Using Glow to support Advanced Higher Biology

Overview

Bruce McMaster is a teacher of Biology at Broughton High School in Edinburgh. Bruce is an advocate of the use of technology in teaching and has operated a successful blog, aimed at enhancing the learning and teaching process, for some years.

In this cookbook Bruce will talk us through how he uses Glow to support the learning and teaching of Advanced Higher Biology.

Context

The mission statement of the Biology Department at Broughton High School contains the following assertion:

• [pupils] are confident with the incorporation of ICT into the teaching of Biology

Through the appropriate use of technology in class, Bruce has aimed to enrich the experience of his pupils during their time in the Biology Department. The introduction of a blog provided his pupils with the opportunity to access advice, information and resources out with the barriers of the traditional school day. The ability of the pupils to leave comments on the blog, asking questions or adding to information, allowed them to become more active in their approach to learning.

With the introduction of Glow to Broughton, Bruce was keen to investigate how best to use the tools and functionality to further enrich the learning experiences of his pupils.

In this cookbook, we will:

• Hear Bruce outline how he uses Glow to support the teaching of his Advanced Higher Biology class.

Ingredients

What Bruce uses to support the teaching of his class:

1. A Glow Group
2. News web part to post learning intentions, project ideas and support notes
3. An XML web part to display a Voki and a news feed from the BBC
4. Web links web part
5. Discussion web part
6. Documents web part
7. A chat room
8. A Page Viewer to give students access to the Biology Blog from within the Glow Group

Recipe

In the videos below, Bruce talks us through how he uses Glow to support his class teaching:

Impact

From his commentary, it is clear that Bruce is very positive about the ability of Glow to support his teaching. Bruce makes use of a number of Glow tools to add impact:

• The News web part allows Bruce to publish lesson learning intentions, provide advice on projects and attach support documents for homework and project work
• Web Links web part provides a quick jump point to frequently used web sites
• Archived support materials – as the term progresses, Bruce is populating the document store with worksheets, homeworks and assessment materials all providing the pupils with anytime, anywhere access to resources
• The Discussions and Chat Chat web parts provide opportunities to explore topics more deeply, allow the pupils to peer evaluate and peer assess one another’s work
• A news feed that is updated automatically giving the pupils access to up-to-the-minute sources of relevant, research information

In making use of a variety of Glow tools, Bruce has developed a Glow Group that is engaging and relevant for his pupils. The group provides an easy access point for a variety of information sources, stimulus to deeper learning, opportunities for collaboration, peer evaluation and assessment.

Follow the link below to see how to set up a news feed in Glow: 

Using Glow to support Advanced Higher Biology5.053