Glow Bugs in Aberdeenshire

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 click here.  The principles around the benefits of Glow Meet are the same regardless of the technology used for Glow Meet.

Overview

Glow Bug

Every school in Aberdeenshire has a member of staff who has undergone the Glow Mentor or Glow Champion Training Programme. However, the Central Team has come up with an incredible way to support this with the Glow Bugs initiative.  The Glow Bug Programme enables pupils to lead learning and develop skills so they are able to communicate, collaborate and share achievements through Glow. This Cookbook will investigate the programme and what it is achieving in Aberdeenshire Primary Schools.

Context

Glow Bugs is a fantastic peer education initiative which has almost made it through all the primary schools in Aberdeenshire. Originally Primary 6 pupils in Market Place, Inverurie, Lairhillock, Meethill and Durris Primary Schools were involved in piloting this ambitious project and then it began to roll out to all the others. This has been a huge commitment by the Central Glow Team in Aberdeenshire. The programme began in 2008 and as of April 2010 they will have visited all 151 primary/special schools in Aberdeenshire.

Aberdeenshire Cluster Support Groups

P6 pupils are the first to be trained as Glow Bugs in their schools.  Glow Bugs have a very important job as reporters. They are equipped with the skills to shoot and edit video, take digital stills, word process news articles and upload and publish these in Glow. They are reporters for the M2C (Mountain to Sea) News Station within Glow which all pupils, staff and parents can access. All aspects of reporting come under their special remit:

• Identifying the latest news from their school
• Gathering information and data from around the school
• Writing newspaper reports
• Planning and conducting interviews with pupils, staff and parents
• Recording interviews using video cameras and mp3 recorders
• Capturing relevant images
• Preparing and editing images, videos and sound files
• Publishing all reports to Glow (M2C News)

The Aberdeenshire Glow Team try to work with 4 schools every week. In each school they work with a specialised team of 10 pupils and develop expertise within that group. The schools are asked to prepare for the training by having issued the Glow usernames and passwords to the pupils and having asked them to log into Glow at least once. A key responsibility of a Glow Bug is to support and inspire other learners within the school community to use Glow.  By the end of the day’s training they have, amongst others, a log-on expert, an IPR and copyright free resources expert, a video expert, picture expert, sound clip expert etc. The Central Team encourage pupils to identify their own strengths and talents which they can build upon when helping others to use Glow. The pupils then take on this responsibility of their specialism and work with other pupils in other classes, teachers and parents to help them.  For example, if P3 ask for help in learning how to put images into Glow then it would be the responsibility of a Glow Bug to go and help out. The Glow Bugs are a group of experts within each primary school who can be called upon for support with Glow and technology to help with the curriculum.

Within the training, Glow Bugs are supported with the following:

• the Glow AUP and their responsibilities as Glow Bugs
• learning how to keep their log-in safe
• navigating the portal
• Taking a Glow Tour (school, authority and National Glow Groups)
• Using equipment such as Flip cameras, digital still cameras and Easispeak microphones for interviewing and recording and gathering a wide range of achievements
• Using the Glow tools such as Discussion Boards, Document Libraries, Image web parts, Glow Meet, Glow Chat, news web parts, text editor etc

A Tour through the main presentation used in the Glow Bugs training day can be found here: (7:37)

Glow Bugs will earn their “wings”, or their specially designed Glow Bug badges after their training when they are then equipped with the skills to use Glow to communicate and share successful learning.  Glow Bugs can then also begin to plan for how they will support others in the school.

The Literacy and Numeracy page of the Group

Each Cluster Support Network (CSN) has a Mountain to Sea Glow Group which they use as their news channel. These are created by the Central Glow Team with pages designed around the 6 key entitlements for pupils listed in the Aberdeenshire Curriculum Framework 3-18 although schools and pupils are free to move beyond this initial design. The Glow Bugs are all set with Web Designer permissions for these Glow Groups to enable them to have, in effect, editorial control but not to be able to adjust the membership of the Glow Group. All other pupils in the authority will have reader membership of the Group.

A Virtual Tour of the M2C Meldrum Group (7:32)

Glow Bugs Central

Glow Bug Central is a local authority level Glow Group which helps the Glow Bugs as experts to be able to call upon support from each other, share ideas etc. It is important that they have a place where they can come together to share information.  Within Glow Bug Central, Glow Bugs can use the discussion board to share successes and challenges and access relevant support materials e.g. passports, presentations, user guides, video tutorials etc.

A Virtual Tour of the Glow Bugs Central Group (3:55)

During the last Cabinet Secretary’s visit to one of the schools, the video interview by the pupils was recorded and placed on Glow before she had even left the school. The central team are keen to place emphasis on the fact that using the technologies to share achievements and successful learning through Glow should be encouraged across every stage and in all curricular areas.

M2C Snow Special

Having all of these Glow Bugs around in Aberdeenshire will certainly have helped with the school closures caused by the heavy snowfall across Aberdeenshire earlier this year. The M2C News Group Snow Special was set up to support learners across Aberdeenshire at this time. The group is filled with tasks, competitions and activities from across the curriculum. Every teacher and pupil in Aberdeenshire was able to use their Glow log-on to access it. Indeed the usage was up in the high hundreds for pupils logging in and taking part in the group. As Anna Rossvol, Development Officer for Curriculum for Excellence says in a TESS article, “Children are showing they can use Glow independently and responsibly. This is an opportunity for the pupils to continue with their learning and also to start building a community online.” She also noted, “It has helped minimise the disruption to pupils’ education but they are not just learning about literacy or numeracy or science; they are learning the ICT skills they need to make the most of Glow.”

Ingredients

There are quite a number of ingredients required for the whole project:

• A local authority Glow Bugs Central Group
• A local Authority M2C (Mountain to Sea) Group acting as a gateway to the cluster groups
• A Cluster Support Network M2C Group
• Central team members or class teachers to deliver Glow Bug training
• 10 pupils identified in each school to be Glow Bugs
• Glow Bugs set with web designer membership of their cluster M2C Group and Reader membership of the other 16 M2C Cluster Glow Groups
• Equipment such as Easispeak microphones, digital still cameras, Flip cameras
• Applications such as Audacity and Movie Maker

Ingredients for The Meldrum M2C News Glow Group

• Pupils set with web designer permssions for the Group which is monitored by the Central Glow Team
• Additional pages added and existing pages renamed
• Announcement web parts added for news items across several different pages
• New Discussion boards created and added across several different pages
• New Picture Libraries created and added for several different pages
• Text editor web parts with videos or audio files displaying in them

Illustration of Curriculum for Excellence

If we look at the Principles for Curriculum Design it is clear to see how the Glow Bugs programme adheres. Pupils learn to apply a set of skills across the curriculum building in their own choice and personalising this further as they grow with the programme. In becoming reporters for the M2C news channel they are constantly seeking out issues and activities which are relevant to them. This programme most certainly allows for learning beyond the subject boundaries and enables the pupils to be working with the whole school community not just in their school, or their cluster but across Aberdeenshire. There isn’t enough space here in this Glow Group to look at all the outcomes and experiences which could be addressed through the pupils using Glow and technology in this way.

Recipe

A Glow Bug in Action

In this section we will discover from Glow Bugs themselves how to do some of the things that they learn in their training. They will be extending their Glow Bug support out of the school and to a national level here. The purpose of this Cookbook has really been to shine a light on the project and so it isn’t as relevant for the how-to section of this Cookbook to be on building a Glow Group.

Pupils demonstrate how to upload sound files to Glow (4:33)

Pupils demonstrate how to upload video files to Glow (5:00)

Pupils demonstrate finding Copyright Free images (1:10)

Impact

In this impact section we will focus on the experience at Meldrum Primary School, although there are also videos of virtual tours available which have been presented elsewhere in this Cookbook.

Glow Bug expertise

Being a Glow Bug involves not just supporting the teachers and teaching other pupils but in Meldrum Primary that also involved teaching groups of parents. A pupil now in P7, Maddy, remembers how the parents were invited along to Meldrum and she ended up teaching her own mum about Glow! She tells us, “we felt important that we were teaching the younger pupils. I also taught my mum how to use Glow because she came into the computer suite, so I felt quite important.”

A younger pupil at Meldrum, Allie tells us, “It was quite fun [to have the older pupils tell us about Glow] because it was people that we knew. It was easier to ask questions because mostly I’m shy with grown-ups.”

Maddy and Allie on the impact of the Glow Bugs Project at Meldrum (2:23)

Maddy and Allie speak further about the Glow Bugs Project and their work in class (2:23)

The Glow Bugs at Monquitter school at the end of their Glow Bugs training

Other Virtual Tour Videos already shown above:

A Tour through the main presentation used in the Glow Bugs training day can be found here: (7:37)

A Virtual Tour of the Glow Bugs Central Group (3:55)

A Virtual Tour of the M2C Meldrum Group (7:32)

The Glow Staff Tutors were inspired by the children’s enthusiasm, engagement and motivation in the project. One pupil went away herself and created a 42 step process on how to download pictures and get them into Glow. She is now showing all the staff at her school! The whole project sits very well with curriculum for excellence and certainly moves the learning beyond the physical structures of the classroom. It is obvious to see how the pupils are clearly demonstrating that they are successful learners, responsible citizens, effective contributors and most definitely confident individuals.

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