Practising Mandarin. Click to enlarge.

Jacqui Clark is a Primary 5 teacher at Lynburn Primary School in Fife. She has been using Glow for about eighteen months initially just with her own class and now supporting colleagues throughout the school. Jacqui is very positive about the learning opportunities Glow has opened up – allowing pupils to discuss and collaborate, to share their work with their peers and their families, to record and assess their own progress.

This cookbook illustrates a number of ways in which Jacqui has embedded Glow in daily learning and teaching.

Context

Jacqui’s first use of Glow was a project on the Declaration of Arbroath. Her class contacted a history teacher at Arbroath High School who was able to support their project remotely through a Glow Group and a Glow Meet session. This provided an excellent testing ground for Jacqui to explore the potential of Glow to expand learning beyond the classroom. Through Glow Meet pupils engaged in a question and answer session with the history teacher, their learning enhanced by his expertise and local knowledge.

The children subsequently became very enthusiastic about participating in national Glow Meet events, often checking the calendar on the National Site themselves and asking if the class could sign up for events of interest.

Jacqui Clark talks about how she got started with Glow (2:26)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

Following the success of her first experiences of Glow, Jacqui this year created a class Glow Group for her P5s. The Group evolves during the course of the year, as the learning progresses.

Her class have begun to learn Mandarin. Resources used in class, such as PowerPoint files, and links to websites have been added to the Glow Group for pupils to use to support their homework. Pupils have used a discussion board to post their thoughts about the Mandarin lessons.

A story in the Daily What about the arrival of two new pandas at Edinburgh Zoo caught the children’s attention. They studied the story together in class and then used some of the accompanying lesson suggestions and resources. They researched what pandas would require in a zoo environment, designed suitable habitats and wrote reports. The results were uploaded into the Glow Group to be shared with the rest of the class and discussed with parents and carers at home.

Learning Tai-Chi. Click to enlarge.

A trip to Edinburgh Zoo was then organised, where pupils enjoyed furthering their understanding of Chinese culture by taking part in a tai-chi lesson, and learning from zoo staff about the logistics of transporting pandas and settling them into a new environment. Evidence of pupils’ learning is recorded in the photos uploaded into the Glow Group and through the presentations they created, recording their experiences.

Jacqui Clark talks about the P5 Glow Group, pt 1 (4:30)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

Santa visits Lynburn. Click to enlarge.

Jacqui is keen to use Glow to develop pupil e-portfolios. As a pre-cursor she is introducing the children to the concept of blogging. At Christmas Jacqui used two additional Glow accounts, created in the names of Santa C and R. Rudolph, to post messages on a blog. The posts rapidly engaged the pupils’ interest – indeed the scenario snowballed with other classes becoming caught up in the story of Santa’s search for his missing reindeer! Pupils responded to the tasks set through discussion boards and by adding their own posts to the blogs.

 Jacqui Clark talks about the P5 Glow Group, pt 2 (2:58)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

The enthusiasm of the P5s for Glow is evident in their independent use at home, such as updating their own pages (described in a separate cookbook), showing their parents and carers work they’ve been doing, and using games and activities on the National Site. Their parents have been keen to find out more about Glow and how they can support their children’s learning. Jacqui created a Homework page where parents could post up questions or comments, use links to suggested online activities and contribute their own website recommendations. To date, it has been the pupils, rather than their parents, who have used the discussion board to post comments, but it has remained a useful point of contact with families.

 Jacqui Clark talks about the P5 Glow Group, pt 3 (2:19)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

The Wedding invitation. Click to enlarge.

Jacqui’s remit includes supporting her colleagues with Glow. One facet of this has been establishing whole school Glow Groups which everyone can use. In April, a Glow Group was created to support a whole week of activities around the Royal Wedding. In a hectic, but clearly very enjoyable, few days pupils were involved in many aspects of wedding planning including making a cake, creating invitations and collecting the replies, organising the caterers and making sure the bride had something to wear! The week culminated in the school’s very own wedding on the Friday morning. A wealth of photos capturing evidence of the learning has been uploaded to ‘The Royal Wedding’ Glow Group. Jacqui’s P5 pupils provided peer mentoring to other classes in the school, supporting them with undertaking a series of challenges posted in the Glow Group. Pupils also supported members of staff in creating their own Glow pages. The week’s activities stimulated a lot of interest from staff about Glow, and this together with the pupil peer mentoring, has had quite a substantial impact on uptake within the school.

 Jacqui Clark talks about ‘The Royal Wedding’ Glow Group (3:07)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

Ingredients

For her P5 class Glow Group Jacqui:

* created a Glow Group on the school site

* added all her pupils as ‘Contributors’

* added additional pages

* created multiple Documents, Web links and Discussions web parts

* added topical features, such as the snowflakes and red noses

Method

The video clips below explain the processes of customising a Glow Group as Jacqui has done.

* how to add, rename or delete pages (2:56) Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to upload a document (2:24) Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to add a post to a discussion board (3:00)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to add a web link (3:56)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to create an additional Documents web part (7:42)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to close, restore or move web parts (4:21) Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to compress images before uploading to Glow (8:12) Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

* how to upload images to an Image Gallery web part (8:51)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

The Glow Help blog contains information about adding snowflakes and red noses to your own Glow Groups.

Impact

Jacqui feels that she has learnt much about using Glow – about the activities that she would definitely continue, such as pupils’ own pages – and the things she’d do differently (compressing photos before uploading, to speed up how long they take to display). She has been impressed by pupils’ enthusiasm for learning, and the motivation that Glow provides. She’s been delighted too with pupils’ sense of responsibility and their confidence: they have provided peer mentoring, supported school staff and talked about Glow to a meeting of Fife headteachers. Next year she’s keen to progress with introducing e-portfolios into the school.

Jacqui Clark talks about her next steps with Glow (0:44)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

Pupils have been keen to lead the learning, talking about news stories they’ve seen in the ‘Daily What’, games and activities they’ve found on the national site, or national Glow Meet events that they want to participate in.  

Lynburn pupils talk about their favourite activities on the National Site (0:58)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

Lynburn pupils talk about teaching others about Glow (1:14)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

Lynburn pupils talk about Glow Meet (2:22)Lynburn Primary: enthusing learners and promoting responsibility

The pupils' own Glow Group. Click to enlarge.

Jacqui Clark is a P5 teacher at Lynburn Primary School in Fife. She has been using Glow for about eighteen months, first with her own class and then supporting colleagues and pupils throughout the school.

This is the second of two cookbooks about Jacqui’s work. The first focused on how Jacqui used Glow to support learning in areas as diverse as Mandarin, Christmas and the Royal Wedding! In this cookbook we look at how she has given the children in her class their own Glow Group and given them the responsibility for ensuring it is used appropriately. She is delighted with the way they have responded to that challenge.

Context

Jacqui’s Primary 5 class were already well used to Glow, to the Glow Group environment and in particular to using Discussion boards to post comments about their work or to ask questions.

One pupil's page. Click to enlarge.

The class were then keen to have their own Glow pages. While pupils could have used their ‘My Glow’ for this purpose, Jacqui decided to create a Glow Group with one page per child. Pupils use these pages to post messages for each other, upload photos of activities they are involved in outside school, post up personal news, announce when they have uploaded new work for peer assessment and store pieces of work they want to be able to share with their families

The P5s have been given ‘Administrator’ rights to this Glow Group, allowing them to be able to create new web parts when required. This is an uncommonly high level of rights for pupils to be given on a Glow Group (’Reader with Discussions’ or ‘Contributor’ are more typical), and could cause some problems, such as with pupils deleting each others’ work. However, the class have proved very mature in their use of the Glow Group and handled the responsibility well. Indeed they have taken the messages of internet safety and being responsible citizens to heart, rapidly flagging up to Jacqui any item that they feel is inappropriate.

Jacqui Clark talks about her pupils’ Glow Group (1:47) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

Ingredients

For the class Glow Group, Jacqui needed to do the following:

* created a Glow Group on the school site

* gave her pupils Administrators of the Group

* created a page for each pupil

The pupils themselves then:

* created multiple web parts, so that each had their own News, Documents and Discussions web parts

* added a Glow Image Gallery web part

* added content to their own pages and to their friends’

Method

The following video clips show how to customise and use a Glow Group as Jacqui and her class have done.

* how to add, rename or delete pages (2:56) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

* how to upload a document (2:24) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

* how to add a post to a discussion board (3:00) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

* how to create an additional Documents (or other) web part (7:42) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

* how to close, restore or move web parts (4:21)  Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

* how to compress images before uploading to Glow (8:12) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

* how to upload images to an Image Gallery web part (8:51) Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

Impact

Using a Glow Group for ’social’ purposes have proved a hit with Jacqui’s class. While every pupil has a ‘My Glow’ space, it is not easy to allow other pupils access to this, nor easy for staff to keep an eye on what is posted. Use of a Glow Group gives all members of the class easy visibility of everyone’s pages. For staff it can provide a good teaching environment in which to reinforce lessons about internet safety, to discuss the implications of copyright when sourcing images on the web, and to encourage respect for peers.

Lynburn pupils talk about their pupil Glow Group (0:35)Lynburn Primary: giving pupils responsibility for their own Glow Group

Context

Operation Safety was conceived in 2000 as an expansion of the Road Safety course being rolled out in primary schools and initially involved Schools Services, Police, Fire Service and Ambulance Service.  Over the years Operation Safety has developed and additional partner agencies now participate. There are now 12 scenarios giving life skills in a safe environment to enhance the pupils’ knowledge of what to do in these situations.  It is hoped they remember these lessons in future if they find themselves in a similar position in real life.  The scenarios evolve to keep up to date with the current issues, for example, Internet Safety includes bullying on-line and on mobile phones. Each year over 2,200 P6/7 pupils attend Operation Safety. Operation Safety was first mentioned at one of the Glow Training courses attended by Community Police Officers as one of the officers involved saw the potential of using Glow.

Diane Webb is a Development Officer for Glow with Dumfries and Galloway. It was decided at a meeting attended by both the police and education that a Glow Group would be created for use within the authority to enhance the experience for the pupils attending the sessions. Discussions were held to decide what would be included in the Glow Group. They decided that a Glow Group would work well to showcase art work and creative writing by the pupils and also to facilitate feedback from the pupils themselves after they took part in the project. They were also keen that the Glow Group could contain film of the pupils, from different schools, participating in some of the activities and also films of interviews with the pupils about the activities. The plan was that pupils would only get access to the Glow Group once they had attended their Operation Safety session.

Ingredients

Tour of the Operation Safety Glow Group (6:30)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

The basic template for the Group was created and the surveys were created and added.  The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) film, Jigsaw, was added after seeking permission from CEOP and the YouTube video, Children See, Children Do. The layout changed as Diane and her team added various items to the pages to make them more attractive and useful for the pupils and teachers.

Creative Writing Page

Be Safe Be Bright – click to enlarge

The Glow Group also includes a Creative Writing Page and they’re hoping to expand this to include more pieces of pupil writing as the Glow Group starts to be used.

Picture Library Page

Posters – click to enlarge

There were hundreds of posters available from running the project previously and it is was really difficult for the team to choose which ones to showcase on this page. Again, it is hoped that they will be able to use this page to showcase pupil artwork from around the local authority.

Filming

Armed with a video camera, tripod and microphone Diane and her colleague Andrea Austin attended Operation Safety in Stranraer and filmed the scenarios they wanted to use for the Glow Group.  They also collected pupil work from PC Milven.  The videos were edited back at base by one of their colleagues on the Glow Team. It is intended to extend the range of videos available on the Glow Group by filming further videos the next time Operation Safety runs.

Beer Glasses film from the Glow Group (2:16)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

What did Diane need to successfully set up the Operation Safety Glow Group?

• A Glow Group created at local authority level in Dumfries and Galloway.
• Pupils to be added into the Glow Group school by school, once they have completed the Operation Safety course.
• Surveys created and put onto the Noticeboard page for the pupils and staff from the schools to respond to.
• Various pages created within the Glow Group.
• A picture library created to hold pupils’ art work.
• A Creative Writing documents web part to hold pupils’ work.
• Various videos uploaded to TeacherTube and then embedded into xml web parts within the Glow Group.

Recipe

There are many aspects of the Operation Safety Glow Group which could have been included in the recipe section. However, I have chosen creating the survey for the focus and you will find videos on this below. You will find links to other Cookbooks containing how-to videos on similar aspects to the ones additioanlly included in the Operation Safety Glow Group.

Creating a Survey (10:04)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

Adding the survey to the page (2:06)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

These Cookbooks contain information about embedding video in your Glow Group:

Embedding Video as a Stimulus for Writing

Engaging Videos in an Earth and Space Glow Group at Coylton Primary

LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos

These Cookbooks contain further information about using surveys in Glow

Embedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

Raising attainment in literacy in Primary 3

Encouraging deeper learning: pupils creating surveys

Enabling Pupil Voice – using a Glow Survey

Impact

The following videos are really about the impact of the project rather than the Glow Group as it is too early yet to be able to tell how well the Glow Group is extending the learning.

The first video is Diane describing the project and the Glow Group and the remainder of the videos are from the What we Learned page of the Glow Group and also available on Teacher Tube.

Diane Webb speaks about Operation Safety (3:06)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

In their own words (0:37)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

The Best Bit of Operation Safety – Pupil Comments (0:50)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

What scared us most – Pupil Comments (1:36)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

Top Tips – Pupil Comments (2:51)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

What we learned about online games (0:19)
Operation Safety in Dumfries and Galloway

Mini-Mentors – click to enlarge

Judith Lennox was P7 teacher at Coylton Primary School in South Ayrshire and is now DHT in the school.

This Cookbook will focus on the Mini-Mentor project that Judith ran with some of her P7 class pupils.

After Judith had received her Glow Mentor training her class and the other P7 class were using Glow regularly. Her headteacher wanted Judith to spread this use to all pupils of P3 and above in the school. This would involve giving out all usernames and passwords and making sure they were using Glow as much as they could be. Judith was given a day out of class to kick this off but as she was planning for it she quickly realised that it was going to take much longer than that. By this point Judith’s class had been making good use of Glow for some time and she thought it would be a good idea for some of them to come and help her out. She gave them the title of Mini-Mentors which made them feel really important. She also made them very official-looking badges and other accessories for their role.

Reactions from the Mini-Mentors – click to enlarge

The pupils were able to help her troubleshoot getting the other pupils logged into Glow and help them set up their new passwords. Judith feels there is no way in that day that she would have been able to get around all of the classes without the help of her Mini-Mentors.

Now, if any teachers are needing any help with Glow in their class the Mini-Mentors are called upon to go and help with anything they’re asked to do. They’ve done short presentations to classes about how to do certain things in Glow. For example, how to add Vokis to their My Glow pages. Judith feels that her P7 pupils have grown in confidence as they recognise the level of their own skills in Glow and in being able to share that knowledge with others.

Dana P7

P7 Pupil Dana explains the project:

Mini-Mentors is a group that Miss Lennox set up and we help the school with Glow things like surveys and stuff. We went down to the P5’s and we showed them how to do a survey. We got them to do it on a computer. A week after that we got them to do Vokis and put them onto their pages. I think they enjoyed the Vokis the best though!

Mini-Mentors News

Judith set up a page for the Mini-Mentors in the P7 Glow Group to allow them to share news, ad.vice and general discussions with each other.

The Mini-Mentor Page of the P7 Glow Group (0:51)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Ingredients

What did Judith need to do to set up the Mini-Mentor Project?

• Set up a P7 class Glow Group and have her pupils familiar with using Glow.
• Create a Mini-Mentors page within the class Glow Group.
• Select pupils from her P7 class to become Mini-Mentors.
• Enable these pupils to assist her to get the other pupils in the school onto Glow.
• Encourage these pupils to help other pupils and teachers across the school by delivering various sessions when called upon.
• The Mini-Mentors also help out by answering questions from other pupils within their class

Recipe

The Mini-Mentor project at Coylton Primary School involved practical aspects of helping with the other pupils and delivering sessions to the other classes. As such there isn’t really How-To videos using Glow which would cover this. Instead, I have included some videos below about setting up the Mini-Mentors page in the P7 Glow Group. The first two videos comprise a tour of the P7 Glow Group to set the project in the context of what the class were already doing in Glow.

Tour of the Primary 7 Glow Group – Part 1 (3:34)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Tour of the Primary 7 Glow Group – Part 2 (3:02)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Adding an image to a text editor web part (3:53)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Adding text to a text editor web part (2:28)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Creating a new News web part (2:31)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Creating a new Discussion web part (2:26)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Impact

Judith speaks about her P7 Mini-Mentors (1:53)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Judith talks about the impact she thinks the Mini-Mentor project has had on her P7 pupils:

I think definitely, for some of them, they would never have dreamed of standing up in front of another class to explain how to do something. I think they also didn’t  realise that they were already very good at using Glow, that they took those skills for granted that they didn’t realise they had. It has made them think more carefully about what they’re doing because they’re having to explain it to someone else. I think there’s a definite confidence boost for a lot of them but also just recognising the skills that they already had.

Dana on Mini-Mentors (0:48)
Mini-Mentors project at Coylton Primary

Dana speaks further about what she enjoyed about being a Mini-Mentor:

I found it quite fun because you were with all your friends. I was quite nervous though … I liked answering all the questions because they were quite good questions.

Space Mobiles – click to enlarge

Judith Lennox was P7 teacher at Coylton Primary School in South Ayrshire and is now DHT in the school. When it came to their topic work on Earth and Space, the P7 pupils at Coylton Primary School had lots of ideas about what they would like to learn about. Judith incorporated all of these ideas into the Glow Group she put together for the topic.

Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 1 (3:40)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 2 (2:45)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

This fourth Cookbook on Judith’s Earth and Space Glow Group will focus on the use made of Picture Libraries in the Glow Group to showcase pupil work. Four further Cookbooks will look at reusing a Glow Group through a template; the use made of embedded YouTube and TeacherTube videos within the Glow Group; the use made of a wiki for pupil project work and lastly on the use of a survey for topic evaluation.

You will find links to the other Cookbooks on Coylton Primary’s Earth and Space Topic Glow Group below as and when they are written:

• Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic
• Engaging videos in an Earth and Space Glow Group at Coylton Primary
• Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary
• Using a survey for topic evaluation to enable pupil voice

Mission to Mars – click to enlarge

The pupils were keen to study Mars as part of their Earth and Space Topic. Judith devised an activity for them which would allow them to use links and videos within the Glow Group for research and then, in groups, to build their own Mars Rover. As part of the activity, they were asked to photograph it and upload this into the Glow Group. Judith had previously created a Picture Library web part to allow them to display their work. This allowed the pupils to return to their work at any point during the project. It also allowed them to log onto Glow from home and show their families the work they had been involved in. It also meant that the models could be dismantled and that there weren’t Mars Rovers cluttering up the classroom throughout the whole project! Judith also took photographs of the pupils working on the models and uploaded these to the Picture Library.

The Mars Rover Mission – click to enlarge

During the topic the children’s Art project was to make some space mobiles and they planned these out based on the information they had been learning in their topic. Once they had finished Judith took pictures of them and got them uploaded into another Picture Library. The mobiles could then go home with the pupils.

Space Mobiles – click to enlarge

Taking photographs of pupil work and uploading these images into a Picture Library web part means that a permanent record of evidence can be stored. It also means that images can be captured of more active learning taking place within the classroom. Pupils enjoy going back to the Glow Group to see their work over and over again. Precious space within the classroom has also been returned for future activities.

Ingredients

What did Judith need to do to be able to showcase pupil work within the Glow Group?

• A sub-group of the P7 Glow Group was created for the Earth and Space Topic.
• Pupils were set with Contributor membership of this Group.
• New Picture Library web parts were created and added to the Mars Mission and Space Mobiles pages.
• Pupils took photographs of their Mars Rovers and uploaded these into the Our Mars Rovers Picture Library.
• Judith took photographs of the pupils working on their Mars Rovers and uploaded these to the Picture Library.
• Judith took photographs of the pupils with their Space Mobiles and uploaded these to the Pictures of our Space Mobiles Picture Library.

Recipe

The videos below recreate the steps that Judith took to showcase pupil work in Picture Libraries in her Glow Group. It begins with a discussion on the logic of creating a new Picture Library.

Why you should create a new Picture Library (2:17)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

How to create a new Picture Library (0:55)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

How to add the new Picture Library web part to the page (1:09)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

How pupils would add images to the Picture Library (0:58)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

Impact

Judith Lennox

Judith explains how the pupils were “hooked-in” to Glow (0:29)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries
Brandon on why he likes Glow (0:29)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

Brandon and Dana

Dana on why she likes Glow (0:23)
Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries

Our Planets Wiki – click to enlarge

Judith Lennox was P7 teacher at Coylton Primary School in South Ayrshire and is now DHT in the school. When it came to their topic work on Earth and Space, the P7 pupils at Coylton Primary School had lots of ideas about what they would like to learn about. Judith incorporated all of these ideas into the Glow Group she put together for the topic.
Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 1 (3:40)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 2 (2:45)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

pupil news and web links – click to enlarge

The pupils were involved in the discussion about what they would study and what the Glow Group would focus on but this was put together by Judith herself. She was able to give over control to them in a few important areas: the first was a Pupil News web part where pupils could add their own news items that they had come across to share with the rest of the class; the second was a web links web part where each pupil could add links to websites they thought would be interesting to other pupils on the Earth and Space Topic. The third important area where pupils were given more control and responsibility in the Glow Group was the Our Planets Wiki. The class worked in groups to research different planets and then to populate a wiki page on each of the planets. At the time of this project Judith used wikispaces.com, however, she would now be able to use the wiki tool within Glow.

This third Cookbook on Judith’s Earth and Space Glow Group will focus on the use she made of a wiki tool. In the Recipe section, the how-to videos will show how to recreate this using Glow Wikis. Four further Cookbooks will look at reusing a Glow Group through a template; the use made of embedded YouTube and TeacherTube videos within the Glow Group; the use made of picture libraries within the Glow Group and lastly on the use of a survey for topic evaluation.

You will find links to the other Cookbooks on Coylton Primary’s Earth and Space Topic Glow Group below as and when they are written:

• Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic
• Engaging videos in an Earth and Space Glow Group at Coylton Primary
• Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries
• Using a survey for topic evaluation to enable pupil voice

Our Planets Wiki – click to enlarge

A wiki, originally from the Hawaiian for fast, can live up to its name in terms of creating space on the web. Groups of pupils can very quickly get started with creating their own web spaces without worrying about website design. They are perfect as a collaborative tool with lots of people able to edit the one area. Wikis are an incredibly flexible tool within the classroom. A wiki allows teachers to hand over responsibility to pupils to investigate a particular area. Pupils are often enthusiastic about adding their own stamp to the Glow Group in an area that they can control. They know their research in the individual groups is leading towards them controlling what goes into a particular area that is owned by them. It allowed Judith to have control of the Glow Group and exactly what she wanted in there and yet also to give over responsibility to the pupils for a particular area without changing permissions for the whole Glow Group. The pupils worked in small groups with a separate log on to wiki spaces for each group. Judith was able to see which group had edited which part and then protect the final product at the end.

Ingredients

What did Judith need to be able to allow her P7 pupils to have more authorship responsibility within the Earth and Space Glow Group?

• A class Glow Group for the Earth and Space Topic created as a sub-group of the class Glow Group
• Pupils set with Contributor permissions for the Glow Group
• a Pupil News web part
• a Pupil web links web part
• Judith took out a wikispaces.com free account and gave the pupils log-ins for this
• She also added a link to this wiki to the Noticeboard page of the Glow Group – however, to do this with a Glow Wiki she would need to have done the following:
  • add a Glow Wiki web part to the Noticeboard page
  • Create an Our Planets wiki – the pupils would then be able to get started straight away

Recipe

The videos below will allow you to recreate what Judith did with wikis using a Glow Wiki.

Creating the Our Planets Wiki (3:36)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Editing the front page of the Our Planets Wiki (3:59)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Creating the pages in the Our Planets Wiki (2:50)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Changing the Privacy Settings on the Our Planets Wiki (1:48)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Impact

Judith Lennox

Judith explains how the pupils were “hooked-in” to Glow (0:29)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary
Brandon on why he likes Glow (0:29)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Brandon and Dana

Dana on why she likes Glow (0:23)
Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary

Earth and Space Group – click to enlarge

Context

Judith Lennox was P7 teacher at Coylton Primary School in South Ayrshire and is now DHT in the school. When it came to their topic work on Earth and Space, the P7 pupils at Coylton Primary School had lots of ideas about what they would like to learn about.

Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 1 (3:40)

Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 2 (2:45)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

Judith Lennox

She realised originally, when she came to speak to the P7 pupils the year before about what they were interested in doing for their topic, that this wouldn’t fit into the class Glow Group. She decided to make a sub-group of her class Glow Group for the Earth and Space topic. This allowed it to sit separately and self-contained in terms of organisation. The following year, she was able to use a template of this first Glow Group to set up a new Glow Group on Earth and Space. This meant that she was not starting from scratch when putting the content together for the topic. She saved the template and then used this to create a new Group but then edited it to fit in with what the children from the current year wanted to learn about. This meant that some of the content was able to be reused.

This first Cookbook on Judith’s work with her P7 pupils on their Earth and Space Project will focus on reusing a Glow Group by saving it as a template. This can be a difficult concept to get your head around. However, if you take your time and follow the instructions you will be able to do the same with one of your own Glow Groups.

Four further Cookbooks will look at the use of video within the Glow Group; the use made of a wiki within the Glow Group for pupils to present research; the use made of picture libraries within the Glow Group and lastly on the use of a survey for topic evaluation. As these Cookbooks are written they will be available from the links below:

• Engaging videos in an Earth and Space Glow Group at Coylton Primary
• Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary
• Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries
• Using a survey for topic evaluation to enable pupil voice

Ingredients

pupil news and web links – click to enlarge

There are several choices within different contexts for reusing Glow Groups. Everyone is busy and finding ways to make best use of previous work is a bonus. Some people choose to simply clear out discussion boards etc from the previous year and change over the membership of their Glow Group for the current class. In other cases people choose, mainly for class Glow Groups, to retain the membership for the original class and let them carry this with them as they get older. This would mean adding content to the Glow Group as is appropriate for the pupils as they move forward.

It is sometimes beneficial to teachers to retain what has been done in a previous year with a class and Glow as evidence. In this case they would want to recreate a similar Glow Group for use with the following year group. Teachers could also want various versions of their Glow Group available at the same time, for example in a secondary context. In both of these scenarios it is beneficial to save the original Glow Group as a template and use this to create further Glow Groups.

What did Judith need to do to be able to create a copy of the Glow Group she had been using with her previous P7 class?

• Access to a Site Collection Administrator account for the school
• To save the original Glow Group as a template as the Site Collection Administrator
• To create a new Glow Group from this template as the Site Collection Administrator
• To set Administrator membership up for her own Teacher Account as the Site Collection Administrator
• To edit the Glow Group for the current class of P7 pupils
• To set the current P7 pupils up with membership of the Glow Group

Recipe

Mars Mission

The videos below will take you through the process of saving your Glow Group as a template and then creating a new Group using this template. You will need to have a Site Collection Administrator account for your school. If you do not know what this is then it is worth asking a Glow Mentor within the school or a member of the senior management team.

How to save a previous Glow Group as a template (4:50)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

How to create a new Glow Group using a template (4:35)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

How to edit your Glow Group for use (3:27)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

Impact

I was able to use a template [for the sub-Glow Group] of a Group I had used the previous year. I uploaded the template but then edited it to fit in with what the children this year wanted to learn about. So I was able to re-use some of the content and I was able to edit the rest that I wasn’t needing.

Judith explains why Earth and Space was a sub-group and why she used a template (0:55)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

Brandon on why he likes Glow (0:29)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

Dana on why she likes Glow (0:23)
Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic

You may find these Help Articles from the Glow Help Blog to be useful:

How to copy Glow Groups within an establishment site

How to copy Glow Groups between establishment sites

Clare Fallon is Principal Teacher at St Mark’s Primary in Irvine, North Ayrshire. She is a Glow Mentor and decided to start using Glow with her pupils at St Mark’s. She began to use Glow with P4 to P7 as she teaches ICT to the whole school. After giving each child their Glow usernames and passwords they were ready to get started. They used many of the resources on the national site as part of their introduction to Glow.

Clare Fallon

In this Cookbook we will focus on the use of Glow Meet for the P4s and also the P7s to link up with St Luke’s Primary and also with St Matthew’s Secondary School. To see a tour of the P7 Glow Group click below:

Tour of the P7 Glow Group (0:47)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

P4 Glow Meet

Initially, Clare was really interested in trying to set up a Glow Meet session, or web conference, with another school in her cluster. She chose St Luke’s as she had worked with the staff there before. Both P4 classes happened to be working on the same project about Ancient Egypt and both Primary 4 teachers were eager to help. To get started the teachers used a Critical Skills based approach where the pupils designed some fantastic posters they had made to explain the facts they had learned about the Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. The children then shared their knowledge with each other through a Glow Meet where they talked each class through their posters.

Glow Meet at St Mark's

Primary 7 have also enjoyed using Glow this year. They’ve been involved in many different activities from posting  and adding to discussions, to emailing their friends from the class and also friends from outwith the school. Clare spoke with them about how Glow could help them communicate with the children in their local community. They decided to have a Glow Meet session with S1 pupils at their cluster secondary school, St Mathew’s Academy. This would become part of an ongoing programme of transition activities during P7. They decided that this experience would be even richer for the pupils if they invited P7 pupils from

S1 Pupils at St Mathew's

St Luke’s Primary in the cluster to be involved. They were hoping to be able to have a variety of questions from a wide range of children for the Glow Meet. To get started for ideas Clare posted a discussion which the P7 pupils replied to with their ideas for questions.

The P7 pupils from both schools were able to discuss with each other what they thought the most important issues to be addressed during the Glow Meet session should be. These were then emailed to St Mathew’s Academy as the S1 pupils wanted to prepare their responses. The Glow Meet was then able to be held with all pupils involved.

Click below to see the tour of the Glow Meet Glow Group:

Tour of the Glow Meet Glow Group (1:10)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

Ingredients

What did Clare need to prepare for and to run the Glow Meet web conference with St Mark’s and St Luke’s Primary Schools and St Mathew’s Academy?

• A Glow Group at local authority level with membership for all 3 schools
• The Discussion Board within the P7 Glow Group at school level with membership for all P7 pupils
• Glow Mail accounts for each pupil
• At least one computer with a web camera and microphone in each school

Recipe

Although Clare used the original version of Glow Meet for web conferencing, the how-to videos below will demonstrate how to get started with the new version of Glow Meet.

The how-to videos below will be enough to get you started with the new Glow Meet. You will find additional help in the Glow Meet section of the Glow Help Blog here.

Adding the Glow Meet web part to your Glow Group (1:26)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

Creating the Glow Meet room (0:56)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

Entering the Glow Meet (2:03)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

Impact

In this first impact video Clare Fallon speaks about starting to use Glow and this is followed by a video of Joseph, a P4 pupil, speaking about the Glow Meet with the P4’s in St Luke’s Primary.

How Clare first got started with Glow (1:06)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

Joseph P4

We took turns to show our posters and our posters were brilliant, so the P4’s in St Luke’s said. And theirs were brilliant too!

It was brilliant! I just thought it was good to share about our posters and everyone in St Luke’s.

Joseph, from Primary 4 talks about his class’s project (1:23)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

More specifically Clare now talks about the P7 Transition Glow Meet Project.

Clare speaks about the cluster transition Glow Meet (1:34)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

The Glow Meet enabled the children to speak to their peers who they wouldn’t normally meet until their induction visit to St Mathew’s in June. The children learned, first hand, about some of the skills and strategies which would support them as they moved on.

The children contributed effectively to an important and really meaningful event.

The first year pupils answered their questions really well and engaged with their audience.

All the children were able to use ICT across the curriculum. They chose relevant information to suit the purpose and took into account their audience.

I hope that this opportunity has really helped the children to feel a bit better about moving on to a new and exciting stage in their lives.

Avneet and Molly talk about the Transition Glow Meet (1:57)
Using Glow Meet for Transition at St Mark’s Primary

Avneet and Molly P7

It made it easier for us to go to St Mathew’s on our induction because it made us see what secondary was like.

Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton is PT Raising Achievement at St Aidan’s High School in North Lanarkshire. She is also the Glow Mentor for the school. As part of the many things Margaret was using Glow for she wanted to work on a Transition Glow Group which she just started before the end of term. Margaret had been impressed by what she saw in the Glow Cookbook, Transition Glow Group in Angus Schools, particularly by the involvement of the S1 pupils and also with their Interactive Map.

Some of St Aidan’s High School’s associate primary schools are as much as 12 miles away and Margaret was attracted by the idea of being able to use tools such as Discussion Boards and Glow Meet to keep in contact without having to wait for physical visits.

The video below is Margaret’s description of the Glow Group and tour of the Interactive Map:
Margaret’s Tour of the Glow Group and the Interactive School Map (2:42)
St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map

Ingredients

The Noticeboard of the Transition Group – click to enlarge

The St Aidan’s High School Transition Glow Group has been built at local authority level in North Lanarkshire so that all primary schools will see the Glow Group name in their list of Glow Groups. If the Group had been built in St Aidan’s High school site they would have to have sent a link to each primary school.

Graphical Interface

As you can see from the screenshot a graphical interface has been used for the design of the Glow Group. This was done to simplify the interface for pupils and teachers. There are only 2 visible page tabs in the Glow Group, the Noticeboard and the Glow Meet page. The other pages in the Group have been created as ‘Hidden Pages’ and are accessible by clicking on the named button links on the Noticeboard graphic.

Content of the Glow Group

The Questions Page – click to enlarge

The Glow Group is mainly about sharing information with the schools. There are pages with pictures and information about the Senior Management Team; the captains and prefects; pupils care and support; the student council; subjects within the school; tutor time; student planners; competitions and the schedule of primary visits. However, there are also 3 more interactive areas in the Questions page, the P7 wiki and the interactive map of the school. It is planned that the following year there will be much more participation from subject departments within St Aidan’s High School. This will possibly be in the form of challenges and competitions which the primary pupils will be able to participate in.

Pupil Voice

The Questions Page is about the primary pupils being able to ask questions which the S1 pupils will answer. There is also a separate discussion board where the S1 pupils will ask and answer questions that they feel they wish they had known about before they came to secondary school. These discussion boards can be set up so that they are moderated and an administrator of the Glow Group has to approve posts before they are seen by all members of the Glow Group.

The Angus Schools Cookbook mentioned above has how-To videos which will take you through the process of setting up moderated discussion boards if this is of interest.

The P7 wiki

P7 wiki – click to enlarge

Although it is early days in the set-up of the Glow Group, Margaret has created a Glow wiki with a page for every associate primary school. It is hoped that the schools will use these pages to give information about their school to be shared with the other primary schools in the cluster. In the wiki area they can easily use text, images, audio files and even videos to describe their school. It is also hoped that they will showcase pupil work in these pages.

The Interactive Map

Interactive Map – Click to enlarge

Margaret originally made the Interactive Map in a PowerPoint document, with a separate page for every photograph of the different areas of the school. She carefully annotated the corridor photographs so that they would provide detail on the direction of further corridors and stairwells and to every classroom within them. Every photograph of a corridor links to each of the classrooms within it and onto further classrooms. Each classroom has the name of the subject and the teacher(s) who teach there. On every page there is a small version of the photograph of the front of the school at the bottom right-hand corner to allow users to navigate back to the home page. Margaret also compressed every individual photograph to minimise the size of the finished document. When it was completed in PowerPoint and the links were all set up, the file was converted to a pdf. This was to reduce the size even further. Once placed into a document library the photo of the front of the school, on the interactive map page was linked to the pdf document.

What did Margaret need to be able to set up the Transition Glow Group:

• A Glow Group set up at local authority level with Margaret given Administrator access to this
• Contributor membership set for every associate primary, for all teaching and non-teaching staff; P6 and P7 classes; teaching and non-teaching staff at St Aidan’s High School and all S1 pupils
• Several PowerPoint slides saved as images to be used as graphical interfaces at different points within the Glow Group
• Hidden pages set up for the different areas of the Glow Group
• The pdf version of the interactive map available in the document library and linked to from the photograph of the school on the school map page
• Moderated discussion boards set up for S1 and P7 pupils
• A P7 wiki created with a page created for every associate primary school

Recipe

The videos below show how you could re-create some aspects of the St Aidan’s High School Transition Glow Group in your own Glow Group.

Saving the pdf document into the document library (1:58)
St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map

Adding a text editor and image of the school (3:33)
St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map

Linking this image to the pdf document (1:50)
St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map

You may wish to visit any of these Cookbooks for further information about creating Hidden Pages:

Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

LEGO activities at SLF: Part 1 – Hidden Pages in a Glow Group

“Which Writer Wins?” Chapter 1: The Author & Book pages

FIFA 2010 World Cup in Inverclyde!

Impact

Interactive Map – Click here to enlarge

The S1 pupils were really keen and enthusiastic to be involved in the project. They did all the work to take the photos of every classroom in the school.

Some of our associated primary schools have now looked at it and they’re now going to make a map of their school. It just shows how it catches on.

The S1’s are really really keen to have a link with the primary pupils.

Click below to see the videos where Margaret talks about what she was setting out to achieve with the Transition Project Glow Group.

Why did Margaret want to use Glow for Transition? (0:32)
St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map

Why was Margaret interested in the interactive map? (0:50)
St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map

The Transition Project at St Aidan’s High School Cluster has obviously only just began and will grow in many exciting ways under Margaret’s steer. What a great resource the Interactive Map is for pupils, not only when they’re in P7 but also when they arrive into S1 and are having to navigate their way around the school on a daily basis!

You may wish to visit other Cookbooks written about St Aidan’s High School:

• Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School
• Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Building the Curriculum 5

From the recommendations contained within Building the Curriculum 5 Jennifer Richardson then South Ayrshire’s Curriculum for Excellence Assessment Team Development Officer, had decided to initiate a pilot project to use Glow to help schools meet the requirements. The documentation states that,

“children and young people should agree learning goals and should record them in ways that are meaningful and relevant.”

It also calls for the creation of a Learner Profile which should include targets and goals with information on all areas of the curriculum and wider achievement and a range of evidence of learning. It states that learners should have opportunities for reflection, sharing and dialogue.  Maintaining an electronic portfolio within Glow could provide schools and pupils with the ongoing information required for a Profile.

In this cookbook we will focus on work done in Barr Primary School in South Ayrshire as part of this pilot process.

Originally South Ayrshire were interested in some work done in East Ayrshire using Glow Groups as e-portfolios. However, since their introduction in the summer of 2010, Glow blogs have become an increasingly important tool within Glow. It quickly became obvious that they would be an excellent opportunity to provide an e-portfolio solution which would have many advantages over using a Glow Group.

Jennifer was originally keen to go ahead with using Glow blogs for this purpose as she saw the following benefits:

• they provide an accessible, electronic and manageable method of storing different types of evidence in one central place
• it can be accessed by both the learner, teachers, parents and peers (optional)
• learners can independently access and update their e-portfolio at any time and from anywhere with an internet connection
• teachers, parents and peers could comment on the learners work
• the e-portfolio can automatically transfer with the learner from class to class and from primary to secondary school.

Nation e-portfolio Glow Group

National advice and access to templates and helpsheets is available from the National level Glow Group here. The advice is given that the e-portfolios are created in a Glow Group in the pupil’s My Glow area. The My Glow area is chosen so that the pupils can have more ownership of the process but also because as the pupil moves to secondary school, if they are correctly identity matched to the same account, then they retain their My Glow and any groups within it. Rather than simply creating the blog on their My Glow it is created in a Glow Group so that membership can be set for teachers in the Glow Group without giving access to the pupil’s My Glow area. When a pupil enters secondary school membership can be reset for all teaching staff for the secondary in the way it was originally set at the primary.

Context

Barr Primary

In South Ayrshire we decided to build a template for schools to use, although local authorities are now able to work with the National Team to design a ‘Theme’ which can be used across the whole authority. Towards the end of 2010 South Ayrshire asked for volunteer schools to come along to a twilight training session. Both primaries and secondaries were keen to be involved. Fraser Baird came along from Barr Primary to find out how to get started with his pupils and kicked the process off with them when he returned to school.

Barr Primary School

Barr Primary were initially keen to use Glow Groups for e-portfolios and had already got started with doing this but then opted to give the Glow blogs a try instead. They began with creating them with the senior pupils in P5-7 but then set them up with the junior pupils as well. All pupils in P1-7 at Barr Primary have their own Glow blog to use for an e-portfolio.

To put the project in context click below to see Brian from Barr Primary take you on a tour through his e-portfolio blog:
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Ingredients

The prcess the South Ayrshire schools went through to create the e-portfolios was as follows:

• Pupils created a Glow Group with their own name as a title in their My Glow Area using the Glow Light interface.
• They added this Glow Group to their favourites.
• The pupils used the Advanced Settings link to add staff as Administrators of their Glow Group.
• They added the Glow Blog web part to the Glow Group
• They created a Glow blog, naming it with their Glow username, in order to keep the blog name unique.
• The pupils applied a template to their blog but this would now be done by adding a theme decided on by the local authority
• The pupils created their own header for the blog.
• A Glow Group was created by their teacher at school level.
• Pupils copied the URL for their blog and added this to a web links web part in the school-level Glow Group.

Recipe

If you go to the National E-Portfolio Glow Group mentioned above you will see videos and Helpsheets taking you through all the stages required for schools to set up e-portfolio with their pupils.

Brian shows us how pupils access their e-portfolios to make a post (1:22)

e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Brian shows us how to move from the dashboard to the e-portfolio (0:20)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Impact

The senior pupils at Barr Primary School

Barr Primary are very pleased with how the e-portfolio pilot is progressing and the pupils appear to really enjoy this way of working. They were generous enough with their time to let me go into the school and film their opinions on using their e-portfolios. Click on the videos in the sections below to find out what firstly, the pupils thought of various aspects and then what their teacher, Fraser Baird thought:

Introductions to the pupils (0:39)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

The pupils on creating the e-portfolios (0:51)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on why they’re using the e-portfolios (1:37)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on what they post on (2:04)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on using your blog as an evidence store (1:05)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on how to post (1:37)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on using vokis on the blogs (0:52)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on using it from home (0:30)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Pupils on getting comments from teachers (0:32)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Fraser on the decision to use blogs (1:13)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Fraser on getting started (1:27)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Fraser on e-portfolio for measuring pupil progression (1:09)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Fraser on the advantages of blogs over traditional methods (0:49)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Fraser on the pupils and blogs (2:21)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire

Fraser on what and how often the pupils post (1:05)
e-portfolios using Glow blogs at Barr Primary, South Ayrshire