Alison Wood

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 one teacher, Alison Wood, and explore how she has used Glow with English classes from first year to Higher. In the Recipe section, video clips show how you can replicate some of Alison’s ideas, such as creating collaborative wikis. 

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.

Book review forum. Click to enlarge.

English teacher, Alison Wood attended one of the training courses in January and came away, she says, “quite inspired”. She has since introduced Glow to her S1, S3 and Higher classes.

With her first year class she was keen to encourage pupils to tackle more challenging texts. Pupils wrote book reviews, uploaded them into a Glow Group and commented on each others’ reviews in a Glow forum. Alison felt this activity worked very well, and was one that she would repeat, and adapt for use with older classes.

One of Alison’s key aims with beginning to use Glow was to support her Higher class. She had read a number of cookbooks, focusing on using Glow to support exam classes, and she was interested in the possibilities. She wanted pupils to complete close reading activities, answer questions in Glow, and use a forum to discuss their responses with other members of the class. Lack of time in the run-up to the exams meant the activity did not get as well established as Alison would have liked, but she feels that this has the potential to be a very valuable way of developing pupils’ skills and understanding. 

Graphical summary. Click to enlarge.

During a class lesson with the Higher pupils, Alison used a survey to assess pupils’ knowledge of key points in “A Streetcar named Desire”. Once pupils had responded to the survey, she asked them to use the ’graphical summary’ option, to view the results as a series of bar charts. Pupils could rapidly see for themselves where their responses differed from other pupils’. An interesting debate ensued about where different responses were appropriate – and where they indicated poor recall! Pupils could identify for themselves where they’d got work to do, and Alison was able to underline the necessity of going back and revising the text thoroughly. Following the success of this activity, Alison can see a lot of potential for using surveys again. As she emphasises in the video clip below, survey questions need to be designed carefully in order to catch the areas that pupils are finding difficult.

Alison Wood: Glow enhancing learning and teaching in English (3:32) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

The 'Protest and Poetry' wiki. Click to enlarge.

With her third year class Alison has created a wiki to develop pupils’ understanding of the context of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Following a lesson in which the class looked at the concept of protest songs, and studied the lyrics of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, Alison asked the pupils to bring in a protest song of their own choice. In Glow she created a wiki and added an introduction. She then asked pupils to each add a page to the wiki, explain their choice of song and provide their own interpretation of it. Beyond these basic requirements, pupils were free to develop their page in any way they wished.

The class responded very well and were intrigued by the possibilities of the wikis. Many have gone well beyond the initial requirements, spending additional time at home on adding further text and images and inserting links to websites, containing videos of the singers or bands.

Alison has been delighted with pupils’ engagement in this work and the results they’ve achieved. She’s keen to explore the potential of wikis further: completed wikis could be downloaded as a document and printed as an example of informative writing. They could be included in pupils’ folios and would be a very different format from anything Alison has included in a Standard Grade folio before.

Alison Wood: ‘Poetry and Protest’ wiki created by S3 (1:51) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

With other classes Alison has used ‘ The Daily What’ and found this to be an excellent resource to encourage pupils to read newspaper articles. She’s looking forward to making more use of it in the coming year when she will have a data projector in her classroom and be able to use this with a whole class, without needing to book an ICT suite.

Ingredients

To use ’The Daily What’ with a class, no setting up was required, other to ensure that all pupils had Glow accounts and could log on. ‘The Daily What’ is launched from a link on the National Site. If you wish to integrate it into other work pupils are undertaking in Glow, there is a ‘Daily What’ web part which can be added into your own Glow Groups.  A video clip in the Ingredients section shows how to do this.

To create a wiki, Alison required:

* permissions to be set by the school’s Account and Services Manager (ASM), allowing Alison and the S3 class the rights to use wikis;

* a Glow Group;

* the S3 class to be given Contributor membership of the Glow Group.

Recipe

The clips provide step-by-instructions showing how to use ‘The Daily What’ online newspaper and how to create wikis.

* How to use the ‘Daily What’ and its associated resources (5:12) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

* How to add the ‘Daily What’ web part to a Glow Group (3:20) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

* How the ASM sets the permissions to allow staff and pupils to use wikis (4:09) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

* How to add the Glow wiki web part to a Glow Group and create a wiki (3:57) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

* How to add text and images to a wiki page (3:42) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

* How to create new pages in a wiki and add hyperlinks and video (7:46) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

Impact

The use of Glow at Glenwood has grown very rapidly over just a few months, not just in Alison’s English classes. 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) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

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) Enhancing learning and teaching in English classes

Glenwood High School

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.

This cookbook describes how a number of staff, from different departments, have been using Glow to enhance learning and teaching. The video clips and Glow Group tours show the work that has been undertaken, the pupils’ responses and the lesson learned. Additional cookbooks focus on each teacher in turn, and provide the detail of how you can replicate (or adapt) their ideas.

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. As can be seen from the clips below, while these basic Glow features were used extensively, staff have also progressed on rapidly to using other tools, such as wikis, blogs and Glow Meet.

In the first clip here, Dave Dawson, DHT at Glenwood, describes the progress over the last few months:

Dave Dawson: uptake and usage of Glow at Glenwood (1:35)Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

Alison Wood

Alison Wood attended one of the training courses in January and has since used Glow with S1, S3 and Higher English classes. With her first year class she was keen to encourage pupils to tackle more challenging texts. Pupils wrote book reviews, uploaded them into a Glow Group and commented on each others’ reviews in a Glow forum. For her Higher class Alison created a Glow Group, and uploaded notes and past papers for pupils to use at home in the run up to exams. She also used surveys during lesson time for pupils to assess their own knowledge of the set texts. Viewing the survey results allowed pupils to quickly see where their responses differed from those of other pupils. This generated a very valuable class discussion where pupils could identify for themselves where they’d got work to do, and the necessity of going back to revising the text.

With third year pupils Alison has created a wiki to stimulate pupils’ interest in the background of a set text. The third years have been intrigued by the possibilities of the wikis and many have gone well beyond the initial requirements in developing their own pages.

Alison Wood: ‘Poetry and Protest’ wiki created by S3 (1:51) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

Alison has found the ‘Daily What’ an excellent resource in encouraging pupils to read newspaper articles. She can see a lot of potential for this, and is looking forward to making more use of it in the coming year when she will have a data projector in her classroom and therefore able to use this with a whole class, rather than needing to book an ICT suite.

Alison Wood: Glow enhancing learning and teaching in English (3:32) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

The full cookbook on Alison’s work can be found here. This includes ‘how-to’ video clips which show how to create wikis and how to make best use of the ‘Daily What’.

Clare Hunt is PTC of Business, Enterprise and Computing at Glenwood. She and her colleagues have begun to use Glow across S1-S6. With first year pupils, Glow offered an ideal place to share the work that pupils had been undertaking in class on a ‘Cyber-bullying’ project. Pupils’ presentations were uploaded to a Glow Group and discussed at home with parents and carers. In class the discussion around internet safety continued with pupils creating avatars and posting comments in a Glow forum.

Clare Hunt: S1 Cyber-Bullying presentations and discussions (1:59) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

At the end of the year S2 classes created Vokis to record their evaluations of the Computing course. Pupils found this a highly motivating activity, and took great care over their comments, spelling and punctuation, as the Voki’s speech is only as good as the text that’s been entered! The Vokis were then posted into a Glow blog, so that pupils could see each others’ and Computing staff could hear all the feedback on the course.

Clare Hunt: S2’s Computing course evaluations (2:14)Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

The full cookbook on Clare’s work is available here. It includes ‘how-to’ video clips on using Glow forums, and on creating Vokis.

Kim Yapp teaches Modern Foreign Languages. For the last couple of years, the department has run a Culture Project at the end of first year. Pupils are asked to work in groups, create a presentation on a cultural theme and deliver the presentation to their class. Prior to the arrival of Glow in the school, the project, though very successful, presented logistical difficulties, as pupils saved their work to their own network area, which is inaccessible to the teacher or to each other. If pupils were absent, their work could not be added to the group presentation. In addition, when classes were delivering their presentations, accessing the completed group work again caused problems. Either all work needed to be saved to a single location such as a memory stick or each group in turn needed to log on and off the network. Kim was delighted to find this year that using Glow easily solved all these problems! One Glow Group was all that was needed – for pupils to upload their individual work, to save their completed group work and from which to present it to the class. There were unlooked-for benefits too – Kim could monitor progress after each lesson as the presentations were being developed, allowing her to intervene with any pupil not pulling their weight in their group – and pupils could show their work to their families.

Kim Yapp: S1 Culture Project (6:36) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

Further details on how Kim set up her Glow Groups and ran the Culture Project are available here. This cookbook includes ‘how-to’ clips on creating and customising Glow Groups, and using a Documents web part.

Janet Rutterford

Janet Rutterford teaches English, and as a guidance teacher also has a remit for primary-secondary transition. When Glow was introduced at Glenwood earlier this year, she was interested to look at ways in which it could facilitate transition. As a first experiment, a Glow Meet session was arranged between a first year class and a P7 class at Southwood Primary. Both classes were very well prepared. The P7s drafted their questions and sent them to the high school, giving the first years time to think about their responses. The preparation proved invaluable when the day came for the Glow Meet, as no-one got stage fright in front of the web-cam and all were happy to ask and answer the questions!

On the back of the overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback from the first year, Janet has continued to develop the transition Glow Group. Pupils generated a wide range of ideas of the content they thought would be useful for the P7s, and Janet was impressed with their skills and confidence with Glow.

Janet Rutterford: using Glow to support transition (2:27)Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

A cookbook on Janet’s transition work will be coming soon. The ‘how-to’ clips will include the basics of setting up and using Glow Meet.

Craft and Design Technology teacher, David Lumsden, attended one of the Glow Basics courses but has since concentrated on using Glow Learn. He and colleagues in his department find this ideal for classwork and class tests. They are also developing a S1 and S2 homework policy which will be entirely delivered through Glow Learn, potentially offering considerable savings in paper and duplicating costs.

David uses Glow Learn to create tests and assessments. A range of question types, including multiple-choice and short answer, can be used and most will be automatically marked. Progress records allow him to see a summary of the class’s performance on all questions. Individual pupil’s responses can also be viewed, marking reviewed and feedback given to the pupil.

David Lumsden: assessments in craft and design technology (2:37)Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

David comments that pupils’ response to Glow Learn have been very positive and the hand-in rate for tests and homework has been much higher than previously.

More information on David’s work, including ‘how-to’ video clips on Glow Learn will follow shortly.

Kayleigh Brown teaches History at Glenwood and has used Glow extensively with her fourth year class to prepare them for the Standard Grade exam. For the prelims Kayleigh has uploaded PowerPoint files and revision mind maps – resources that pupils had used in class and were familiar, but uploading them to Glow ensured that pupils had access for homework and during holidays. Kayleigh has also shared these resources with other History teachers and departments through the Fife ‘Study Support’ Glow Group.

Kayleigh Brown: Standard Grade History (6:36) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

Kayleigh asks her pupils to submit their homework through the Glow Group. She created a ‘Upload your homework’ web part, which allows a pupil to hand in their work but not to see the work of any other pupil. Kayleigh can see all the work her pupils submit, review it, add notes to it, and give feedback. Both teacher and pupils have found this invaluable. Using a survey to gather feedback from pupils about their performance in their prelim was also a big hit with Kayleigh. The graphical summary allowed here a rapid overview of where pupils felt they needed help, and viewing individual responses allowed her to see any private concerns about their progress which pupils had expressed.

A cookbook providing more detail on Kayleigh’s Glow Group can be found here. This includes video clips showing how to create a homework web part.

Drama teacher, Clare Todd, comments that she “was really excited when I first heard about Glow. It was exactly what I’d been looking for.” Clare wanted pupils to be able to access learning resources at home, use a forum to ask questions and discuss what they’d been doing in class. She knew that she didn’t have the skills to create her own website, so Glow’s arrival in the school really enthused her. She now has a Drama Glow Group accessible to all pupils in S1-S6 to give a flavour of what classes are doing in lessons and on trips. There are also separate Glow Groups for S1, S2, Standard Grade, Higher and Advanced Higher classes.

Clare Todd: Drama Glow Groups – part 1 (7:14)Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

Clare Todd: Drama Glow Groups – part 2 (2:29) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

Like Kayleigh, she asks pupils to submit homework and makes use of surveys for self-evaluations. She’s recently been introduced to Glow Learn by colleagues in other departments in the school and sees this as her next step, as it provides better options when asking pupils for personal responses, and will be easier to monitor and record pupils’ progress.

The cookbook describing Clare’s work in more detail can be found here. The ‘how-to’ videos show how to create and use surveys.

Next steps

Dave Dawson

The use of Glow at Glenwood has grown very rapidly over just a few months – thanks to the hard work of teaching staff and to those responsible for creating the accounts. 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.

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) Glowing across the curriculum at Glenwood High School

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

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

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

Irene Stewart

Irene Stewart is a Principal Teacher of Music at Bellshill Academy in North Lanarkshire. She began using Glow quite recently, encouraged by her own son’s use of Glow in primary school. She saw the potential for her secondary pupils to be accessing materials from home and also to be able to ask questions on Discussion Boards for help with their homework. Her son’s obvious enjoyment of using Glow made her think that her pupils would be motivated by using it.

This is the second of 2 Cookbooks which will look at how Irene has started to use Glow with her Standard Grade classes but mainly with S3. This second Cookbook on Irene’s use of Glow will focus on the pupils using a wiki to upload project work for Standard Grade Music.

The first Cookbook can be found here: Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface.

Glow wiki

Glow wiki

Wikipedia describes a wiki as:

a website that allows creation and editing of any number of interlinked pages … wikis are often used collaboratively by multiple users.

Glow itself describes wikis as:

online, collaborative spaces that can be used for almost anything. From class topic work, to school working groups, wikis are extremely flexible websites with infinite uses.

wiki web part

front page of the SG Music wiki

In a Glow Group there is a separate web part you can bring in and then use it to create a wiki within your Glow Group. You can choose to have this public facing, even though it is a part of your Glow Group, or you can choose for it to have the private membership of your Glow Group.
In her Standard Grade Listening Glow Group she has created a Glow wiki to allow the pupils to upload their group project work. This also allows them to see  and comment on what other groups have uploaded. Irene was keen to use the Glow wiki so that the pupils would be able to quickly upload larger files. She was also keen that it was easy to allocate each group their own page within the wiki and yet allow them to have access to all the pages where other groups had uploaded their project work.

The project has different groups of pupils researching jazz. Each group of pupils have created a page which can be accessed from the menu at the side. They have then uploaded their presentation files and any appropriate images and audio files to go along with them.

Later, the pupils will be able to use the comment facility on each page to comment on each other’s work.

wiki group page – click on this to enlarge

Ingredients

What did Irene need to do to allow her pupils to upload their work to the Glow wiki:

• A staff Glow account within Bellshill Academy
• Her pupils provisioned and allocated their Glow usernames and passwords
• A Glow Group created at school level
• S3 pupils set up with at least contributor membership of this Glow Group
• A Glow wiki web part added
• A Glow wiki created
• The front page edited with instructions for pupils about uploading their projects
• Pages created within the wiki for each group of pupils

You will be able to see the whole Glow Group in the Virtual Tour video in the Method section below.

On the Noticeboard page there is a Glow wiki web part containing the link to the Standard Grade Music wiki. Once clicked this opens in a new window and the pupils are able to upload their projects to share with each other.

Recipe

In the first video below, Irene takes you on a virtual tour of her Glow Group. The following videos will show you how to replicate what Irene has set up in terms of a graphical interface and hidden pages in her Glow Group.

Irene’s tour of the Glow Group – (3:33)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

Creating a Glow Wiki (4:24)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

Editing a Glow Wiki Home Page, adding text and images (4:44)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

Adding pages to a Glow Wiki (4:33)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

Adding links to a Glow Wiki (7:39)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

Leaving a comment on a wiki page (1:39)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

Impact

When she first started her training on Glow Irene felt there was a lot of information to get through and that this could be off-putting. But once she got started with Glow she found she really enjoyed using it and it was generally easy to use.

Irene feels that the pupils really enjoy using Glow, even at this early stage. They have been particularly interested in the discussion forum, being able to do their homework online and being able to upload and share their project work.

View the following videos to get an idea of the impact that using Glow has had on Standard Grade Music in Bellshill Academy.

Why Irene first decided to use Glow (0:40)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

How Irene found it when she first started to use Glow (0:36)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

What the pupils thought of using Glow (0:50)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

How Irene uses Glow with her pupils (0:40)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

How Irene would like to take Glow forward (1:00)
Standard Grade Music – Using a wiki for project work

For further help, information and examples for Glow wikis visit the following links:

Welcome to Glow Wikis

Getting Started with Glow Wikis Cookbook

Scotland’s Schools Wiki

Context

The Glow Wikis tool became available in January 2011, and several schools began exploring them straightaway. Wikis are collaborative online spaces, and Glow Wikis allow individuals and classes to work together on one ‘canvas’. There are hundreds of possible uses for wikis, such as class projects, inter-school work, peer assessment, or building up a bank of knowledge and resources. We will have a look at how some primary schools started out with Glow Wikis,

In this cookbook we will look at:

• How some primary schools started out with Glow Wikis
• How to create a wiki for yourself or your class

Burravoe Primary School, Shetland

Caroline Breyley is the headteacher of Burravoe Primary School, a small school on the island of Yell in Shetland. There are 11 pupils in the school, aged from 5-11. They have been using Glow Wikis collaboratively, working on different pages within the same wiki at the same time. One of their wikis is for Magnie the Whale, a stuffed whale who is travelling the world – he is currently with a school in Hampshire, and will be travelling to Dunedin in New Zealand soon. His wiki is a place for his travels to be documented, and also for the children to write about their community and their school. The wiki has text, pictures and video. The wiki is public, so anyone can read it and comment on it, but only the children at Burravoe can write to it. They give guest glow logins to teachers in the schools which Magnie visits. You can visit Magnie’s wiki and comment on it here.

The class are also using a wiki to collaborate with Longhaugh School in Dundee. Longhaugh set up the wiki in a Glow Group and made the children at Burravoe members so they could contribute to it. The wiki itself is public, so anyone can go and have a look – you can find it here. The classes at each school will be adding information about their schools and where they live, comparing town and island life. Lesley-Anne Weir, the teacher of the class (P3) at Longhaugh, said:

“Our new project we are working on is Urban and Rural, comparing areas and mapping. We also want to continue to build on the use of technology across the curriculum. This is also a good opportunity to engage with the Mairi Hedderwick Katie Morag stories. However we wanted to avoid this being a stereotypical picture of island life. In order to make this project relevant and meaningful we wanted to meet “real” people who live on a Scottish island, which is where Caroline Breyley and the children at Burravoe have stepped in. We are really impressed with the knowledge and skills her pupils have and it is certainly inspiring our pupils! Our wiki will be a place to share information about both areas, discuss similarities and differences and ask questions. Burravoe have started well and in the next two weeks we will be taking pupils out of school to photograph and take video footage of our area and city, which will be uploaded as we go.”

We asked the children at Burravoe what they had been doing with wikis and what they thought of them so far. Each of the children has been working on different pages in their wikis. Charlotte in P4 has been writing a page all about the island they live on. Mia in P3 has been writing about the local wildlife, and is putting a video of otters onto the wiki. Kerry in P2 has been writing about the pre-school group which meets in the school. She would like to find out more about the weather in Dundee from the children at Longhaugh. Lucy in P6 thinks that wikis are useful for finding out about other schools, and is looking forward to hearing about Magnie’s travels. Kay in P6 thinks that wikis would be good for project work, and there is lots of information already on the wikis about the class’s recent Romans project. She is pleased that she is able to use pictures, audio and video easily on the wikis. Brydon in P6 said that he likes that everyone could be working on the wiki at the same time. He thinks they’re really straightforward to use, and James in P7 agrees that they’ve been easy to use and he likes that he can use them anywhere, at home or at school.

The Children of Burravoe show off their Togas

Carronshore Primary School, Falkirk

Margaret Vass is a P6 teacher in Carronshore Primary school. Her class have been using Glow Blogs for several months as online diaries, and Margaret was keen to explore the possibilities of Glow Wikis with them. The class had already used Wikispaces wikis for collaborative story writing, so were familiar with the way wikis worked. Margaret thought that the wikis showed potential as an e-portfolio solution, so the class were encouraged to set up a wiki in their My Glow area. This gives them full control over their own e-portfolio, but they decided to make the wikis themselves public, which means that anyone in the world is able to view and comment on them. However, only the pupil him or herself (and any chosen individuals, such as their teacher) can edit the wiki.

The pupils set up their wikis with an introductory front page, then created pages for achievements inside and outside of school. They were encouraged to personalise the wikis with images and text, and upload pictures and media celebrating their achievements. The class are very familiar with internet safety guidelines, and are careful never to write their full names on the wikis, or post any pictures where faces are identifiable. As Margaret says, “I thought this was the safest option because they’re updating them from their own homes and so have complete control over them – and what they consider to be ‘ok’ pictures, might not be.”

Andrew set up his e-portfolio and described what it was for on the front page:

“Hi everyone! Welcome to my e-portfolio. Well, this is actually a Glow Wiki but I am using it as an e-portfolio. In case you were wondering, an e-portfolio is something online where you record your achievements throughout the years. You can use it to get a job when you grow up as well.”

He has added a Crazy Talk video introducing his e-portfolio, and has recorded his maths achievements. He is keen to upload his reading achievements too. He thinks that the wikis are easy to use, and he likes how simple it is to add videos and media files. He also likes that you can upload large files into the wikis. He is glad that he will be able to take his wiki with him when he goes to secondary school and keep using it through the rest of his school years. Click here to visit Andrew’s wiki.

Anna has uploaded details of her gymnastics achievements, including the details of her routine, and has also uploaded the audio of her class talk on her pet cat using Photostory 3, so people viewing her e-portfolio can actually hear the talk itself. She told us that she liked using the blogs alongside the wikis, as the blog was more like a diary, and the wiki was a record of what she had achieved. She said she enjoyed using the wikis as it was easy to make them look good. Click here to visit Anna’s wiki.

Lucy has also uploaded a record of her achievements inside and outside of school. She has written about her Tae-kwon-do achievements, and has uploaded a narrated slideshow video of her medals and trophies. She has also set up an area where she can update her achievements on her class topics through the year. She has enjoyed using both the blogs and wikis, and likes how you can use them both for different things. Click here to visit Lucy’s wiki.

Mrs Vass is interested in the idea of using the wikis to work with other schools, and would like to try collaborative writing using wikis again.

Ingredients

What is needed to create a Glow Wiki?

• Permission to use Glow wikis. The Accounts and Services Manager (ASM) for your school, or local authority, can switch on  this permission for you and your pupils.
• A Glow Group to host the wiki.
• Administrator rights to the Glow Group.

Recipe

In this section we look at creating and populating wikis

•Creating a Glow Wiki
Getting Started with Glow Wikis
•Editing a Glow Wiki Home Page, adding text and images.
Getting Started with Glow Wikis
•Adding pages to a Glow Wiki
Getting Started with Glow Wikis
•Adding links to a Glow Wiki
Getting Started with Glow Wikis
•Adding video to a Glow Wiki
Getting Started with Glow Wikis