Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow
Overview
Noticeboard – Click here to enlarge
Alison Smith, P7 teacher at Highlanders Academy Primary School in Inverclyde, was looking for an after school responsibility and looked at taking an ICT club. Given that she’s also the Glow Mentor at Highlanders she had planned to find a purposeful use of Glow and this seemed like the ideal opportunity to team these up. She had in mind that each school in Inverclyde has to produce a 4 page spread in the Greenock Telegraph and this responsibility usually sits with the P7s. She had worked with a previous P7 class to produce a paper version of a newspaper which the pupils had really enjoyed. Alison thought it would be ideal to undertake something with the ICT Club, using Glow and also getting them ready for the spread in the Greenock Telegraph. The Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group was born.
In this cookbook, we will find out:
• What the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group looks like
• How the pages and web parts were used to become a newspaper
Context
The Club started earlier this year and the pupils were told what kind of things the group would be working on and asked who would like to be a part of this. Alison met initially with the pupils in the ICT Club to discuss what the features of using Glow as a newspaper would look like. They planned together what pages would be required in the Glow Group. They then opened up the planning process to involve the rest of the school and the nine members of the Editorial Team went around all the classes conducting a survey, asking all the pupils and teachers what they would like to see in the group. Many of the suggestions from the rest of the school were what the Editorial Team had already planned.
Editorial Team Working – Click here to enlarge
The pupils then got down to work planning their first edition. They decided that interviews would be a good idea for a regular feature. For example, if there was a netball competition on then the pupils would go and interview the classroom assistant responsible for taking the netball team. They would interview someone if there was something interesting going on in the school or generally pick a random member of staff in the school to interview. There are also a couple of articles which the Team will write for every edition on things which have happened or are about to happen in the school. The very first edition contained a feature introducing the Editorial Team themselves. They chatted about why they had volunteered for the team and what they were hoping to learn from working on Highlanders’ Highlights.
Once the team had put the first edition together they went around every class introducing it to the pupils and the teachers. The teachers were then aware of the structure of the editions. This would make it easier for the Editorial Team every week to ask for submissions, such as homework tips.
Parental Involvement
The school felt that it would be easy to involve the parents of the older pupils in the school with Highlanders’ Highlights as they would naturally log on and show their parents from home but they wanted to find a way of making sure they were involving the parents of the younger pupils. They decided to run a workshop for parents to get them involved and let them have their say. As a parent would come in, a member of the Editorial Team would go and get that parent’s child and get them to log into Glow. This allowed the pupil to show their own parent through the group. The school had a lot of good feedback from this event, especially from the parents of the younger pupils.
Parental Comments – click here to enlarge
They decided to get parental feedback at the workshop and build this into improving Highlanders’ Highlights. Parents asked for several sections to be added, the annual holiday list, the school menu, when the gym kit days were for each class, homework tips for each class and the school newsletter being added to Glow. Highlanders’ Highlights was a great way to simply get parents more involved in the school.
Enterprise Showcase
Inverclyde runs an Enterprise Showcase each year and Alison was asked to present on what they were doing at Highlanders. Highlanders’ Highlights was a perfect example of what was being looked for in the remit and they were already doing it and making a great job of it so it made sense to showcase this use of Glow to the rest of Inverclyde. It was the perfect opportunity to get the pupils on the Editorial Team involved and let them share their enthusiasm. The teachers were able to stand back at the event and allow the pupils to take everyone through what they were doing and encourage them to log into Glow and leave a comment on it.
Ingredients
Click here to enlarge
The Noticeboard
This page acts like the front page of a newspaper with taster items for what’s in a particular edition. The News web part contains headlines of the different articles to be found. There is a picture of the Editorial Team and a What’s On This Week? web part letting everyone know what’s coming up in the school. There are also web parts containing the Question of the Week and Celebrating Success with highlights from each class.
Discussions
The discussions page spans all of the issues and provides useful feedback from all of the teachers and the classes. There is also feedback here, left by the parents during the workshop and from teachers across the authority from the Enterprise Showcase. Replies have been typed by the child of a parent or by the Editorial Team during the showcase event with the poster’s name being given.
Documents
click to enlarge
The documents page contains a folder for every edition of Highlanders’ Highlights. The Editorial Team upload their articles into these folders and leave news items to point people to particular articles.
Homework Tips
This was a page which was requested when the Editorial Team were doing their research. It contains information for pupils and parents on the days gym kit will be required and a section for each class reminding them what they are working on for homework at the moment. It also has a web links web part with links to suggested external educational websites which parents have found particularly helpful.
Fun Page
The Fun Page – click to enlarge
This page is divided into an upper and a lower school with puzzles created by the Editorial Team from external websites and contained in a text editor web part.
Menu
The menu page contains an image of the school menu from the Inverclyde Council website. This allows parents to view information and decide whether their child will be having the school menu or a packed lunch on any given day. This was a page requested by the parents after the Parents Workshop.
School Holidays
This is Megan, on the Editorial Team’s favourite page! It contains information from the Inverclyde Council website to remind pupils, teachers and parents of when the holidays are coming up. This was another page requested by the parents.
Newsletter
The final page of the group and another one to be requested by the parents is the Newsletter page. A text editor web part contains the most recent issue of the school newsletter meaning that parents don’t have to worry if they have mislaid it.
What did Alison and the pupils need to do to allow for the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group to work as a newspaper?
- A Glow Group built at school level
- Set Reader with Discussions membership for all teachers and pupils in the school
- Set the Editorial Team up with Administrator membership of the group
- Add extra pages for Homework Tips, Fun Page, Menu, School Holidays and Newsletter
- Add Folders for every edition into the Document Library and upload articles into these folders
- Make use of the News web part on the Noticeboard for headlines for each edition
- Change the title of the What’s On web part and use this for school events
- The Editorial Team had to delete old News and What’s On items every week
- Add text editor web parts for the Question of the Week and Celebrating Success and edit these every week
- Add an image of the Editorial Team to the Noticeboard page
Recipe
The first video below acts as a virtual tour by Alison of the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group. The videos that then follow show how some of the elements within the Group can be recreated. Details are:
Tour of the Highlanders Highlights Glow Group (4:26)
How to change the title of the What’s On web part (1:18)
How to add text editor web parts for the Question of the week and Celebrating Success (4:42)
How to add folders to the document store for the editions (1:11)
How to upload articles in the folders in the document store (1:28)
How to add a new page for Homework Tips (1:37)
How to edit the information in the Homework Tips text editor web part (2:00)
How to add images and text into the text editor web parts on the Fun Page (2:37)
Impact
Mairi Nock, DHT at the school notes how the pupils themselves really bonded as the Editorial Team. She comments on how they have all found different aspects within the production of Highlanders’ Highlights which they have strengths in. She speaks about them at the Enterprise Showcase:
“They appear to be quite quiet but when you listen to what they’re saying, they know exactly what they’re doing and they know why they’re doing it. They sat there with a lot of staff from other local schools [at the Enterprise Showcase] and went through exactly what they do, and what they do on a weekly basis and it was great. They had staff from all sorts of schools who posted very very positive responses.”
Enterprsie Showcase Comments – click to enlarge
A member of staff at Port Glasgow High School was so impressed that she came to Highlanders with her school’s system of positive response slips for each of the four pupils and an Easter Egg for each of them. She said this was because the pupils had taught her so much about Glow.
Parents were very positive about the project especially when they were involved in a workshop as it allowed the pupils to introduce it to them. One parent in particular had been very pleased about information regarding external educational websites that she was always looking to use with her child at home. Having the links available on the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group suited her in particular. In terms of the Eco nature of the project, the school had just got its first Green Flag last year and a lot of the parents were saying they were happier to have less bits of paper having to go home. The Highlanders’ Highlights really hit the mark as far as this was concerned.
Highlanders’ Highlights also became a great “hook” to get staff onto Glow. It became the only way of getting on with your class, as another teacher, and having a look at what was happening in the school and being able to make suggestions for homework tips etc. Classes and teachers were also asked to post responses to discussion boards and so everyone could become involved. As Mairi Nock notes,
“it’s been a learning curve for everybody in the school.”
The pupils are obviously very proud of what they’re doing. Chloe tells us,
“I thought it would be very good to do because we weren’t doing it for ourselves, we were doing it for the school.”
Megan adds to this,
“[I wanted to be involved] because we’re eco-friendly”
Megan tells us,
“my parents are really proud of me because they know I have a lot of responsibility and they always go online and see how it has turned out.”
Chloe echoes this,
“that’s the same with my mum and dad. They say they are very proud of me and that they want me to become a journalist because I write articles.”
Alison points out that as time went on, after the initial edition it has really been over to the pupils and they have been responsible for directing and putting everything together. It takes hardly any reminders to keep them on track.
Alison Smith speaks about the Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 1 (4:17)
Alison Smith speaks about the Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 2 (2:59)
Mairi Nock, DHT, speaks about the impact of the project (2:12)
Mairi Nock speaks about parental involvement (2:31)
Mairi Nock speaks about staff involvement (0:59)
Chloe, Chloe, Megan and Jason talk about Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 1 (3:10)
Chloe, Chloe, Megan and Jason talk about Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 2 (3:32)
Through their involvement in the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group, the editorial team have been actively engaging with a range of Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes. This range will depend upon many factors, namely, which roles the different pupils took within the team and which web parts were used. Amongst others, they include:
HWB 2-10a – I recognise that each individual has a unique blend of abilities and needs. I contribute to making my school community one which values individuals equally and is a welcoming place for all.
HWB 2-11a – I make full use of and value the opportunities I am given to improve and manage my learning and, in turn, I can help to encourage learning and confidence in others.
LIT 2-01a - I regularly select and listen to or watch texts which I enjoy and find interesting, and I can explain why I prefer certain sources.
I regularly select subject, purpose, format and resources to create texts of my choice.
LIT 2-06a – I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in an appropriate way for my purpose and use suitable vocabulary for my audience.
LIT 2-22a – In both short and extended texts, I can use appropriate punctuation, vary my sentence structures and divide my work into paragraphs in a way that makes sense to my reader.
LIT 2-24a – I consider the impact that layout and presentation will have and can combine lettering, graphics and other features to engage my reader.
TCH 2-03b - Throughout all my learning, I can use search facilities of electronic sources to access and retrieve information, recognising the importance this has in my place of learning, at home and in the workplace.
TCH 2-04b – I can create, capture and manipulate sounds, text and images to communicate experiences, ideas and information in creative and engaging ways.
Tags to further Outcomes can be seen at the bottom of this page.