Launching Glow to parents
Overview
Monifieth prefects welcome parents to the launch evening
Monifieth High School was not the first school in the country to launch Glow with parents and carers, but it has certainly seen the biggest launch to date. Over two busy nights, 800 parents and carers were introduced to Glow, issued with their accounts and given starter information. An event of that size does not happen without careful planning: this cookbook describes the preparation required and provides documentation to support other schools making similar plans.
Context
The background
Glow usage has become well established at Monifieth High School over the last two years and, by summer 2009, the senior management team felt ready to extend that usage to parents and carers.
Gus McCormack, Glow co-ordinator, explains the aims of bringing parents into Glow
Who should get access?
Monifieth headteacher Richard Coton approached Lynn Shellard, the Glow key contact at Angus Council, to discuss the preparation required. They started with the guidance provided by the National Glow team: (SEEMIS version) GC514 – Bringing Parents In To Glow (Pearson version): Bringing Parents In To Glow – Pearson GC553. Richard and Lynn first needed to identify which parents and carers would be able to get access to Glow. As the parental information in Glow can include data from the school’s management information system, it was agreed that accounts would only be provided to the parents and carers who receive school reports. Only one parental account would be provided per child and this would go to the first named parent or carer in the management information system.
The next step was to consider how the accounts would be distributed.
Towards the end of the summer break, a letter was sent out to all parents and carers briefly introducing Glow and offering three options regarding parental accounts:
- the parent/carer wanted a Glow account and would attend the launch evening to receive their account
- the parent/carer wanted a Glow account but was unable to attend the launch evening
- the parent/carer was not interested in having a Glow account
On the basis of the very positive response from parents and carers, what had initially been conceived as one launch evening rapidly expanded to two evenings split into four sessions. The sessions were carefully organised to balance out the expected number of attendees, and a second letter was sent to parents and carers confirming the date and time of the session they were to attend. This letter also contained an Acceptable Use Policy for parents and carers to sign and return on the evening. The AUP was originally provided by Aberdeenshire (thanks go to Anna Rossvoll). All that was required for Monifieth was for the Angus Council legal department to approve it, which was duly done. The AUP is included here AUP08.doc – Aberdeen, for any interested school or LA to use or adapt if they wish.
Creating the parental accounts
While work organising the launch evenings continued at Monifieth, Lynn was busy centrally with the ASM tasks. First on the Default policies screen, she set the specific Glow services, such ‘My Child’s MIS data’, to which parents and carers would have access. With the policy set, Lynn was then in a position to start creating the accounts. Lynn’s advice to any school or authority at this stage is to ensure that the data in the school’s management information system is really clean: in other words, to sort out any potential errors such as missing surnames or surnames recorded in brackets. To generate the accounts, Lynn requested the authority’s MIS provider – SEEMIS in this case – to pass all the first named parental contacts across to Glow. She was then able to carry out the standard ASM processes of approving and downloading accounts. When downloaded the accounts spreadsheet contains username and password, first name and surname, but does not contain any information which links directly to the pupil. It was therefore necessary to cross-check the names against the school’s MIS to match parent to child. The details of each account were then placed in an envelope and a label attached listing the parent’s name, children, form class(es) and postcode.
Lynn found a number of instances where the spreadsheet of accounts identified a number of identical names, each of which had been given a Glow account. These required careful checking, both to check whether any were duplicates, but also to ensure that the accounts were given to the right parent. In some instances this was a common name, and each repetition of the name was a different person requiring a separate account. In others, Glow had generated new accounts due to some discrepancy in the MIS data, such as the parent’s first name being abbreviated in the entry for one child, but written in full in the entry for the second child in the family! Given the number of parental accounts being created, there were actually surprisingly few instances like this and they did not prove time-consuming to resolve.
The final requirement for Lynn as ASM was to ensure that remote access was switched on for each account.
Planning what parents and carers can view in Glow
Once the accounts had been created, Lynn and the two Glow co-ordinators at Monifieth – Gus McCormack and Simon Reid – spent a day planning exactly what parents and carers would be able to access in Glow. The Parent role-based site contains two default pages (the Noticeboard and Children pages) and a number of default web parts. The layout of the pages was customised to include useful web links, documents and contacts. Additional pages were added to the role-based site to include information about ‘parents as partners’ and a view of the school website. Membership of school Glow Groups was amended to allow parents and carers access to ‘top-level’ faculty Glow Groups, but not to sub-groups being used by staff and pupils. Lynn, Gus and Simon double-checked all views, using a genuine parental account belonging to a member of staff in the school and used with her permission. One interesting point, they noted, for example, is that parental accounts do not include an option to change theme, as staff and pupil accounts do.
Gus McCormack gives a tour of the Parent pages
The Launch
Parents collecting their Glow accounts
The launch evenings took place on 28th and 29th September. Each evening was split into two 1-hour sessions. On arrival for the session, parents and carers were directed to the tables set up at the side of the room from which they were to collect their accounts and starter information. Each table was manned by two prefects, with staff nearby to help if needed. To avoid congestion, tables were ordered alphabetically – A-B, C-E etc, with the parent to collect their envelope from the table according to their oldest child’s surname. Parents and carers were required to give their children’s names, form class(es) and their postcode in order to collect their envelope. Parents and carers were not allowed to collect on behalf of someone else; uncollected envelopes were sent by post the following day.
Gus McCormack explains the procedures and timescales required for the parental launch
Along with the envelope parents and carers were given a CD containing two documents. The documents are attached here: Read me first and Finding your way around Glow, and may be used or adapted by schools or local authorities, if required.
Richard Coton welcomes parents to the evening
Each session was introduced by headteacher Richard Coton, giving the school’s perspective on using Glow and outlining the aims of providing the parental accounts. Marie Dougan and Derek Robertson from LTS attended to provide the national perspective. The bulk of the session was then led by Gus and Simon, leading the parents and carers through the two documents on the CD. The first document, “Read me first”, shows parents how to log on to Glow for the first time and how to set up a password challenge. The second document, “Finding your way around”, shows the layout of the Parent home page, how to navigate to Glow Groups, how to set up an alert on a web part, and how to view information on the Children page.
Photos from the Parental Launch evening
The launch sessions were very well received by parents and carers. A clear system has been put in place for parents and carers to ask for help or password resets. Parents and carers are requested to phone the school after 1pm or to put a note in their child’s homework jotter. There have been only a few requests for password resets, which Lynn puts down to the encouragement for all users to set up a challenge question at the outset. The only other common question has been regarding the Children page where a parent can view information from SEEMIS. The top web part on the page requires the parent to select a name from a list (of their children in that school). This step is required even if the parent only has one child in the school. The other web parts on the page show no information until this step has been done – and this has confused a few parents and carers!
Overall, Lynn felt that the preparation for the launch of Glow to parents and carers had been surprisingly straightforward and the most difficult part had been erecting the Glow banner borrowed for the event!
Ingredients
In order to launch Glow with parents and carers, Monifieth High School needed to:
- identify which parents and carers should receive Glow accounts
- pass the appropriate accounts from the MIS to Glow
- approve and download the accounts
- plan the layout of the Parent role-based site
- decide which Glow Groups parents and carers will have access to
- plan how the Parent role-based site will be kept up-to-date and relevant
- organise a launch evening to distribute the accounts and introduce parents and carers to Glow
- provide support documentation and develop an on-going support system to deal with queries
Recipe
If you are an SCA and are setting up the Parent role-based site for your school, you may find the clips below useful:
* Introduction to the Parent role-based site and how to customise the Parent home page – part 1
* How to customise the Parent home page – part 2
* How to amend the membership of the Parent role-based site
* The Children page of the Parent role-based site
* How to add additional pages to the Parent role-based site
Impact
The initial impact of parental access to Glow has been very encouraging, although as Gus points out it is definitely a ‘work in progress’! Around 30% of the initial attendees log on regularly, but it is hoped that this will increase as more and more communication is provided through Glow, and in particular when further SEEMIS tracking is available.
Gus McCormack explains the impact of bringing parents into Glow
Gus McCormack explains future plans for use of Glow with parents
