow team in collaboration with the sciences and technologies team. Mr Cain’s Primary 6 class from Pencaitland Primary school were live at the Museum carrying out the challenge.

Earlier in the day they had been in the museum’s Fantastic Flight interactive gallery where they had explored a range of hands on exhibits to help them learn more about flight and the training needed to become a pilot.
Through Glow, 30 classes took part, with over 500 pupils and teachers taking part in the challenge. The Glow Meet kicked off with a representative from the museum presenting on the four forces of flight and then the classes were presented with the challenge and began drawing and discussing their ideas. At the Glow Meet and in classrooms around the country gliders were built, tested, adjusted and retested. One class managed to get their glider to fly 15 metres! Adam Love Rodgers, the programme and Learning Officer answered questions on Glow Chat as people carried the challenge.

The event was great fun and many classes had learnt about flight in the run up to the Glow Meet.

Resources and reflective questions are posted in the glider challenge tab on the national Glow science site; why not take a look? A photograph competition is being run where classes can send their photographs to Wendy French, [email protected] The best photograph will win a prize for the class and will be announced in January.

December 10th, 2009

An Even Fresher Glow

Lorna Arbuckle

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: glow themes, refresh, storage
 : Categories Benefits, Development, Uncategorized

I am delighted to announce that the next two improvements from the Glow Refresh project will be deployed to Glow this weekend.

The two new themes you voted for will be available from 18:00 on Sat 12 Dec. If you’d like to see a preview of what will be coming, check out the Glow Refresh Group

We’ll also be upgrading Glow Mail Storage. The amount of space given to Pupil Accounts will be increased to 20Mb, with all other accounts increased to 200Mb. The Glow Mail administration screens will be altered to allow these new mailbox sizes to be applied and also to allow the giving of more space to some users in a domain.

We do not anticipate any downtime as a result of implementing these changes, but as with any changes there is an increased risk of disruption to Glow during this period.

In addition, the Glow Mail admin screen will be unavailable from 18:00 on Fri 11 Dec until 08:00 on Mon 14 Dec.

November 17th, 2009

Share Your Glow Experiences

Dougie Eustace

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Benefits Management, benefits realisation, Glow benefits, Glow Experiences
 : Categories Benefits

The Glow Team is asking for your help in implementing an ambitious programme to build an overall picture of how practitioners are using Glow across Scotland and the benefits that are being achieved as a result. We are keen to receive input from those new to Glow or who are using Glow in a relatively simple way to provide a useful outcome as well as those with more experience. We want to represent as many different aspects of Glow usage as possible so we’d like to hear about anything you have done. Some examples might be:

• I have eliminated some paperwork or costs by using Glow to disseminate information on-line
• I have shared materials, ideas, thoughts or practice with my colleagues using Glow
• I have found that my class are more motivated when we use Glow for class work
• I set tasks for learners to complete within Glow
• I allow pupils to post their work in a Glow group which then provides a rich record of work
• My class have joined a national Glow Meet event which provided a focus for our topic work

The list is endless….if you’ve done it; we want you to tell us about it. It doesn’t have to be particularly innovative or best practice; we simply want you to share how you are using it.

We recognise that your time is extremely valuable, so we’ve created an on-line questionnaire within Glow which will take less than ten minutes for most people to complete and the displayed results will be anonymous. Once we have sufficient responses, the plan is to publish the results within the Glow community and so you should bear in mind that your comments may be viewed by colleagues, head teachers, school management teams, pupils, and in some authorities, parents.

We would very much appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to share your experiences of using Glow with us. There are three ways to access the questionnaire.

The survey can be found here.

Or ….you can access from www.glowhelp.me/experiences

Or ….Log in to Glow, go to National Site, National Groups, Glowing Potential, Glow Groups, Benefits Management and Realisation, Sharing Glow Experiences.

If you are interested in further discussion of the benefits of using Glow, there is a dedicated Glow Group for Benefits Management and Realisation here.