Glow Scotland

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.

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.

September 20th, 2010

Co-Create at the Scottish Learning Festival

Julia Fenby

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Argyll and Bute, Co-Create, Curriculum for Excellence, East Ayrshire, Expressive Arts, Glasgow City, Glow, Glow Groups, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Outdoor Learning, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Sciences, Shetland Islands, Social Studies, South Lanarkshire, Technologies, West Lothian, Western Isles

Throughout 2010, ten demonstration projects are taking place in 18 local authorities across Scotland. Arts organisations are working together with teachers, pupils and other partners to explore and develop new approaches to teaching and learning using Glow and supporting delivery of Curriculum for Excellence. Four projects are presenting at the Scottish Learning Festival. Don’t miss:

S1A – Make Art Not War: A Dynamic, Interactive, Cross-curricular Experience for S2 pupils
Paul Gorman from Visible Fictions Theatre Company talks about ‘State of Emergency’, an ambitious project in which a series of webisodes and ‘live’ broadcasts from an online fictional country will be created and broadcast through Glow in November. This seminar outlines the process so far to highlight how creative approaches, facilitated within Glow, can ensure best practice in Curriculum for Excellence.

B1C - Curriculum for Excellence: Enhancing Performing Arts Experiences through Glow This seminar presents a new online learning resource that aims to support teachers and pupils to evaluate and appreciate performing arts experiences. The new resource supports teachers in meeting Curriculum for Excellence expressive arts experiences and outcomes across all levels and is a development of Imaginate’s range of resources on art appreciation.

B1E - Glow Co-Create model project: Hooks + Bites
Barbara Chalmers and the Plan B Collective team give a presentation on how they worked together with nursery, P7 and S6 pupils from St John’s Academy Perth to create a digital art bank for Glow made up of sound journeys, percussion and digital animation based on the pupils’ experience of ‘transition’.

B1H - Co-Creating with Glow: Walking Within Langass Wood
Join Sarah MacIntyre to hear about this collaborative project involving S2 pupils and staff from Sgoil Lionacleit (Benbecula), Carinish and Lochmaddy Primary Schools, Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre, Urras nan Craobh Uibhist a Tuath (North Uist Woodland Trust), and Scottish Natural Heritage. The project aims to creatively interpret the ecology and heritage of Langass Woods on North Uist through visual art, creative writing, science, history, geography and music.

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

Image credits: Visible Fictions; Screen Media & Imaginate; Plan B Collective; Sgoil Lionacleit

June 30th, 2009

How are others using Glow?

Lorna Arbuckle

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, East Dunbartonshire, East Lothian, Events, Glow Chat, Glow Groups, Glow Meet, National Groups, Outdoor Learning, Pupils, Shetland Islands, West Lothian

Did you know that within the Sharing Practice page of the GlowScotland website, schools from across Scotland share their experiences of using Glow?

Log on and find out how pupils from across Scotland watched leading scientists perform a bird autopsy beamed live into their classrooms from the Scottish Seabird Centre; or how Burravoe Primary School in Shetland used Glow to keep in touch with pupils when bad weather closed the school.

Read about how schools in East Dunbartonshire are using Glow in a project to ease the transition to secondary school, and how James Young school took a phased approach to the roll out of Glow to benefit learning and teaching.

In addition, practitioners from across Scotland, working with children at different ages and stages, share their experiences of using Glow.

Why not log on and see if you can benefit from any of these ideas and stories ?

February 17th, 2009

Using Glow to Beat the Snow

Katie Barrowman

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: homework, Shetland, snow
 : Categories Shetland Islands

Since the Shetland Learning Festival in October, I’ve been keeping in touch with Caroline Breyley, Head Teacher at Burravoe Primary School on Yell. Burravoe is a single teacher school with fourteen pupils from P1 to P7, and all the children love to get on Glow. They have a well-used school Glow site, including a tab for each of the class topics and a packed picture library. I’ve joined in a Glow Meet between the Burravoe children and a class in Dumfries and Galloway where everyone in the class had their own computer and contributed brilliantly, and I look forward to checking in on their site regularly to read the children’s stories and see who’s in the picture of the week.

This week Caroline let me know about the school’s ‘Snow Work’. Last week the school was closed for a few days after the heavy snow, but thanks to Glow the learning didn’t stop. The children were able to log in from home, see their tasks for the day and upload their work once it was finished. What a brilliant way of using Glow to keep in touch and keep learning going when the weather gets in the way!


Glow’s helping hand didn’t stop there though. When the school reopened, Elouise (P3) and her brother Jake (P1) were still unable to get into school, but managed to join in with the class through Glow Chat. While their dad helped Jake out with his contribution, Elouise chatted away with her friends and Ms Breyley easily and confidently, following everyone’s messages despite the speed of the conversation, and telling the story of how she had managed to cut herself - it was all Jake’s fault apparently!

Burravoe is a lovely example of a school where Glow has become part of everyday life for the children and the teacher, and it’s particularly lovely that even the primary one children are on and happily working with the Glow tools. While it’s true that this is a small school, which might make it easier to integrate Glow into whole-school life, the Burravoe model would work equally well with individual primary or secondary classes anywhere. It’s clear that it appeals to the children too, if their eagerness to work on a snow day is anything to go by!

October 30th, 2008

Shetland Shines with Glow

Katie Barrowman

Comments: Comments Off Tags: Tags: good practice, In Service, mentors, Shetland, training
 : Categories Events, Local authorities, Shetland Islands

Hot on the heels of the Orkney Learning Festival came the Shetland Islands Council two-day In Service event at Anderson High School in Lerwick. The event was well attended on both days, even with lying snow, high winds and ferry cancellations taking their toll. The Glow team ran two training events, one an introduction to Glow and the other a session for advanced users. Both were successful, and we were delighted to have the help of some of the Shetland Islands Glow Mentors, who assisted in the introductory session.

A real highlight of the sessions was seeing the work being done within the local authority, including collaboration between Nesting and Tingwall schools, who had arranged a joint trip to London earlier this year. They planned, discussed and documented the trip via a shared Glow Group, with impressive results.

Also impressive was the school Glow Group of Burravoe School, a fourteen-pupil primary. Each of the school’s projects has its own area on the group, as do each of the pupils. In addition, Glow’s being well used in the ICT department of Anderson High School, where they’re venturing into the world of Glow Learn.

All in all, Shetland seems to be embracing Glow, from small one-teacher establishments to large secondaries, with enthusiasm and imagination, and it’ll be great to see what the newly trained attendees who came to the In Service get up to now they’re back in school.

March 30th, 2008

Glowing for miles

Anne Ward

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories East Dunbartonshire, Shetland Islands

On 17 March, children from Primary 1 in Lairdsland Primary, East Dunbartonshire, linked with Olna Firth Primary in Shetland, 450 miles away, using Glow Meet - the videoconferencing tool.

This learning opportunity exemplifies how the switch on of Glow within local authorities links learning across the country. The pupils from each class worked together on a project, looking at the differences between urban and island life, and each class developed a PowerPoint presentation about both their schools. The teachers used an online map facility to show the children just how far away their new friends were.

Lairdsland teacher Laura Kerr said:

‘It was fantastic! The children got to ask about living on an island and made great comparisons to the way we live.

‘Since the event, I’ve used the opportunity to engage the children in learning about the geography of Scotland.’

The collaboration is set to continue as both schools have set up a Glow Group containing links to their home pages within their school sites. This has been made possible through Glow being available in both local authorities.

Find out more about Glow at Lairdsland Primary, Glow in East Dunbartonshire and Glow in the Shetland Islands.

January 3rd, 2008

Mentor Activity in Shetland

Andrew Brown

Comments: Comments Off Tags:  : Categories Shetland Islands

In December last year, the Glow team visited Shetland to work with their Glow Mentors and Pioneers. The training will provide Mentors and Pioneers with the skills and knowledge to be able to support schools throughout the rollout of Glow across Shetland.

During the programme, Mentors discussed many ideas about how Glow can support and enhance learning and teaching and collaboration in Shetland as a remote authority. This was put into action with plans to link a school in Shetland with a school in East Dunbartonshire. They are also very excited about the potential of Glow for international communication.

Following the Glow training three schools in Shetland will participate in the local Glow pilot. There are also a number of suggestions for impromptu Glow Groups connected with specific projects. These include a Group to support a project linking primary schools in Shetland with a London school.