LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos
Overview
Recently, four schools from East Dunbartonshire volunteered to attend the Scottish Learning Festival to enable their pupils to take part in a range of activities. To support their preparation for this, a Glow Group was created at Local Authority Level to enable the schools – Bearsden Primary, Killermont Primary, Lenzie-Moss Primary and Oxgang Primary – to communicate, collaborate and share their learning.
In order to look at how the Group was used, this cookbook will be split into four parts. This part, part 4, looks at the use of pictures and videos within the Group. Part 1 looks at the use of hidden pages, Part 2 at the use of Glow Meet and Part 3 focuses on how the Glow Blog was used. All four parts will contain the same overview in the ‘context’ section, with the different elements being explored in the ‘Focus On’ and recipe sections.
Context
Jan Pollok, Quality Improvement Officer and Glow Key Contact for East Dunbartonshire Council sent out a Targeted News item from the Local Authority site in Glow, asking for schools to volunteer to attend the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF) to take part in LEGO activities. Jan had initially wanted to choose two schools, but after responses came in from schools, she decided to invite the four schools named above.
Jan met with Joanne Connolly, one of the Glow Educationalists from the National Glow Team, to discuss how Glow could support the schools before SLF and also how it could be used during and afterwards.
As a result of this conversation, Jan created a Glow Group at Local Authority level to enable the four schools to have direct sight of it. The layout was then designed and built, after consultation with the schools.
Initially, the Primary 7 teachers from the schools met with Jan and Joanne to discuss the activities that the pupils would be undertaking at SLF and to give their input to the Glow Group structure and content. It was agreed that the Group would contain hidden pages, with only the Noticeboard Page visible and links to the hidden pages provided there. This gave the Group a sleek and simple look and made it very easy to navigate around. You can learn more about hidden pages in Part 1 of this cookbook series.
We can look at the Group and its layout in the following video:
Tour of the SLF LEGO Glow Group (11:48)
Elements of the Glow Group
A range of different web parts were incorporated within the Glow Group:
Glow Meet
The first part of the Glow Group that was used was the Glow Meet page. It was agreed at the initial meeting that a Glow Meet would be held to enable the children to introduce themselves and become more familiar with Glow Meet. It also provided an opportunity for the schools to check their equipment was working. You can find out more details about it in part 2 of the cookbook series.
Picture Library
Both before and after the Glow Meet, the pupils spent time in their classrooms using the ‘We-Do’ LEGO kits that they had been given to allow them to practise prior to attending SLF. They took photos of the models they built and these were uploaded to the Picture Library on the ‘Our Photos’ page of the Group. Find out more in the ‘Focus on’ section of this cookbook.
Document Stores
There are two Document Stores in the Glow Group.
The first is on the Documents page. This was there to give pupils a place where they could perhaps write instructions on how to build a particular LEGO model and share those with others by uploading to the Document store. It was also discussed that pupils might do creative writing about the models they built and those pieces of writing could also be uploaded and shared.
The second Document store was created through the Advanced Settings link, in order to have a fresh, new, empty web part, rather than just a duplicate of the original Document store on the Documents page. This Document store was named Video Files and was added to the ‘Our Videos’ page. A folder was created for each of the schools, along with a fifth folder for SLF. Schools could use this to upload videos of their LEGO models in action, since the ‘We-Do’ kit includes software enabling the models to be programmed to move and make sounds. Find out more about how this Document store was used in the ‘Focus on’ section below.
Discussion Board
A discussion board was added to the Discussions page. This was originally intended for staff to ask questions about preparations for SLF and for pupils to discuss the activities they had been doing with the LEGO kits. However, the discussions about these activities naturally transferred themselves to the final page of the Glow Group, the Glow Blog.
Glow Blog
A page was created to host the Glow Blog.
The Glow Blog web part on the page enabled pupils to make quick posts about the activities they were doing. It was also used during the Scottish Learning Festival and afterwards. You can read more about this in Part 3 of the cookbook series.
In the next section, we will focus on one of the elements briefly described above. The others are focused on in the other three parts of this cookbook series.
Focus on: Pictures and Videos
Pictures
Click to view
A Picture Library was added to the Glow Group to enable the schools to upload photos of the LEGO models they made prior to attending SLF. This enabled the pupils to share their work with other schools, log on at home and show their parents what they had created in school and also learn from one another.
The picture library was configured to show only two columns – a thumbnail of the photo and a description of it. This allowed the pupils to describe their picture or simply add a comment.
During the Scottish Learning Festival, many photos were taken of the pupils participating in the LEGO, animation and video activities. These were then made into a collage by pasting all of the images into a Microsoft Word document then capturing the collage as a single picture using an image capture tool. This single image was then uploaded into the Text Editor web part, giving another way of sharing images between all four schools.
Videos
Video files were added to the Glow Group in two ways.
Prior to SLF, some of the schools recorded short video clips to show the models they made in action, since the software that accompanied the LEGO kits enabled the models to be programmed to move and make sounds.
Click to View
These video files were then shared by uploading them into the ‘Video Files’ Document Library on the ‘Our Videos’ page in the Glow Group. Members of the Group simply had to click on the file to play the video.
During the Scottish Learning Festival, the pupils made stop/start animations with LEGO models. The animation videos were then added to the Glow Group. This meant that they could be watched by pupils who had not attended SLF and could also be shown to parents. In this instance, this was done by uploading the files to a free online hosting site called screencast.com. This site then provided an embed code which was pasted into the xml web part in the Glow Group. This enabled the videos to play within the web part, simply by pressing the play button. You can see this in the SLF LEGO Glow Group Tour video clip earlier in this cookbook. The recipe section below provides a ‘how to’ video to enable you to learn how to do this for yourself.
Ingredients
In order for the East Dunbartonshire schools attending the Scottish Learning Festival to be able to upload images and videos to the SLF LEGO Glow Group, the following was done:
- A Picture Library was added to the ‘Our Photos’ page
- A new Document Library was created and added to the Documents page
- Text Editor web parts were added to the Videos Page in the Group and the video files of the pupil animations were added to those.
Additional work was done to create the other elements of the Glow Group which have been touched on in the ‘elements of the Glow Group’ section above. These are covered in the other parts of this cookbook series.
Recipe
In the following videos we will look at how to replicate some of the elements mentioned above. In particular, we will look at creating hidden pages and linking to them:
How to add a Picture Library to a Glow Group (2:03)
How to create a second Picture Library for your Glow Group (4:27)
How to change the columns shown in a Picture Library- adding a description field (4:38)
How to embed a video file in the xml web part (3:55)
How to create a new Document Store (5:57)
Impact
Using the Glow Group has had a great impact on the schools involved in the LEGO activities.
They have had a place for communicating and sharing their learning.
Pupils have been able to share with others, both in their own school and outwith, the models they have built, through use of the picture library, Document store for videos, and through their blog posts.
Staff have been able to use the Group to meet virtually using Glow Meet and to plan using this, so eliminating the need to travel to actual meetings. Glow Meet has also enabled the pupils to speak to one another and to the Glow Team, prior to attending the Scottish Learning Festival, which helped reassure them before attending such a large event.
The use of the picture library provides and excellent means of formative assessment, showcasing the work pupils have done and providing an opportunity for peer review.
In all, the Glow Group has been highly beneficial to all who have used it.
Read the other parts of this cookbook series:
Part 1: Focus on – Hidden Pages
Part 3: Focus on – Using a Glow Blog