Glow Scotland

February 6th, 2012

Safer Internet Day 2012

pcurrie

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Cyberbullying, Esafety, insafe, Internet, Internet Safety, news, Parents, privacy, Report Abuse, resources, safe searching, Safer Internet Day, safer internet day 2012, Social Networking, Teaching Ideas, Teaching Resources, training
 : Categories Glow, Health and Wellbeing, Learner Resources, Media Literacy, Pupils

This Tuesday may well be just another day, but it is a day that we feel important to acknowledge…

Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world.

This year, Safer Internet Day (SID) will take place on Tuesday 7 February 2012 and will be centred around the theme Connecting generations and educating each other, with the slogan: “Discover the digital world together… safely!”

About Connecting Generations

This topic looks at the reach of the online world across all generations and cultures and encourages families to work together to stay safe online. Whether you are 5, 40 or 75 years old, whether you use the internet once a month or several times a day - each person has something different to bring to the table that can help shape our online experiences and our understanding of online competences and safety. We all have a role to play in ensuring that every child is safe online.

Today our offline and online worlds are strongly connected, from families communicating via webcam with relatives and friends abroad to children doing their homework online. The online world is a unique arena where people of all ages can learn together and from each other, especially regarding online safety. Tech savvy youngsters can teach their elders how to use new technologies, while grandparents can draw on their life experiences to advise younger generations on how to stay safe online, as they discover the digital world together.

How to take part?

Visit saferinternetday.org for more information and to download SID promotional materials and resources.

Glow Resources:

Visit the Internet Safety and Responsible Use Resources site for a brilliant introduction to this topic and a coming together of all the sites that provide further teaching resources. This blog brings together all the well-respected Internet safety sites, including CEOP and ThinkUKnow.

December 5th, 2011

Panda-monium as Sweetie and Sunshine land in Edinburgh

pcurrie

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: CfE, China, Chinese, early years, edinburgh, environment, Events, Glow, Glow Meet, Glow TV, Literacy, pandas, Tian Tian, video, Yang Guang, zoos
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Early Years, Events, Glow, Learner Resources, Literacy, Pupils

Our Glow TV team had an unusually early start to their Sunday as they braved the cold and snow and made their way to Edinburgh zoo for the arrival of two very special black and white guests. Known as Tian Tian and Yang Guang, or ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Sunshine’ the Pandas arrived just after lunchtime on Sunday 4th December to an excited throng of flag-waving well-wishers and a tartan-clad pipe band playing ‘Scotland the Brave’.

The pandas’ arrival marks the start of a ten year stay at Edinburgh Zoo, which many people hope will result in a baby panda. Baby or not, the new residents are sure to bring the zoo many new visitors, keen to catch a glimpse of these endangered bears. They arrived at Edinburgh airport, having made the 12 hour journey from China in a special ‘panda express’ Fed Ex plane with panda livery and a crew dressed in kilts.

Our Glow TV team of junior reporters, Callan, Cammy, Daniel, Emma and Evan, were at the zoo’s Education centre all morning, making Chinese lanterns and watching a panda presentation as well as capturing interviews with zoo staff. They, and lots of other children were then given special black and white jackets and hats and Scottish, British and Chinese flags to wave, before making their way down the hill to welcome the pandas from the airport.

The panda reporters did, of course, capture lots and lots of footage of the arrival excitement for Glow users and this week sees Glow TV turn into ‘Pandamonium’ as we bring you as much panda-related content as we can. Pam Currie from the Glow team will kick this all off on Tuesday at 2:30pm as she gives viewers a taste of what’s to come and provides sneaky early details of an exciting panda competition we will be launching. After that, on Wednesday morning at 10:00 am, Pam is joined in the TV studio in Glasgow by Louise and Melissa from the Daily What News, our Glow news service for schools. They will share panda facts, discuss the related news articles and resources, and give more details and tips on the competition to win ‘Pandaphernalia’, or ‘cute black and white panda stuff,’ if you are groaning at our panda puns by now!

Later on Wednesday, at 2:30 pm Glow TV viewers can watch our ‘Pandamentary’ which offers a truly behind-the-scenes look at all the zoo arrival excitement we captured on Sunday. Watch our intrepid panda reporters take part in fun panda activities and see the zoo keepers’ panda presentation from the Education centre. We even managed to grab a real scoop, when our reporters were relaxing with a hot drink in the cafe, only to see Yang Guang’s truck being reversed alongside us as the zoo staff prepared to unload him to his new home. As true reporters would do, they quickly grabbed their cameras and ran back out to the cold to try to get some sneaky footage of Yang Guang in the back of the truck.

‘Pandaphernalia’ competition details will be revealed in all of these Glow TV broadcasts this week and entries will run until December 16th. Tune in and find out how to enter. A good few black and white panda prizes to be had, including two cuddly panda toys, panda wristbands, panda rock, panda sweets, panda pens and a panda keyring, as well as some limited edition Glow TV t-shirts.

Education Scotland has set up a special ‘UK Pandas’ blog to celebrate the arrival of Sweetie and Sunshine and suggest CfE learning ideas as an inter-disciplianary resource. The blog also contains integrated links to the Chinese Embassy’s excellent ‘Panda Pals’ site, the Fed Ex blog that tracked the journey from China, the Edinburgh zoo homepage and a special Edinburgh Zoo panda site as well as videos and a host of other links.

September 26th, 2011

Pupils’ Common Room - bursting with resources for pupils

ggallacher

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Glow, Learner Resources, Mathematics, National Groups, Pupils, Technologies, Uncategorized

It’s great to see so many pupils across Scotland using the Pupil Area on the national site within Glow. The area is full of great resources and is now one of the more popular areas in Glow. Join in by logging in to the Glow National Site

For those interested in the designing of computer games you can have a look behind the scenes at some game design companies including Denki and Honeyslug. These video resources have been created by Education Scotland and some have been made available with kind permission of the companies. These should inform and inspire budding game designers, they also explicitly demonstrate that you don’t have to be a programmer to be involved in making computer games.

Here are just some of the resources available:

September 2nd, 2011

Screening Shorts - New Moving Image Education Resource

GerryQ

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: CfE, CPD, Creative Scotland, Education Scotland, English, Expressive Arts, film, Glow, Glow Groups, Learning and Teaching Scotland, Literacy, media literacy, moving image education, National glow groups, video
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Expressive Arts, Glow, Glow Groups, Learner Resources, Literacy, Media Literacy, Moving Image Education, National Groups

The team is currently busy working on Screening Shorts, a major new online resource to help teachers exploit moving image education in the classroom.

Developed by Creative Scotland and Education Scotland, Screening Shorts will be unveiled at SLF 2011, 21-22 Spetember 2011.

The resource will provide:

• Approximately 50 downloadable short films, free to Glow users
• Film tutorials explaining the core concepts of film language
• Lesson examples in film format showing how short films can be used for a wide variety of classroom activities
• A link to CPD opportunities and activities for teachers wishing to explore how to use moving image across Curriculum for Excellence
• A gateway to the growing Moving Image Education online community on Glow.

Watch this space for more information before and during SLF 2011…

August 11th, 2011

BBC Class Clips

nstewart

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: BBC, free resources, resources, video
 : Categories Early Years, Learner Resources, Literacy, Moving Image Education

Find educational clips from the best of BBC programmes in the Class Clips video and radio archive. BBC Class Clips (http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/)

Class Clips is the BBC’s archive of educational video and audio material for use in primary and secondary schools. Working with teachers across the UK, the best of current BBC programmes and back catalogue of schools television and radio the best range of clips to help with classroom teaching are chosen.

There are currently more than 10,000 clips in the Class Clips archive, all searchable by level, subject, topic and keyword and all accompanied by notes from teachers on the content and how it could be used. From major factual series such as:

Wonders of the Universe

Human Planet

and A History of Scotland

through to old favourites like Around Scotland and See You See Me, clips cover a wide range of subjects across all age levels, many with broad potential for cross curricular learning.

Class Clips is also home to new, specifically-created educational video.

Talkie Time

is a set of innovative videos for Early and First levels, that let you and your class interact with on-screen characters while learning about Numeracy, Literacy and Health and Wellbeing. Blethering Scots features famous faces discussing Scots language and its place in history, poetry, media and the playground.

All content on Class Clips is free to access and can be streamed directly into class. We’re also in the process of making all our clips embeddable, making it even easier to include them in blogs and web pages.

To find out what clips are available to help with your classes, visit Class Clips and start searching.

August 11th, 2011

Explore the past and explain the present with Whose Town?

nstewart

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Edinburgh City, Learner Resources, National Groups, Social Studies

Whose Town? is an innovative resource for teaching social studies. It is a fun and interactive digital resource which brings Edinburgh’s history to life. It has been made available to all Glow users and can be found in the Whose Town? Glow Group, you can follow the link from here or from the National Site.

It is built on the City of Edinburgh’s heritage collections and is linked to the Curriculum for Excellence second, third and fourth levels.

Whose Town? looks at Edinburgh and Scotland’s past from 1850s to the 1950s through the eyes of people who lived there. There are 14 lives to discover who lived in Victorian times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and in the Fifties. Archival material is collected in a digital box and hidden in an attic for pupils to uncover and examine. Each life is captured at a particular point in history, creating a snapshot of their life: a Life in a Box.

Discover how life was for Levi, a destitute and orphaned boy in late Victorian Edinburgh or learn about Robert Louis Stevenson, a young writer studying at Edinburgh University, but destined to travel the world. Learn how nine year old Bessie became the youngest Suffragette or uncover Italian Luca’s story as he established an ice cream business in Musselburgh. Nancy tells what life was like as an evacuee in the country and then as a schoolgirl in a city at war. Hear a first hand account from Hugh about his time working on Edinburgh’s trams in the Fifties or the early days of television from Bill.

There are over 450 unique and original documents for teachers and pupils to explore. Maps, newspaper articles, photographs, objects, documents, video and audio clips, and the bits and bobs that everyone collects are all used to bring each person’s history to life. Whose Town? also contains a wealth of support materials for teachers from lesson plans to ideas on how to use archival materials in the classroom.

Whose Town? is a Heritage Lottery Funded project. It was developed by Edinburgh City Libraries in collaboration with Edinburgh Museums and Galleries and Edinburgh City Archives, and has been supported by many partner organisations.

For more information contact the Digital and Information Team at Central Library in Edinburgh on 0131 242 8047. You’ll also find a wide range of supporting material on Edinburgh City Libraries, Museums and Galleries’ online image library, Capital Collections.

July 26th, 2011

Glow TV

pcurrie

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: CfE, CPD, Edinburgh International book Festival, Education Scotland, Glow, Glow Featured, Glow Meet, Glowscotland, glowtv, Scotland, Scottish Book Trust
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Early Years, Events, Expressive Arts, Glow, Glow Meet, Health and Wellbeing, Learner Resources, Literacy, Local authorities, Mathematics, Moving Image Education, National Groups, Pupils, Religious and Moral Education, Sciences, Social Studies, Technologies, Uncategorized, modern languages, research

Glow TV is our way of bringing the National Glow Meets to you from the one, easy to find, place. Launching for the start of the new term, we have a major schedule of ‘programmes’ planned for the coming session, including, hopefully, a whole series of programmes on topics such as: CfE, SQA, Glow, Glowing Thursdays, World of Work Wednesdays, Creativity, Games Design and Moving Image Education.

This is, of course, in addition to the many exciting events we already broadcast through Glow, such as the author events from the Scottish Book Trust and Edinburgh Book Festival, as well as those hugely popular one-offs like the Dr Who event and the NASA astronauts one, for example. All of these Glow national events will now be accessed through the one central place, Glow TV.

We are now using new software for Glow Meet (Adobe Connect) and this software allows us access to a recording of a Glow Meet, instantly from within Glow. That got us thinking that we could really develop the idea of Glow Meets further and offer a kind of ‘Watch Again’ facility, a bit like the online efforts of the major TV channels. Okay, so we don’t have the equipment or resources that the major TV channels do, but we have created an area in Glow that provides users with a schedule and allows users the opportunity to add programmes to their own, personal, schedule when they sign-up for events.

Signing-up for these events/programmes is easier now, too. Instead of having to complete a sign-up form for every event you want to take part in, all you have to do is register once for Glow TV and then choose your username from a drop-down list whenever you wish to sign-up to a specific event. Easy.

It is hoped that a lot of the programmes we bring you will include live debate/discussion on important topics in Education, as well as many online training programmes.We have managed to procure a little room in Education Scotland’s Optima office in Glasgow and turn it into our very own Glow TV studio, which even has a couch and a coffee table, so that our presenters look like true TV professionals in the making!

So, with a whole schedule of programmes you can tailor to your own personal guide, easy sign-up and channel categories to make it easy to find recordings and watch again, Glow TV is a brilliant addition to Glow’s assets. To register for Glow TV and then be able to have your own personal schedule and easy sign-up for programmes, click here.

March 31st, 2011

Introducing Stevie Dante - Imaginate’s virtual theatre critic

Julia Fenby

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Co-Create, Curriculum for Excellence, East Renfrewshire, Expressive Arts, Learner Resources, Shetland Islands

Imaginate’s step by step guide to evaluating the performing arts is now live and available via Glow. This interactive online resource has been designed through consultation with teachers and pupils from Whalsay Primary, Shetland and Busby Primary, East Renfrewshire as part of Imaginate’s Co-Create project.

Stevie Dante is a virtual theatre critic – he guides users through a range of activities intended to help them explore, evaluate and assess their experiences of live performance. His engaging personality, good looks and wit will ensure that both primary and secondary pupils and teachers will love using this resource.

Through the Co-Create project, pupils’ and teachers’ feedback, via a series of theatre visits, workshops and on-Glow activities, informed Imaginate’s development of the interactive resource, in partnership with Screenmedia, digital communications studio. The resource has now been launched nationally so that all teachers can use it. Imaginate’s aim now is that a new community of users will share their performance reviews via the project Glow Group.

The new resource aims to support teachers in meeting Curriculum for Excellence Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes across all levels, and encourages pupils to develop critical thinking skills and become more able to express their own thoughts, feelings and opinions with confidence whilst valuing those of others.

Co-Create is funded through a partnership between Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Creative Scotland National Lottery Fund.

February 7th, 2011

‘Safer Internet’ Quizzes

Lesley Dickson

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Health and Wellbeing, Learner Resources, Social Studies, Technologies

Space

Sp

To raise awareness about e-safety for Safer Internet Day, Promethean Planet and Millionaire For Schools have teamed up to give Planet members exclusive access to a selection of FREE quizzes to help you tackle the issue in the classroom.

Promethean partnered with award winning ICT and digital content development company, Charanga, to launch an educational version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? which is compatible for use with its Learner Response Systems. Millionaire For Schools brings the fun of the world famous TV game show into the classroom. Teachers can ‘Ask the Audience’ and pupils become virtual contestants using their ActiVote or ActivExpression handsets to submit their individual answers.

Please note that it is not necessary to have a whiteboard to play the quizzes nor is it necessary to register on the Millionaire web site.

Click here to play the quizzes.

January 13th, 2011

Espresso Science

Gail Cairns

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: resources
 : Categories Learner Resources

Espresso Science is a fantastic free resource available to all Glow users offering a wide range of video clips and multimedia activities to help children develop a range of critical thinking skills.

Espresso Science modules encourage pupils to think logically and develop conclusions based on the evidence presented to them.

Features include:

• News-based video footage
• Interactive quizzes, surveys and tools for creative learning
• Self assessment opportunities for children
• Photograph and graphic archives, websites, fact files, vocabulary banks and more.

To access Espresso Science modules and find out more about all the learner resources available to you, visit the LTS Learner Resources homepage.