Supporting Early Years staff in Dundee through Glow

Please note that this cookbook refers to Glow Meet using Marratech.  Glow Meet is now delivered over Adobe Connect which offers enhanced functionality.  To find out more about Glow Meet using Adobe Connect then click here.  The principles around the benefits of Glow Meet are the same regardless of the technology used for Glow Meet.

Context

Louise Henderson is an Educational Support Officer for ICT in Dundee with a remit for early years and primary. The Early Years Glow Group developed by Louise and her team is aimed at celebrating and showcasing the work being done in early years establishments across Dundee. By creating the Glow Group at the local authority level and opening the membership up to all staff in Dundee, the group provides a valuable insight into the work that is going on in the early years sector across the city.

Click on image to enlarge

In this cookbook, we will:

• Hear how Louise makes use of a Glow Group to provide one-stop-shop central support to early years practitioners in Dundee.

Ingredients

What Louise used to develop the group:

1. A Glow Group
2. Text Editor web parts to display various messages that combine text and graphics
3. Text Editor and XML web parts to display video
4. News web part to post messages
5. Web links web part to provide quick links to resources
6. A Picture Library web part to showcase work
7. Documents web part for storing relevant documents
8. Page viewer web part to highlight other useful web sites
9. A Discussions web part to enable staff to bid for ICT resources

Recipe

In the first two video clips, Louise talks us through her Glow Group. As Louise’s group showcases video examples of the work carried out by some of the early years establishments, video three outlines two methods of displaying video in Glow web parts.

Impact

The Glow Group developed by Louise and her team not only showcases the excellent work that is going on across the early years sector in Dundee but also encourages early years staff to develop their own use of Glow. Other benefits include:

• Through Glow Meet, the children and staff are gaining access to writers and storytellers
• The children and staff have a city wide audience for what they are doing
• The showcasing of work is encouraging staff to try new technologies for themselves
• The group is providing the ‘one-stop-shop’ space where staff can find out what is going on across the city and nationally and have easy access to relevant documents and resources
• Staff across establishments now have a place to share ideas and collaborate on projects
• The group provides Louise with an ideal method of allocating new hardware and software via a ‘bidding’ process in a Glow Discussion. The early years staff benefit from the transparency of the process
• The group acts as a source of CPD for staff by highlighting examples of practice and how to use particular resources in different activities

Supporting Early Years staff in Dundee through Glow5.051