Écoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening practice in Modern Languages
Overview
The Modern Languages Department in James Young High School in Livingston, West Lothian, is always looking for ways to provide pupils with innovative and interesting resources and activities that will help them develop their language skills.
Sophie Martin and Amanda Lyons have been using Glow Learn this year as a means of sharing resources with pupils.
Context
This year, Sophie and Amanda have created Glow Learn courses to share resources with their Advanced Higher German and Higher French classes respectively. As well as using Glow Learn, they also created a Glow Group for each class. You can find out more about the Glow Groups in the following cookbooks:
Encouraging independent learning in Advanced Higher German
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communication
Glow Learn
Sophie and Amanda have always been keen to support pupils with their studies outside of the classroom. One of the areas of the Modern languages courses that they have previously found most difficult to support pupils with though, is listening practice.
Often, the audio files that they would wish to use for this are large and so have been difficult to share with pupils. Their only means of doing this was to put the files individually onto pupils’ USB memory sticks, which was time consuming. The alternative of emailing the files to all pupils was also difficult, given the file sizes.
This session, they decided to upload the audio files into Glow Learn.
Sophie created a course for Advanced Higher German and uploaded audio files to support listening practice along with Microsoft Word and Powerpoint files to support reading practice. She was also able to upload Smartboard files that she had saved during her lessons to give pupils continued access to teaching materials. Amanda did the same for Higher French.
They then enrolled the appropriate pupils onto the courses, so enabling them to access the resources. The only limitation in pupils being able to hear the files was that they needed to have a media player on their own computer that would play the files. This, however, was not an issue for any of the pupils.
There is much more functionality available within Glow Learn, but as they were just starting out, both Sophie and Amanda wanted to keep it simple.
Pupil access to the Course and Resources
The pupils access the resources within the courses by clicking on the Glow Learn link in the Lefthand Navigation bar. They then click on See My Courses. This shows them all courses they have been enrolled on. Pupils then click on the name of the course they want to view. This gives them access to all resources within the course (unless any resources have been hidden by the teacher, or the teacher has limited the dates that resources are visible. You can learn more about this in the Glow Learn Training Guide (Glow login required), or in other cookbooks.)
Ingredients
To share the files through Glow Learn, Sophie and Amanda had to:
- Create a course in Glow Learn
- Add resources to the course
- Enrol the appropriate pupils onto the course
The following videos will explain how to create a Glow Learn course, add resources to it, and enrol pupils onto it to give them access to the resources. Further information about other aspects of Glow Learn can be found in the Glow Learn Training Guide, or you may wish to explore other cookbooks relating to Glow Learn. These may contain additional videos on other elements, such as the Monitor and Mark facility.
How to create a course in Glow Learn
How to add resources to a course in Glow Learn
How to enrol pupils onto a Glow Learn course (5:39)
Impact
Glow Learn has given Sophie and Amanda a vehicle for easily sharing large files with pupils to support their listening practice. This has given them a form of support that they would not have otherwise had.
Combining this with their ability to use the Discussion Boards in their Glow Groups to ask questions of their teacher and their peers, the pupils now have a means of collaboration and communication and a way of accessing resources that has enhanced their studies.
Some of the pupils from Amanda’s Higher French class talk about the impact that having access to audio files through using Glow Learn has had.
Pupils: Benefits of having access to the listening files (1:02)
