Last session, the Computing Department in John Ogilvie High School, South Lanarkshire, decided to create a Glow Group to host all of the resources that pupils studying Higher Computing would need access to throughout the year. Joe Kane is Head of the Business Education and Computing faculty and undertook the task of building the Group,

Context

Click to see full image

Joe was keen to ensure that pupils studying Higher Computing had easy access to all information and resources they would need for the course and also would have a place where they could give feedback.

He wanted to simplify the look of the Glow Group and aid pupils’ navigation around it and so decided to use a graphical interface along with hidden pages.

On the Noticeboard page of the Group, Joe deleted the default web parts from the page, added a Text Editor web part and uploaded an image to it. He then created ‘hot spots’ on the image to provide links to each of the hidden pages.

Each part of the image then acts like a button, linking to a separate hidden page and gives pupils access to course notes, tests, past papers, homework, study information, useful web links, a pupil voice feedback area and a blog giving specific course information.

Because of the use of hidden pages, only the Noticeboard page tab is visible in the Group, so Joe chose to create a navigation system on each page, to enable pupils to go from page to page without having to go back to the main page each time.

Like the Noticeboard page, this was done by uploading an image to a Text Editor Web part and creating hot spots to each page.

The Pages

Each page in the Glow Group is beautifully simple and easy to use, containing only a few web parts. For example:

Past Papers Page

Click to see full image

This page contains only three web parts – two text editors and a Document Store. Both text editor web parts have had their borders and title bars removed so that only the images which have been uploaded into them are visible.

The Document Store hosts Past Paper exam questions and marking schemes to aid pupils in their exam preparation and enables the staff in the Department to ensure that all relevant information is shared with pupils.

Notes Page

This page also contains Text Editor web parts (3) and a Document Store.

In order for Joe to ensure that each page contained a different Document store, containing the folders and documents relevant to the purpose of the page, he had to create new Document Library web parts from scratch for each page, using the Advanced Settings link in the Glow Group. Had he not done this and had simply added a document store to each page from the web parts gallery, he would have had the same document store, containing the same documents, on every page. You can find out more about this and how to create new web parts from scratch in the ‘how to’ videos in the Recipe section below.

Blog Page

Joe created a Higher Computing blog to enable him to give up to date information to pupils. Once he had created the Glow Blog, he copied the web address of the view of the blog. Joe then removed the blog web part from the page and instead added a Page Viewer web part, adding in the web address of the view of the blog to it. This enabled pupils to have a direct view of the blog content.

In the blog, Joe was then able to write posts to share information about the course revision guides, holiday revision and Supported Study.

Pupil Voice Page

The Pupil Voice page gives pupils the chance to give feedback on the Higher Computing course, to enable staff to then make changes in order to help them continually improve the learning experience for pupils.

On the page there is a Document store with evaluation documents which pupils can use to give their opinions on Positive, Negative and Interesting elements of the course. In here also are the results of a survey which Joe did with pupils last session to gather their thoughts on the course. This was done using ‘Survey Monkey’, however this year, Joe has decided to use a Glow Survey instead and so the web part for this is also on the Pupil Voice page. Using the Glow Survey will enable Joe to have an overview of the whole class’s feedback, as well as being able to see individual pupil responses. Results can be displayed in a variety of ways, including graphically.

These are just four of the pages in the Glow Group. In the following video we can take a look at the whole Group:

Tour of Higher Computing Glow Group (13:44)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

Ingredients

Joe chose to create the Higher Computing Glow Group using hidden pages, with links made to them via a graphical interface. This is done by uploading an image to a Text Editor web part then creating ‘hot spots’ to each of the pages on selected parts of the image.  In order to do all of this, Joe therefore needed to do the following:

-    Create a Glow Group at school level
-    Delete the Documents, Discussions and Glow Groups pages
-    Create Hidden Page
-    On the Noticeboard Page, delete the default web parts, upload an image to a Text Editor web part and create hot  spots on the image to link to each of the hidden pages
-    On each of the hidden pages, upload an image to a Text Editor web part and create hot spots on the image to link to each of the other hidden pages.

Since Joe needed separate document stores on many of the pages in the Glow Group, he also needed to create new Document Libraries from scratch, to avoid simply having the same Document store duplicated on every page.

A Glow Blog had to be created. Joe chose to then use the Page Viewer web part to show the view of the Blog.

A Glow Survey was created, with multiple choice questions using the ‘ratings scale’ option, to enable Joe to gather pupil feedback on the Higher Computing course.

Recipe

The following videos explain how to replicate some of these elements of the Higher Computing Glow Group. The context of these videos is different, but the process is exactly the same.

How to remove pages from a Glow Group and close web parts from a page (2:22)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to create a hidden page and hyperlink text to access it (10:39)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to hotspot an image and link it to a hidden page (6:22)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to create a new Document Store (5:57)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to add a Glow Blog to a Glow Group and create the blog (6:12)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to view a Glow Blog through the Page Viewer web part (4:53)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to create a survey (14:16)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

How to respond to a survey (5:19)
Higher Computing- Pupil support and Pupil Voice

Impact

Perhaps the best way to judge whether the Glow Group has been beneficial is to listen to the thoughts of the pupils who used it. Here are what some of them had to say:

“I thought that the glow group was very useful as it had all the required course notes which was easily accessible from home. I liked this because it meant that if I had missed a set of notes or lost a set I could easily get a new copy without using up the teachers time”. Sean

“Sitting Higher Computing last year, I felt glow was a great study tool.  With the online daily guide of what to study each night, it really helped me keep my studying on track, as it gave you a guide line of what to study, for how long and what was coming up. This section also updates us on homework or tests that were coming up. It allowed you to submit homework online at any point. This was great as you could receive immediate feed back, the following day. It also prevented you from losing or forgetting sheets.   It covered all the course and recalled on subtopics that we had done at the start of term. The notes on power point were also a great help to look over if I was unsure on any particular parts of a topic, these notes went into further detail and helped explain when I did not understand. With the past papers and marking schemes, this was a great study revision, as they were easy to access and find. Also the previous class test that we had sat were available online, this was a further study guide that was available nowhere else. The site was very easy to use and navigate around. I personally feel this would be a great revision and home tool for all subjects.  All of this helped me greatly to stay on track and achieve my grade B that I had hoped for.” Alix

“The Glow program was useful by providing remote and digital access to homework as well as a balanced revision timetable. Being able to download homework meant that the problem of losing sheets disappeared completely and being able to upload digital documents meant that when homework was handed in there was no loss of a jotter and thus access to notes, so studying could carry on in lots of little chunks instead of needing a big rush to catch up after a few days. I would recommend using Glow just because of how useful digitised work is when you have written notes, and having a good revision timetable always handy is a bonus”. Daniel

“Glow last year was good as Mr Kane was able to set us a study plan every week so we knew which to study every night in order to achieve the best grade possible. We were also able to access past papers as well as the marking instructions. Glow was effective when coming up to our exams as I was able to know what to study for when at home as well as at school”. Tommy

“I think glow was a useful, educational tool in which we were able to access at home and see our study plan and online past papers. This benefited me greatly and allowed me to work the best of my ability and achieve a high grade.” Stephen

“Good points about using the glow group in Higher Computing last year were that it allowed the class to gain access to all resources needed for the course and all past papers that would be needed for revision. It also gave us a study guide for specific subjects to study when at home which was optional which was good as it gave us areas that people may need help on as well as being able to issue homework and do homework on computer and send it back to the teacher”. Connor

Joe Kane also talks about the benefits that he got from using the Glow Group with the pupils. He feels that the blog has been the most useful element: 

“For me, the blog had the biggest impact as pupils would come to school having checked the revision guide. They would then be able to informally feedback on the aspects of the course that they found tricky when revising.”

In June 2011, two of East Renfrewshire’s clusters worked with their pupils to create e-portfolios using Glow Blogs. This involved Eastwood High School, St Ninian’s High School and their associated primary schools. At the start of the 2011-12 academic session, the other five Secondary clusters did the same. Part 1 of this cookbook covers the background to this and the set up process for the e-portfolios.

Here in part 2, we focus on the use of the e-portfolios and the plans that one school has for this.

Context

The schools in East Renfrewshire are using e-portfolios as part of their adoption of the recommendations in Building the Curriculum 5, and whilst every school in the local authority is following the same basic adoption principles, each school has its own specific plans for implementation and use. This cookbook highlights the plans of one of these schools.

Crookfur Primary School

Crookfur Primary is one of the schools in the Eastwood High cluster.

Gillian Graham is Depute Headteacher in Crookfur and has responsibility for implementing the e-portfolios. Supported by the National Glow Team, the school created e-portfolios with all of their Primary 6 and Primary 7 classes. Building on this, Gillian then worked with the Primary 5 classes to do the same.

Gillian has been taking part in the Education Scotland pilot group for Pupil Profiles and when introduced to the e-portfolios, immediately saw a way to link them with the pupil profiles.

Working with staff and Headteacher Fiona Loudon, Gillian developed the format of the profile document that the P7 pupils in Crookfur Primary will complete. This document will contain the pupil’s reflections on their learning, their progress through the curricular areas, information on achievements across learning plus a section for parental comment on their child’s progress.

In ICT time, pupils add information to their e-portfolios about their weekly achievements, to build a permanent record throughout the year. This will be used at the end of the year to help pupils complete their profiles. These will then be attached to their e-portfolios.

Staff can access each pupil’s e-portfolio and comment on the posts that pupils write and parents can view the e-portfolios when their child logs in to Glow at home to show them.

In the following audio clips, Gillian Graham explains Crookfur Primary’s plans for use the e-portfolios:

Use of e-portfolios and Pupil Profiles (0:51)
Gillian Graham: Pupil Profiles

 In the following video, we’ll look at one pupil’s e-portfolio and how they have included their pupil profile in it.

Pupil profile in their e-portfolio (8:10)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2

You can also view a sample of the pupil profile document being used in Crookfur Primary in the following attachment:  You can also view a sample of the pupil profile document being used in Crookfur Primary in the following attachment:    Pupil’s primary 7 Profile

Ingredients

In order for pupils to be able to attach their profile to their e-portfolio, they first had to learn how to add content to their blog. The Crookfur pupils learned the same things as the pupils in all of the East Renfrewshire schools.

This included:

-          Adding information about themselves on the blog’s welcome page

-          Learning how to use the Blog Dashboard to write a post and edit it

-          Finding out how to categorise and tag a post

-          Learning how to attach documents and images to blog post

Pupils were also shown how teachers can comment on posts and how they can then read those comments and reply.
 

Recipe

Learn in the following videos how to do the things listed above:

How to set up the ‘All about me’ welcome page (8:48)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
How to use the blog dashboard to write a post, categorise and tag it (9:54)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
How to attach a document to a post (6:10)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
How to add an image to a post (8:38)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
How teachers access a pupil’s e-portfolio and add comments to it (7:11)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
 

One additional thing which pupils did, to give ease of access to their e-portfolio, was to create a button on their Glow Light screen to take them straight to their e-portfolio. Find out how to do this in the following video:

How to create an e-portfolio button on the Glow Light screen (3:39)
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 2
 

 Impact

Each of the schools in East Renfrewshire plans to use the pupil e-portfolios in different ways and so the impact will be different for each.  

In the following audio clip, Gillian Graham gives her thoughts on the benefits of using e-portfolios, including access from home and parental access:

Ninian’s High School:
Josef Fuchs is Principal Teacher of Development at St Ninian’s High School in Giffnock. He has been heavily involved in the implementation of the pupil e-portfolios there and commented on the benefits that he and the school see for their usage:

 “E-portfolios allow our pupils to keep an online record of their progress and achievements throughout their school life.  These records can be categorized into achievements and/or curricular areas.  Pupils post updates on their progress and achievements, also being able to attach media files such as photos to evidence these. 

As these can be updated continually, this record is a much fuller account of their experiences than if completed as a paper exercise termly or annually which was the previous method. 

We have a strong emphasis on pupils being responsible for updating their own e-portfolios regularly.  Staff across the school encourage pupils to add in for example test scores, extra curricular activity involvement and achievements such as awards gained.  School staff can easily view and comment on pupils e-portfolios at any time although we plan to timetable a formal review on a termly basis. Another use is that we can make resources available, for example PE fitness test scores and Home Economics Food Diaries that pupils copy and paste into their e-portfolio and then fill in the answers online, allowing pupils and staff to access these.  It also removes the ability to lose them while also saving paper and filing space. We believe these to be invaluable as we prepare our pupils for the next stage in their lives. 
The benefits include: 

• Giving pupils the necessary communication tools to use in the world which is becoming more and more digitalised. 
• Preparing pupils for using e-portfolios at further/higher education level and beyond in many professions such as Medicine, Dentistry and Law.
• Encouraging pupils to be self reflective, important in many professions such as Teaching and Nursing.”

These comments reflect the impact on just two of the schools involved in the implementation of e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire. There are many other benefits being enjoyed across all of the schools.

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

Graphica Interface. Click to enlarge.

Glenwood High School in Fife, with a roll of 860 pupils and with 90 teaching staff, has seen a significant increase in the use of Glow over the last six months. By the end of the year, around 75% of staff and pupils had active accounts and in an average week over 200 pupils were using Glow during school hours.

The cookbook, “Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School“, describes how a number of staff from different departments, have been using Glow to enhance learning and teaching.

In this cookbook we focus on the work of the Computing department. In the Recipe section, video clips show how you can replicate the use of avatars, vokis and forums.

Context

In January 2011, a number of Glow training courses were run in Fife and staff from eight secondary schools were invited to attend. At Glenwood, volunteers were sought from across the school and 14 participated in the training. Most of the sessions offered were one-day Glow Basics training, which covered how to create a curricular Glow Group to support learning with a specific class. At the end of the day’s session, staff had a Glow Group ready to go and a good idea of how they wanted their pupils to use it. The aim for many of the staff was initially to upload revision documents in preparation for prelims and for pupils to be able to use discussion boards or forums to ask questions or look for help.

Clare Hunt is PTC of Business, Enterprise and Computing at Glenwood. She and her colleagues have begun to use Glow across S1-S6, and have created a series of attractive graphical interfaces to allow users to easily navigate between the different Glow Groups.

Pupils' work. Click to enlarge.

The S1 ICT course contains a unit of work on Cyber-Bullying. Following a class discussion, pupils were asked to create presentations to share their understanding of what cyber-bullying is, how it should be dealt with and how to avoid becoming a victim of a cyber-bully. Pupils uploaded their completed presentations into the S1 Glow Group, as it provided an ideal place for pupils to share their work. The Group enabled them to view each others’ presentations and to show their work to parents and carers at home. A number of parents have commented to Clare about how valuable this has been in stimulating a discussion with their children about staying safe online.

Pupils' forum avatars. Click to enlarge.

A Glow forum was then used to encourage pupils to think about the advice they would give if they discovered a friend was being bullied. Introducing the forum to the pupils enabled Clare and her colleagues to reinforce internet safety messages about keeping personal information private. Rather than displaying a photograph of themselves in the forum, pupils learnt how to create an avatar (a cartoon representation) using a free website, and how to upload this into their forum profile.

Clare Hunt: S1 Cyber-Bullying presentations and discussions (1:59) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

Pupil's voki

Towards the end of the academic year S2 classes were introduced to the Voki web site. Here they each created their own Voki (a talking avatar) to give their evaluation of the Computing course. The website allows users to give their Voki a voice, either by entering text or by using a microphone to record. Microphones work well with a bit of peace and quiet, but not so effectively with 20 pupils recording simultaneously. So the second years typed in their text and took great care over the comments, spelling and punctuation, as the Voki’s speech is only as good as the text that’s been entered. The Vokis were then shared through a Glow blog, so that pupils could see each others’ and Computing staff could hear all the feedback on the course. Pupils clearly found this a highly motivating activity, and the quality of comments was better than might have been recorded on a paper evaluation form.

Clare Hunt: S2’s Computing course evaluations (2:14)“Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

Ingredients

For the S1 Cyber-bullying project, Clare required:

- an S1 ICT Glow Group

- all relevant pupils given Contributor membership

- a suitable website for creating avatars

- Microsoft Office Picture Manager, or similar image editing software, to resize the avatars

For the S2 end of year evaluations, Clare required:

- an S2 Computing Glow Group

- all the relevant pupils given Contributor membership

- the Voki website

- a Glow blog created within the Glow Group

Method

* How to add the Glow forum web part and create a forum (2:57) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

* How to post messages on a forum (5:59) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

* How to create an avatar to use in a Glow forum (3:46) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

* How to upload an avatar to a Glow forum profile (1:36) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

* How to create a Voki (4:41) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

* How to add a Voki to a Glow Group page (6:50) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

* How to add a Voki to a blog post (4:50) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

Impact

The use of Glow at Glenwood has grown very rapidly over just a few months, not just in Computing. Glow is becoming well embedded in the curriculum: it’s not viewed as an adjunct, but a tool to be used, when appropriate, to enhance learning and teaching.

In the video clip below, Dave Dawson, DHT at Glenwood, explains the progress that has been made.

Dave Dawson: uptake and usage of Glow at Glenwood (1:35) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

The challenge now is to continue to develop. In the new academic year, each department has been asked to have a Glow representative and for Glow to be included in development plans.

Dave Dawson: next stages of Glow development at Glenwood (0:36) “Glow is an ideal place to share pupils’ work”

 

In June 2011, just before the end of term, two of the East Renfrewshire clusters worked with their pupils to create e-portfolios using Glow Blogs. This involved Eastwood High School, St Ninian’s High School and their associated primary schools. In the secondary schools, every S1 pupil (the new S2 cohort) created an e-portfolio and in the primaries, every P7 pupil did so, in preparation for their transition to high school. In many of the primaries, the P6 pupils also created e-portfolios for use in P7 and beyond.

Context

In line with Building the Curriculum 5: A Framework for Assessment (BTC5) , the Assessment Team in East Renfrewshire was keen to ensure that all schools are providing opportunity for pupils to reflect on their learning, evaluate it and record evidence of what they have achieved, both in school and outwith. They felt it to be essential that there was a consistent approach across all schools in the local authority. This approach is encouraged in BTC 5:

“It is important that shared standards and expectations should apply among the primary schools in a cluster and across departments in secondaries. Transition will be greatly assisted by sharing ideas across sectors.”

To help ensure consistency, staff from East Renfrewshire contacted the National Glow Team to enquire about the possibility of having a custom-built Glow Blog theme created for their e-portfolios. This was readily agreed to and a theme reflecting the East Renfrewshire priorities was created. The theme incorporates an image for the header, widgets, categories and three ready-made pages. This can be seen in the ‘how to’ videos later.

Creating the e-portfolios

Members of the National Glow Team worked with staff and pupils in all of the Eastwood and St Ninian’s cluster schools to create the e-portfolios.

Each pupil created a Glow Group in their My Glow area and into that Group they added a Glow Blog. It is the Glow Blog that is used as their e-portfolio. All staff were made members of the Glow Group where the blog lives. This membership alone, however, does not enable them to access the e-portfolio. Since no one can access another user’s My Glow area, pupils additionally had to provide staff with a link to their blog. This link to the view of the blog was added to a web links web part in a school e-portfolio Glow Group. This Group had been created ahead of time in preparation for the pupil sessions.

Pupils learned how to add content to their blog by writing posts, categorising and tagging them, adding media such as images and attaching documents. They also learned how staff can comment on the posts and where they can then access those comments from.

Ingredients

In preparation for the pupils creating their e-portfolios, each school had to do some work in advance. This involved them creating a Glow Group to host links to the pupil e-portfolios. They also had to ensure that both Glow Light and Glow Blogs were switched on for all pupils. (This task is done by the school or local authority Accounts and Services Manager – ASM)

During the pupil sessions, the pupils required the following:

- To have Glow Light enabled

- Create a Glow Group in their My Glow area

- Add the Glow Blog web part to their Group and create a Blog

-  Add teachers and non-teaching staff as administrators of the Glow Group Note: One of the reasons that  (Administrator access is recommended so that any comments left by staff on the pupil’s blog are automatically published. If, for example, staff are given Contributor rights, they can still access and interact with the pupil’s blog but their initial comments would have to be approved by the pupil before they are displayed)

- Put a link to their Blog into the school e-portfolio Group to enable staff to access it

- Carry out some ‘admin’ on their blog – apply the Local Authority theme; delete the default post; delete one of the pages; set a static welcome page and a page to display latest posts

- Add information about themselves to their welcome page

- Learn how to use the Blog Dashboard to write a post

Recipe

The following videos explain the process that the pupils went through to create their e-portfolios, as well as looking at the preparatory work the schools did to create the Glow Group to host the links to the pupil e-portfolios.

Step 0 (for staff) – How to create a school Glow Group to host links to pupil e-portfolios
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1
Step 1 – How a pupil creates a Glow Group in their My Glow
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1
Step 2 – How a pupil creates their Glow Blog
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1
Step 3 – How a pupil adds staff as members of their Glow Group
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1
Step 4- How a pupil adds a link to their blog into the school e-portfolio Glow Group
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1
Step 5 – How a pupil uses the Blog Dashboard to apply the local authority theme and customise it
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1

The following video covers the whole process for steps 1-5 above. There is slightly less explanation than in the separate videos but the video provides a good overview of the entire process:

The whole process for pupils creating their e-portfolio
e-portfolios in East Renfrewshire – Part 1
 

For videos on how to add content to the blog, see part 2 of this cookbook.

Impact

Each of the schools in East Renfrewshire plans to use the pupil e-portfolios in different ways, depending on their particular focus. Part 2 of this cookbook looks at the plans for two of the schools and discusses the impact they hope the e-portfolios will have.

Maureen Atkins

Maureen Atkins is a Maths teacher at St Aidan’s High School in North Lanarkshire. She has been making good use of Glow in her teaching. She was involved in the school making the decision to move ahead with using e-portfolios with the S1 year group. Maureen was keen that evidence of pupil achievement that she had captured in the classroom would be available to be used by the pupils when creating posts in their e-portfolios. This Cookbook will focus on the Maths Store Glow Group and on the wiki. You will see a tour of the Glow Group and wiki and also interviews with Maureen where she will explain what she was setting out to do.

This process could be used across any whole school seeking a method to give pupils access to evidence from classes for use in their e-portfolios.

Ingredients

click on image to enlarge

Maureen decided that the easiest way to give pupils access to  evidence from  their Maths classes was to create a Glow Group called The Maths Store and then create a wiki inside this group for various files to be uploaded to. The plan was originally that the whole Maths Dept would use this but the school are looking into having a school-wide evidence wiki. It was materials such as, scanned images of posters the pupils had made; PowerPoint files from their Famous Mathematicians presentations and photos Maureen normally takes in class for evidence that she wanted to give the pupils access to. There is a 5Mb limit on uploading individual files into the Glow Blogs currently being used as pupil e-portfolios. With this in mind, Maureen compressed some larger image files before adding them to the wiki to make it easier for the pupils to upload them to their individual e-portfolios.

What did Maureen need to do to enable the pupils to upload class evidence into their e-portfolios:

• Have a staff Glow account at St Aidan’s High School
• Have her pupils provisioned and given their Glow usernames and passwords
• Create a Glow Group on the school site and set the pupils up with at least Reader membership
• Remove pages other than Noticeboard page from the Glow Group
• Add a text editor web part with instructions
• Add a wiki web part and create the wiki
• Edit the wiki to give instructions and create a separate page for her class to use
• Upload images and files to the page in the wiki
• Pupils with e-portfolios created
• Pupils need access to a computer to save the file and upload this to their e-portfolio to become part of a post.

Recipe

The first video below is of Maureen taking you on a tour through the Maths Store Glow Group and through the wiki itself. The videos that follow will allow you to follow the same steps that Maureen has taken to be able to achieve this yourselves.

Maureen’s Tour of the Maths Store Wiki (3:09)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Creating a Glow Group to use as an evidence store (1:38)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Removing the unwanted pages and adding a text editor (3:06)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Adding the wiki web part and creating the wiki (2:17)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Editing the wiki (3:17)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Uploading evidence to the wiki (1:28)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

How the pupils can access the evidence from the wiki (1:33)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

How the pupils would use this in their e-portfolio (3:20)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Impact

Click on image to enlarge

Maureen notes that the pupils were very keen to use the evidence she had provided in the wiki for their individual e-portfolios. She notes:

They were even going home and trying to do it. They’re excited about it … because they live in that world. This use of ICT, they like it, they are very comfortable with it.

They were very keen that it gave them a vehicle to be able to show their parents. This is something Maureen knew that both the parents and the pupils were keen on before but that there wasn’t really a mechanism for sharing until Glow.

In the videos below Maureen talks about various aspects of the impact of this project.

Why Maureen was keen to become involved with Glow? (0:24)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Why did Maureen decide to create an evidence store in Glow? (0:35)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

What was involved in getting the materials onto the wiki? (0:39)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

How the pupils have responded to using evidence and making posts in their e-portfolios. (1:05)
Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

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

• St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map
• Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Malcolm Wilson is an ICT Development Officer with Falkirk Council. Part of his role is to support Primary Schools in their use of ICT. Last year, Malcolm decided to use the then new Glow Blogs to create a blog as one of his support tools for Primary Schools. The blog, called ‘ICT for learning and teaching in Falkirk Primary Schools’, recently won 3^rd Prize in the 2011 UK Education Blog Awards in the Most influential Blog of the Year category.

Context

Click to enlarge

Malcolm’s blog contains a wealth of useful information, hints and tips, to help enhance the use of ICT within the classroom. Although the blog is primarily aimed at Primary teachers, its content is most definitely applicable to all sectors.

In the following videos, Malcolm gives us a tour of the blog, highlighting some of the key features:

Tour of Malcolm’s Blog Part 1 (3:19)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
Tour of Malcolm’s Blog Part 2 (3:26)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
Tour of Malcolm’s Blog Part 3 (2:33)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
Tour of Malcolm’s Blog Part 4 (2:21)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!

The blog is a public blog, so is open to anyone interested in reading it. You can access it by clicking this link :
‘ICT for learning and teaching in Falkirk Primary Schools’ 
(Note: If you click on the link, you may be asked to log in to Glow. To view the blog without logging in, right click on the link, select ‘copy shortcut’, then paste it into a new browser tab/window. This also applies to other links to the blog within this cookbook)

Supporting particular areas of the curriculum – focus on Literacy

Malcolm has uncovered a fantastic range tools to help support teachers and learners within the classroom and has written individual blog posts on each. He categorises and tags each post, to make it easy for readers of the blog to find specific articles they are looking for. For example, he has categories for Animation, ASN, Databases, Early Years, Glow, Literacy, Music, etc to name but a few.

Click to enlarge

So, for example, if a reader is interested in learning about how ICT can be used to support literacy within the classroom, they can select the Literacy category to view all the posts within it.

Here, readers can learn how to use “Word Talk” , a tool which reads out any written text and has the option to then turn it into an mp3 file. This is a great way to support literacy for children with visual impairment, or for those who simply require additional support when reading.

Also posted is information about “Breaking News English” a resource which takes current news stories and provides teaching and learning activities to support them. Defintely worth a look.

Tools for collaborative writing are discussed in the blog. Free online tools such as ‘Titan Pad’ and ‘Primary Pad’ are explored, with their pros and cons highlighted. These tools provide an online space for collaborative writing in real time. The output of the collaboration can be exported and saved (for example to a Word document) and stored as evidence. There are also other interesting features, such as the ability to play back the whole collaborative process to see and discuss how it developed. Click the link to read more in Malcolm’s post about the collaborative writing tools.

One of the most versatile tools shared by Malcolm in the Literacy category is ‘Lingro’ . In its simplest form, Lingro is an online dictionary, but in fact, it is far more than that.
Lingro adds a toolbar to a website the user selects, so enabling any word on that site to be clicked on and a definition of the word given. For many of the words clicked on, there is also an audio feature which reads out the word to aid pronunciation. Amongst other things, Lingro includes a translation tool and also literacy games linked to the words clicked on on the website. Malcolm explains more in the following video:

Malcolm looks at ‘Lingro’ (4:10)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
 

Click on the link to browse all of the posts in the Literacy Category to learn about other tools which can be used to support Literacy in the classroom.

Ingredients

In order to have the blog in its current format, Malcolm had to do the following:

- Create a Glow Blog in a Glow Group

- Make the blog public so that anyone worldwide could view it

- Add the widgets he wanted

- Categorise and tag his posts appropriately to enable readers to find things easily

In the following ‘how to’ videos, you can learn how to replicate some of this for yourself.
How to create a Glow Blog (6:12)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
How to add basic widgets to a blog (2:21)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
How to customise the image in the blog header (2:27)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
How to write a post in a blog (4:55)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
How to categorise and tag a post (6:26)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!
How to add an image to a blog post (8:38)
An Award-Winning Glow Blog!

Impact 

Malcolm’s blog has had tremendous impact, not only within Falkirk, but across Scotland, the UK and indeed the rest of the world. This is verified by the traffic statistics displayed in the widgets on the blog.

Comments left on the blog posts confirm that readers of the blog find it very useful and the fact that everything is easily accessible, searchable and retrievable in one place is a big plus. One comment said:

“This is the best education blog I have ever seen. You are to be commended for your comprehensive and tireless efforts. Bravo!” Conor Cusack

Of course, winning 3^rd place in the UK Education Blog Awards emphasises how influential and highly regarded Malcolm’s Glow blog is!

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

Parts 1 and 2 of the cookbook series ‘S1 e-portflios in Scottish Borders’ explain the process of using Glow Blogs to create e-portfolios. Whilst this process is straightforward, as with anything there is always potential for user error. In this cookbook we will look at some of the issues that may occur should a user not follow the e-portfolio creation process correctly and, perhaps more importantly, how to correct these.

Content

Through experience of working with hundreds of S1 pupils in Scottish Borders to create their e-portfolios using Glow Blogs, certain situations have occassionally occurred, causing error messages or problems for the user. These are not Glow errors, but user errors, and whilst they occur infrequently, if they do occur, it is important to understand why and know how to remedy them.

Issues

Examples of these errors and issues are:

• When creating the Glow Group in ‘My Glow’ the pupil get a message saying,  ”A Glow Group with that name already exists or the name contains unsupported characters’
• When creating their blog, a message appears saying, ‘A blog already exists with the path that you have chosen, please enter another path’
• When going into Advanced Settings to add teachers as members of their Glow Group, they see a message saying ‘Sorry – You are not able to search for other Glow users’
• When adding the group of teaching staff to their Glow Group, they get a red error message on the page after they have typed in the teaching staff code which says: ‘None of the users or cross-site groups you entered could be added. Please make sure there were no typing mistakes on the previous page and semicolons were used to separate the names’
• When adding teachers as administrators of their Glow Group where the blog is, as well as seeing themself  and the the group of teachers as members, the pupil sees other groups of members too.
• If pupils do not add their Glow Group to their Favourites when they create it, they cannot then find or access it again.

Reasons

The first two issues listed above, are generally caused by pupils ‘double clicking’.
In Glow, a single click on a button or link is sufficient. Double clicking, particluarly when creating something such as a Glow Group or a Blog, can cause Glow to try to create it twice, hence giving an error. Emphasising to pupils the importance of a single click may suffice and so avoid the error messages apppearing, but if not, it is easy to remedy these issues. You can find out how in the videos in the ‘Remedies’ section.

The third issue is caused by pupils not clicking on the correct links in Advanced Settings. After clicking on Advanced settings and Site Settings, it is essential that on the first  page they click on ‘Go to Site Administration’ and then on the second page, click on ‘Manage users’. If on the first page they click on ‘Manage users’, as is possible, they will see the error message. This can be corrected by simply going back and clicking on the correct links.

The fourth issue of the error message when adding the teaching staff group, is caused by the code being entered incorrectly. This is corrected by clicking Back and then correctly entering the code.

The fifth issue of seeing additional members occurs if the pupil has actually added members directly into their My Glow rather than the Glow Group in their My Glow. The solution is to go into the Glow Group and repeat the process of adding members.

The remedy for the sixth issue, not adding the Glow Group to Favourites,  can be found by watching the relevant video in the next section.

Remedies

In the following videos we will look at what causes these errors and how to correct them.

Solution to: ‘A Glow Group with that name already exists or the name contains unsupported characters’ (2:53)
S1 e-portfolios: Part 4-Avoiding and correcting user error
Solution to: ‘A blog already exists with the path that you have chosen, please enter another path’ (3:50)
S1 e-portfolios: Part 4-Avoiding and correcting user error
Solution to: ‘Sorry – You are not able to search for other Glow users’ (1:42)
S1 e-portfolios: Part 4-Avoiding and correcting user error
Solution to: Seeing extra groups of members when adding teachers as members (1:34)
S1 e-portfolios: Part 4-Avoiding and correcting user error
Solution to: Pupils not adding their Glow Groups to their favourites and not being able to find it again (2:36)
S1 e-portfolios: Part 4-Avoiding and correcting user error
 

Impact

Part 1 of this cookbook series showed the process that the Scottish Borders Secondary schools followed to create their S1 e-portfolios. In Part 2, learn how to customise the blogs and add content then take a look at how schools have been using the e-portfolios for different purposes. Part 4 will then show how to avoid or correct any user-errors when creating the e-portfolio.

Content

Once the pupils had created their Glow Blog for their e-portfolio and given staff access, the next step was for them to customise the basic blog and add their own content.

Pupils learned how to use the blog Dashboard to write a post, categorise and tag it, then publish it for others to see. They learned how to add images to posts and attach documents.

In some schools, they also created new pages. They set one page to display all of their posts and then created other pages for specific purposes such as Personal Learning Plan pages or a page where they will attach electronic copies of all their report cards over the coming years.

Since each school has different reasons for asking pupils to use their e-portfolio, they all tackled this element of writing to the blog in different ways.  In the next section we will look at how two schools are initially asking pupils to use their e-portfolios, before finding out in the ‘Method’ section how to add replicate the elements mentioned above.

Focus on: Selkirk High School

One of the main drivers in Selkirk for using the e-portfolios is for pupils to have an online place for their Personal Learning Plans (PLPs) that they would previously have completed on paper and stored in a folder.

After investigation and discussion with other staff, Paul Samson (DHT) and Rachel Fagan (PT Pastoral) decided that they would like the pupils to have separate pages for their each of their PLP documents which normally they would complete in paper format. They learned that they could create a page in the e-portfolio blog, copy the content of a PLP document (from Microsoft Word) and paste it onto the page. This allows pupils to add their information to the page by editing then saving it. Staff can add comments to the page in the same way that they can for posts, so enabling the Pastoral team and others to engage with the pupils’ e-portfolios.

Click on each of the images below to enlarge them and see examples of pages and posts from one pupil’s e-portfolio:

'About Me' welcome page

PLP Page – P7 Transition

PSE post with teacher comment

The other purpose that Selkirk High school staff feel that a page in the blog could serve is a place where pupils can store their reports. So, each pupil has created a page called ‘My Reports’ and over time, they will attach electronic copies of their reports.

Paul Samson, DHT in Selkirk High School explains why the school were keen to provide their pupils with e-portfolios:

“We are hoping that as a school our pupils can start to build up an e-portfolio which will contain examples of their best work, act as a record of their personal learning planning and be a record of their wider achievement both inside and out of school.  Pupils will have responsibility for their own portfolio, which we feel is important, and the next challenge will be to give them the opportunities to maintain and update them.  The whole experience of working on this project has been very postive for both pupils and staff.”

Rachel Fagan, one of Principal Teachers of Pastoral Care in Selkirk, adds:

“We also hope that the e-portfolio, through the category and tag widgets, can be used as  a vehicle for pupils and teachers to recognise and profile literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing across the curriculum, as well as  their personal achievements.”

Focus on:  Earlston High School

In Earlston, the use of the e-portfolios has begun in the English Department, with staff encouraging pupils to use their blog to write about things they have been learning about. This provides pupils with a record of their learning and an opportunity for staff to comment on pupils’ work. The pupils have been writing separate posts for each of the elements they have been learning about and are categorising their posts to enable them and staff to easily find them.

Click on the images below to enlarge them and look at examples of how one pupil has been using their e-portfolio:

'About Me' welcome page

English Post

Teacher comment on English post

Judith Weston teaches English at Earlston. In the following videos she explains the school’s use of e-portfolios:

Judith Weston: Why we decided to use e-portfolios (0:37)
S1 e-portfolios in Scottish Borders-Part 2: Customising and Using
Judith Weston: What are the e-portfolios being used for? (0:37)
S1 e-portfolios in Scottish Borders-Part 2: Customising and Using
Judith Weston: Future plans (0:25)
S1 e-portfolios in Scottish Borders-Part 2: Customising and Using
Judith Weston: Commenting on pupils’ e-portfolios (0:45)
S1 e-portfolios in Scottish Borders-Part 2: Customising and Using
 

Recipe

In Part 1, we looked at the main steps that the staff and pupils had to follow to create the basic e-portfolio. In order to customise it, they further had to: ensure that the blog had a static welcome page and a page to display latest posts. Delete the default ‘Hello World’ post

• Set a welcome page for the blog
• Set a page to display Latest Posts
• Delete the default post and default page created when the blog was created

In Selkirk and in other schools they also chose to:

• Create pages for Personal Learning Plan information
• Create a page for Reports

Pupils also had to learn how to:

• Write a post, categorise and tag it, then publish it.
• Add an image to a post
• Attach a document to a post

Method

Since the process for creating e-portfolios using Glow Blogs has moved on since the Scottish Borders schools undertook the work with their pupils, please refer to the Documents and ‘how to’ videos in the National e-portfolio Glow Group  (Glow login required) for current information.

Impact

All of the schools who have begun the process of using e-portfolios with their S1 pupils foresee many benefits to doing so.

For pupils, there are many benefits to them having an e-portfolio.

They now have an online environment where they can take responsibility for recording their own progress, attainment and achievements. Since Glow is delivered online , pupils can add information to their e-portfolio both in school and out, personal circumstances permitting.

By creating their e-portfolio within their My Glow area, the pupil will have access to this regardless of which school they are in, as their My Glow area moves with them from school to school, without any need for staff intervention to move it or any of the content within. This is a great aid to transition and indeed for pupils who might create their e-portfolio in P7, having it move with them to Secondary school is a great advantage, both for the pupil and for staff, who will be able to see what the pupil has previously achieved and the comments the P7 teacher has added.

Staff can converse with pupils on a one to one basis through their e-portfolios by leaving comments to encourage, praise and support. They can write posts in the e-portfolio if appropriate, perhaps to attach a document to give additional support to a pupil or provide extension materials, this done without other pupils being aware.

For schools transferring the completion of Personal Learning Planning documents onto the e-portfolios, they envisage cost savings due to reduced use of paper and photocopying. They will also minimise the need to find storage space for pupil folders and paper documents. Having all of this information online reduces the likelihood of it being lost or damaged.

Related cookbooks:

Part 1 – S1 e-portfolios in Scottish Borders: Overview of process

Part 4 – avoiding and correcting user error

In part 3 of the cookbook, find out how schools are additionally using Glow to enable pupils to record examples of their wider achievement in a way which will assist staff in their collation and reporting on this.