Glow Scotland

May 4th, 2012

SCCYP - Your RIGHT wee blether feedback

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: RIGHT Wee Blether, SCCYP, Tam Baillie
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Early Years, Events, Glow TV, Pupils, Scottish Borders

Friday 11th of May @ 11:00

Once again join Tam Baillie and the Blether Bear live from Eyemouth Nursery and Primary in the Scottish Borders to hear about all the exciting things your children said in a RIGHT wee blether.

Tam will be saying thank you to everyone who took part and telling the story of a RIGHT wee blether.

It will be a chance for your children to find out what the Blether Bear has been doing and to ask Tam what he has been doing since our last Glow Meet.

Sign up and join us for fun and games on the day!

September 15th, 2011

Daily Quote - Using Glow to support Standard Grade English

ggallacher

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Glow, Glow Learn, Literacy, Scottish Borders

” User friendly Glow learn is an area I will definitely make more use of in the future”

Judith Weston, teacher of English at Earlston High School, Scottish Borders

Find out more by visiting the Glow Cookbook here

April 18th, 2011

Exploring Safe and Unsafe Use of ICT Through Drama

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: Borders Youth Theatre, Earlston Primary, Scottish Borders
 : Categories Expressive Arts, Glow, Glow Meet, Pupils, Scottish Borders, Technologies

Despite a range of excellent resources and plenty of publicity, there is still considerable concern about the dangers to young people of the misuse of modern technology - ‘cyber bullying’, access to inappropriate material, ‘grooming’ of young people etc.

Although young people, when asked specific questions about the use of ICT will give ‘correct’ answers, there is often a mismatch between their knowledge and their actions.

Borders Youth Theatre will work with a class of P6 at Earlston Primary School, Scottish Borders using drama to explore the issues involved and to devise some pieces of theatre which will illustrate the dangers of mobile phones and the internet and possible safe practice.

The drama pieces will be performed and filmed and broadcast live across Scotland via Glow Meet on Tuesday 26th April from 1.45 - 2.30pm. There will be an opportunity for pupils in other schools to interact and perhaps influence the performances.

Although there is no attempt to replace the many excellent sources of information, there will some material available which schools may wish to use to follow up the project with pupils and parents.

Sign up now and join us on Tuesday 26th April at 1.45pm!

December 8th, 2010

Glow in the snow - Inspiring stories

Gail Cairns

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: Glow
 : Categories Aberdeenshire, Dundee City, Falkirk, Fife, Glow, Glow Groups, Scottish Borders, Shetland Islands, Stirling, West Lothian

As the bad weather continues to close schools throughout Scotland, teachers all over the country have continued to use Glow to stay in touch with their class. Local authorities have been utilising Glow in a variety of ways.

In a West Lothian Primary School, teachers are using a local authority level Glow Group to support snow activities, as well as poetry competitions, snow photographs, snow science, animation and other general snow day tasks. Teachers are using the West Lothian Council Glow noticeboard to leave messages for pupils asking them to go to their class’ Glow Group to find work. West Lothian teachers are also using Glow messenger for staff meetings.

St Margarets Academy in West Lothian are using Glow for support and resources for many subjects including, Physics, Business, Biology, Administration, Geography, Maths, Chemistry, Modern Studies and Sociology. Login to Glow to visit the West Lothian - Sharing Our Learning Blog and find out more about how West Lothian teachers have been using Glow in the Snow.

Dundee also created a local authority Glow Snow Day Group where teachers can upload work for pupils. Teachers have also created simple individual groups called Snow Days allowing other members of staff to contribute work for pupils.

Other Authorities using Glow in the snow include:

• Aberdeenshire – Aberdeenshire launched the M2C Snow Glow Group. Now open nationally, this Glow Group offers a huge range of snow based online and offline activities. Other resources available in this Group include an advent calendar, weather research, art, snowmen photographs, symmetry using snowflakes, templates and instructions for creating a snow journal and guidance on measuring snow depth.

• Scottish Borders – Teachers in several departments in Hawick High School have put work up on Glow for schools.

• Shetland Islands - Burravoe Primary School in Shetland have been using Glow tasks and blogs to keep in touch with pupils

• Fife - Several schools in Fife have been encouraging home access to Glow.

• Falkirk – Glow Blogs are being used by pupils at Carronshore Primary School while the school is closed.

• Stirling - Open to everyone, Stirling Council has made a fantastic Glow blog for pupils to use. Newton Primary in Stirling have also been using Glow to set work for pupil during snow days.

To find out more about using the tools within Glow, visit the Glow Help Blog or alternatively you can e-mail Glow Admin.

November 17th, 2010

Scotland’s Biggest Maths Lesson?

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: Lauder Primary, Scottish Borders, tom renwick
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow Meet, Local authorities, Mathematics, Scottish Borders

Yesterday afternoon more than 170 classes logged in to learn their 8x Table with Tom Renwick from Maths on Track and pupils from Lauder Primary School in the Scottish Borders. Joining the Primary 5 class were more than 4000 pupils from all around Scotland who were all learning new techniques, playing exciting games and finding out that learning your tables can be fun!!

As well as watching Tom and the pupils live the Glow Meet audience also took part in timed events all geared to help speed up the children’s ability to multiply and divide using the 8x table and it all got very competitive indeed with times improving with each new activity!!

Tom Renwick himself said of the event “I personally took great pleasure at the thought of more than 4000 pupils running home geed up with their 8x table!” and the one school said “Thank you we enjoyed learning our 8X table, it was fun!”

During the event the Glow Helpdesk were keeping an eye on the event for us and told us that the bandwidth peaked at 128mb - a record!!! But what we’d like to know is was this the biggest simultaneous maths lesson ever undertaken in Scotland? Could Glow have been involved in another record breaking event?

Even if no records are broken there are a lot of children around Scotland who were enthused and saw that learning maths can be a lot of fun!!

Following on from this live event teachers were able to log in for their own CPD with Tom as he explained lots of games and techniques that could be used in the classroom to help children become confident with number. 36 practitioners joined in at 4pm and quizzed Tom about issues they were experiencing with teaching number and they too are now off to spark new enthusiasm in their schools and classrooms!

November 11th, 2010

Learn Your 8x Table the Easy Way!!

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: maths on track, times tables, tom renwick
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Glow Meet, Local authorities, Mathematics, Pupils, Scottish Borders

Join Tom Renwick from Maths on Track live from Lauder Primary School in the Scottish Borders on Tuesday the 16th November at 2pm for an exciting lesson on how to learn your 8x table.

From there he will be working with a P5 class using interactive and visual techniques that he’s shared with teachers and their pupils in many schools, including the 100+ board and wee red box flash cards which help to promote working memory and processing speed.

During the event there will be opportunities for you to work with your class on the tasks that Tom has set and use his techniques

NB For your pupils to participate live in this event you’d need to have pre prepared one set of 10 multiply flash cards eg 1×8, 2×8, 3×8, … 10×8 and 10 divide flash cards eg 8÷8, 16÷8, 24÷8, … 80÷8.

We hope as many teachers as possible can log in with their pupils, and Tom has expressed his wish to have all your pupils being fantastic with their 8 times table and have lots of fun!

This Glow Meet is suitable for P4 -7 - and all those working on their 8x table!!

Then at 4pm there is an opportunity for a CPD session for teachers. This will be an opportunity for Tom to further discuss the techniques and how they sit with Curriculum for Excellence, as well as an opportunity to ask questions. You don’t have to have taken part in the earlier session to join this one.

Sign up and let us know that you will be joining us on the day.

August 19th, 2010

Glowing Cookbook - Supporting Higher Geography with Glow Learn

Gail Cairns

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Glow Learn, Scottish Borders

Emily Greenhorn teaches Geography at Jedburgh Grammar in the Scottish Borders.

Following an introduction to Glow Learn (the virtual learning environment available to Glow users), Emily was keen to capitalise on the functionality provided to produce a Glow Learn course to support the learning and teaching of her Higher Geography class outwith the classroom.

With Glow Learn, Emily was able to create a virtual course structure that matched her classroom course. She populated lesson and topic folders with digital resources such as worksheets, presentations, audio and video clips which allowed Emily’s pupils to access material anytime/anywhere.

Visit this Glowing Cookbook

September 6th, 2008

BERA Conference

mbrown

Comments: 3 Comments » Tags: Tags: BERA, Borders, CPD, Glow
 : Categories Scottish Borders, Uncategorized

It was a privelege to be on the plenary panel at the BERA Conference Practioner Event, today. Thanks to Professor Vivienne Baumfiled for organising this and supporting teacher’s action research. The panel was asked to judge teachers action research projects and give our individual impressions of the day. I commented on the key note speech by Ken Zeichner and supported comments made by my colleague Con Morris. Ken described his theory on ‘third space’: where practice is not set against theory or academic against teacher but where the focus is on the research not the researcher. He exemplified his theory by referring to teachers who had confidently shared their action research on their own websites. Glow offers us the opportunity to use emerging technologys to improve action research and professional development in Scotland. We can build communities of professional learning and engage in professional conversations in Glow, about Glow and for a Curriculum for Excellence.

I also saw a presentation about the Virtual Research Environment in AERS. This made me think about the huge potential in Glow for teachers to connect with other teachers and share ideas for action research. For example by uploading or discussing research in the National Site. They now have the opportunity to use Glow tools to plan, design, research and store data. It is now easier than at any other time to collaborate across regional boundaries, make the most of virtual space and hopefully, third space theory. There are a wide range of tools in Glow which can be used or adapted for educational surveys, quantative and qualitative research.

Finally, congratulations to Lesley Wilson from St Boswells Primary School, for the best research project on display with BERA. She has recently started on the Charterered Teacher Program. It would be great if Lesley used Glow for future action research projects…. the Glow team will be in the Borders giving Mentor training at the end of September.