Using Glow to support an Authority-wide In-Service Day
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
In West Lothian, one of the recent In-Service days was used to give all staff the opportunity to engage with the new plans and forthcoming arrangements for assessment. In order to ensure that all staff from every school had access to the same information and resources about this, the Local Authority decided to use Glow to support the day’s activities.
Context
The day was planned on a cluster basis, with teachers from each Secondary and its associated Primaries working together in the Secondary school, along with staff from Nurseries, Special Schools and Outreach Teams. It began with the Director of Education and Cultural Services, Gordon Ford, speaking to every member of staff, via Glow Meet:
Gordon Ford: Glow Meet to all West Lothian teachers (3:16)
Following Gordon Ford’s address, Meg Morrison, Area Adviser from Learning and Teaching Scotland, spoke to all staff about the plans for assessment, in particular the NAR (National Assessment Resource).
Meg Morrison: Glow Meet to introduce the day’s activities (8:00)
After the Glow Meet, staff were tasked with a range of activities, requiring them to explore the assessment proposals and comment on these.
West Lothian has a CfE Development Glow Group at Local Authority level, which is used by each cluster for communication and collaboration. For the In-service day, two new pages were added to the Group. The first was entitled NAR; the second was labelled IN-SET 17th August 2010.
On the NAR page is a page viewer web part showing the Learning and Teaching Scotland online service which contains samples of emerging approaches to assessment. The page selected to view shows examples from some West Lothian schools. There is also information about the West Lothian schools who are participating in the NAR pilot.
The ‘IN-SET 17th August 2010’ page provided staff with a dedicated area for accessing the resources needed for the day and a place for uploading the results and feedback of their collaborative working during the sessions. Staff used a Discussion Board on the page to submit questions about assessment and the NAR, to be responded to later in the day.
The day culminated with another Glow Meet to all schools.
Rosemary Delaney (LTS Development Officer) and Meg Morrison gave their responses to the questions that had been submitted by staff throughout the day and gave further information on the NAR and assessment in general. This enabled the same message to be simultaneously delivered to all staff.
Rosemary Delaney: NAR and Assessment (10:25)
Meg Morrison: NAR and Assessment Part 1 (5:42)
Meg Morrison: NAR and Assessment Part 2 (3:24)
All of the day’s Glow Meet sessions were recorded. The recordings were then uploaded into XML web parts in the Glow Group for staff to watch back. This provides a permanent record of what was said and can be used for reference at any time.
Ingredients
The support for the In-Service Day was provided via and existing Local Authority CfE Development Glow Group (you can read more about this Glow Group in the following cookbook: Supporting Curriculum for Excellence in a Local Authority). This meant that all West Lothian staff already had membership of the Glow Group and could easily access it through their My Glow Groups list. In order to ready the Group for the In-Service day, the following was required to be done:
- Add two new pages
- Create new three Document stores and add those to the page
- Create a new Discussion Board and add it to the page
- Add a page viewer web part and link it to the LTS online service
- Add a Glow Meet web part to the page and create a meeting room
- Record the Glow Meet sessions
- Use screen-capture software to capture the recorded Glow Meets ,upload the mp4 files that this created to a hosting site then get the embed code from there and embed the videos into the xml web part.
We can see these elements in the following tour of the Glow Group:
West Lothian CfE Development Glow Group: Inset Day and NAR pages (3:17)
Recipe
In the following videos, you can see how to replicate some of the elements from the West Lothian in-Service Day pages in the CfE Glow Group:
How to have multiple Document stores in a Glow Group: Creating a new Document Store (5:36)
How to create a new Discussion Board (7:02)
How to edit the user permissions on a newly created Discussion Board (3:48)
How to set up a Glow Meet in a Glow Group (5:36)
How to join and take part in a Glow Meet (3:38)
How to use the video, audio and chat facility within a Glow Meet meeting room (6:19)
How to record a Glow Meet (2:09)
How to play back a previously recorded Glow Meet (3:22)
How to embed a video of a recorded Glow Meet into the xml web part (8:45)
Impact
Using the Glow Group for the In-set day had a tremendous impact for the West Lothian schools.
Using Glow Meet to communicate to all staff simultaneously enabled the same message to be delivered to all, ensuring continuity across all schools. Being able to also record these Glow Meets and embed them back into the Glow Group also provides a permanent record of what was said, so that staff can refer back to the recordings as required. It also means that any staff who were absent are able to see and hear the information that was provided.
Staff welcomed the opportunity to be able to feedback and ask questions during the day at a time that suited them, by adding posts to the Discussion Board or uploading files to the Document store. Having a further Glow Meet to address these questions meant that staff received an immediate response. It also enabled all staff to benefit from the answers to questions raised by other schools.
Using the Glow Group reduced the need to produce paper copies of documents and so helped to reduce costs. Using Glow Meet reduced the need too for Gordon Ford and the staff from Learning and Teaching Scotland to travel to each school, saving time and travel costs.
Laura Compton is Curriculum Development Officer and Glow Key Contact for West Lothian . She provided much of the Glow support for the day and was delighted with the success of the event. Laura felt that being able to communicate to all staff at the same time was invaluable, saying:
“The impact of having LTS expertise available to answer questions in real time was huge for most staff. In the current financial climate having the Director being able to address 2500 staff at no cost was fantastic”
Gordon Ford, Director of Education for West Lothian also commented on the benefits for him:
“The opportunity to speak live to 2000 staff was excellent. By using Glow we got this important in-service day off to a great start”
The day was most successful and all involved in its organisation feel that Glow played a vital part in this.