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 one teacher, Kim Yapp, and how she found that Glow solved a long-standing problem. In the Recipe section, video clips show how you can replicate Kim’s ideas.

Context

Saving group work. Click to enlarge.

Kim teaches Modern Foreign Languages. For the last couple of years, the department has run a Culture Project for first year pupils. At the end of each unit of work, different aspects of French culture, such as Christmas celebrations, school and leisure, are introduced. At the end of the year, pupils are asked to work in groups, create a presentation on a cultural theme of their own choice, and deliver the presentation to their class. 

Prior to the arrival of Glow in the school, the project, though very successful, had presented a number of logistical difficulties. The classes worked in the ICT suites and at the end of the lesson each pupil saved their work to their own network area. As common to many school networks, a pupil’s network area is inaccessible to teachers and to other pupils. If a pupil was absent in subsequent lessons, their work could not be retrieved to be added to the group presentation.

Similar difficulties occurred once the presentations were completed and ready to be delivered to the class. If saved to a pupil’s network area, then the presentation lessons involved one group after another each needing to log in to the PC linked to the projector. Often half of the lesson time was lost, simply in this repeated logging in and out of the network. 

An alternative solution that Kim had tried, involved the finished presentations being saved onto a memory stick. This meant that the last 20 minutes of the lesson in which pupils were completing their presentations were spent passing around a USB stick and all groups saving their work onto it. Again a significant amount of time was lost, but this method did have the advantage of ensuring that the lessons where the presentations were delivered to the class ran much more smoothly.

Kim Yapp: S1 Culture Project (6:36)Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

When Kim began to use Glow earlier this year, she was hopeful that it would deliver a simple solution to these logistical problems – and was delighted to find that it did! To test the waters she ran a mini-project with her class, asking them to research a European country, create a project document and upload it into Glow. This activity gave Kim time to ensure that all pupils had Glow accounts, and knew their passwords, and allowed her to show them how to navigate around the Modern Languages Glow Groups and upload their work.

Pupil's work. Click to enlarge.

She then created an S1 Culture Project Glow Group, customising it to leave just the Documents web part. Folders for each group of pupils were then added, to enable each to organise their work effectively. Pupils then had four periods in the ICT suite in which to research and create the presentations. At the end of each lesson they saved their work into their folder in the Glow Group. This meant that if an individual was away at any point during the following lessons, the group leader could still add the work to the collated presentation. No time was wasted during the research period with replicating missing work or saving to a communal USB stick.

Delivering the presentations was greatly simplified too. Kim simply logged on to the network herself, then logged into Glow, and all groups’ work was immediately accessible. Each team could then come, in turn, to Kim’s PC and deliver to the class with no time lost logging in and out of the network.

A simple Glow Group had provided a way around the logistical barriers, as Kim had hoped, but there were unexpected additional benefits too. As the work was in a shared area from the start of the four periods, it was easy for Kim to monitor progress as the presentations developed and to step in quickly if any pupil was not pulling their weight. The Glow Group also enabled pupils to continue their work at home and to discuss it with their parents and carers.

Ingredients

To support the S1 Culture Project, Kim required:
* a Glow Group

* pupils given Contributor membership of the Glow Group

Recipe

Having created the Glow Group and set the permissions, Kim then customised the Group to meet the needs of the project. She simplified the layout, removing unneeded pages and web parts. In the Documents web part she created a folder for each group of pupils. Reminders to the pupils about how to save their work were displayed in a Text Editor web part. The instructions for each stage of these processes are shown in the clips below.

* How to delete pages from a Glow Group (1:47) Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

* How to add and close web parts (2:35) Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

* How to create folders in a Documents web part and upload a file (3:50) Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

* How to add the Text Editor web part to a Glow Group to display instructions (3:24) Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

Impact

The use of Glow at Glenwood has grown very rapidly over just a few months, not just in Modern Languages. 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) Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

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) Using a Document Library to facilitate group presentations

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

Burns Supper at Coylton

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

Judith Lennox

Judith explains the Burns Supper Enterprise Project at Coylton Primary (0:53)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

Primary 7 pupils at Coylton Primary School used a Glow Group to help in the planning of an interdisciplinary enterprise event. This event was the organising of their annual Burns Supper.

P7 pupils took responsibility for all aspects of planning this event, which involved:

• writing newsletters to parents
• inviting special guests
• selling tickets
• handling cash and cheques
• rehearsing songs, poems and dances
• writing and learning speeches
• publicising the event in the school community.

All 60 P7 pupils took on a role in organising the event, as well as having an ‘on the night’ job.

Glow Group Pages

Co-ordinating this number of pupils, from different classes, who were all completing different tasks, was made easier by the great idea of using a Glow Group for communication. This meant that pupils were able to communicate easily between the 2 classes by using various discussion boards, a moderated chat room and a Glow Meet room. The pupils made use of these both in and out of school. Using Glow enabled class teachers to oversee the planning process, whilst allowing pupils to work independently. It meant that the teachers didn’t have to keep bringing the 2 classes together and disrupting the school day. Teachers were able to answer queries as they arose and challenge pupils’ thinking by contibuting to the discussions in the Glow group.

The Coylton P7 Burns Supper

On the night, pupils chaired the event and provided high quality entertainment for their 90 guests.  After the event, pupils continued to use the Glow Group to celebrate their success. They were able to discuss their favourite memories and look at photos of the event which their teachers had uploaded.

Judith’s Tour of the Burn’s Supper Glow Group (3:14)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

This Cookbook will focus on the use of the Glow Group as a planning tool for the P7 classes.

Ingredients

What did Judith need to be able to allow the pupils to use Glow as a planning tool for their enterprise event?

• A Glow Group built at school level in Coylton Primary School
• Pupils from a both P7 classes set with Contributor permissions
• Use made of a general discussion board
• A Job Discussions page created
• Additional discussion boards created on this page to aid different teams of pupils in their planning
• A chat room
• A Glow Meet room
• A Page Viewer web part with the World Burns Club website
• An additional Page Viewer web part with Address to a Haggis
• A Memories page with photos and an additional discussion board for pupils to comment on the event

Recipe

Discussions in the Group

In this Cookbook we have chosen to focus on creating the Jobs Discussions page and additional discussion boards.

In the videos below you will be able to see how Judith did this.

How Judith created a new page in the Glow Group (1:47)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

How Judith created additional discussion web parts (2:47)

Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

How Judith added these web parts to the page (1:03)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

Impact

Judith explains why she wanted to use Glow for the project (0:32)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

Judith explains why she thinks using Glow was successful (0:49)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

The Burns project worked really well. The pupils were extremely enthusiastic. They had only just got their Glow log-ons and they were really keen to use Glow as much as possible. They were logging in at home quite a lot and also in school they were given a chance to log in whenever they had any free time.

The discussions worked really well. It was a good way for the pupils to collaborate without having to be in the same room as each other. Because it was 2 classes working together, it meant that we could do that without any disruption to the school day.

Brandon and Dana from P7

Brandon on why he likes Glow (0:29)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

Dana on why she likes Glow (0:23)
Burns Supper – Using Glow to support an Enterprise Project

Recently, a large amount of Spanish content was added to Glow Learn. This content comes in the form of Sonica Spanish activities and is relevant for both Primary and Secondary pupils. There are approximately 150 activities,  particularly suitable to second and third levels.  

Context
The Spanish activities are located in two places in Glow Learn – in the Resources Tab and in the Courses Tab. Where you access the activities from will have an impact on how you can use them and whether or not pupils will have access.

Resources Tab:

National Resources

In the Resources tab, the Spanish resources sit within the National Folder. Click the plus sign to open this folder and you will see three sub folders. The third is called Sonica Spanish by RM Education.

Spanish Topics – Click to enlarge

Within the Sonica Spanish folder, there are sub folders for a range of  topics commonly covered within the Modern Languages curriculum at second and third levels. The topics are listed alphabetically. Inside each of those folders are folders are the activities. 

Resource information – click to enlarge

Each activity has accompanying teacher notes is tagged with the appropriate Curriculum for Excellence levels. This was kindly done by an experienced Modern Languages teacher.

You can learn how to find the tagging information in the ‘how to’  videos later.

Courses Tab:

The activities have also been made into courses.

Using the Sonica Spanish activities

The Spanish activities can be accessed and used in a range of ways.

It is important to know that the computer being used to access the resources has to have Adobe Shockwave Player installed in order for the activities to launch and run.
This can be downloaded free from http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/ 

Whole Class Teaching

If you have access to a data projector and interactive whiteboard, you can use the Spanish activities as a whole class teaching resource. By launching one of the activities from within the Resources tab, the whole class can engage with it.  These activities can add enjoyment and challenge to lessons and can help to engage children, as well as offering opportunity for discussion and for teaching points to be made and explored.

Pupil Access

Pupils have no access to the Resources tab in Glow Learn.

Pupils can therefore only access Spanish resources which have been added to a course which the pupils are then enrolled onto. Here are a couple of suggested ways of doing this.

Recipe

Watch the videos below to learn how to access the Sonica Spanish activities and how to enable pupils to access them.

Accessing the Sonica Spanish activities from the Resources Tab (3:54)
Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
 Copying the Sonica Spanish Course for class use (4:33)
Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
 How to create a Glow Learn course (5:36)
Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
 Adding Sonica Spanish activities to your Glow Learn Course (5:08)
 Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
Adding your own resources to a Glow Learn course (9:34)
Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
 Enrolling pupils onto a Glow Learn Course (4:38)
Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
 Pupil View of a Glow Learn course (2:19)
Spanish Resources in Glow Learn
 

Impact 

There are many benefits to including the Sonica Spanish activities as part of the range of learning resources made available to pupils as part of their learning.

Adding a range of different resource types can increase pupil motivation and promote learning. Using the Spanish activities can help achieve this, as pupils often see them as a more fun way of learning. 

By giving pupils access to the activities, they have a resource that they can use as often as they wish, helping with initial understanding, consolidation and mastery of a topic.

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

Overview

Staff in the English department at Carluke High School in South Lanarkshire have used Glow to enhance learning and teaching in a number of ways over the last two years. Projects have ranged from novel studies in S2 to War Poetry at Standard Grade. In this cookbook David Falconer describes the impact of using discussion boards for peer assessment with Higher students.

Context

David created the Higher English Glow Group for his fifth and sixth pupils as they began to prepare for internal assessment of writing. The aim of the Group was to give the pupils a forum in which to publish their creative writing to their peers. Pupils would then assess each others’ work and give constructive feedback.

The expectations of pupils’ writing abilities at Higher are:

Candidates will develop and extend a range of writing skills as they employ different registers, formats and styles to fulfil a variety of purposes. Study at this level will be characterised by such activities as close consideration of different models and styles, writing to particular briefs and for specific audiences and experimenting with imaginative forms. (SQA course specification)

A tour of David Falconer’s Higher English Glow GroupPeer assessment in Higher English

Pupils first undertook a number of activities in class to generate ideas for their writing. Ideas were developed and honed, and a first draft completed. The work was then submitted through the discussion board in the Glow Group. As most of the pupils had not used Glow before, David had created a discussion thread per pupil, which included instructions about how to reply to a discussion post, attach a file and save the posting. With hindsight, David felt that this level of support was generally not needed, as pupils clearly felt comfortable with the technology and had no difficulties in understanding how to use a discussion board.

With the initial pieces of writing submitted, pupils were asked to review the work of four other pupils. A reminder of the assessment criteria were included within each discussion thread so that pupils kept them to the forefront of their minds whilst reviewing. (click on images below to enlarge)

Creative writing – guidelines for peer assessment

David was pleased with the quality of feedback that pupils gave. He felt that most had provided perceptive and constructive comments, which would genuinely help their peers to develop their work further. 

Feedback on one pupil's work

Once pupils had completed the peer assessment, David also reviewed the submitted writing. He decided to do this through the discussion board, in preference to marking work manually and annotating pupils’ work in pencil or pen. He commented that he found this very useful, indeed “quite a liberating experience”, as it allowed him to make much more extensive comments, with a greater degree of explanation and feedback to pupils, than he would ordinarily have been able to do. He often found that pupils’ peer assessment chimed with his, indicating that pupils were fully engaged with the success criteria and were reviewing with a considerable degree of maturity.

At the end of the review process, David printed the feedback for pupils, copying the comments from the discussion board to a Word document. This provided each pupil with extensive, thought-provoking commentary on their work and how to improve it.

David applied the same use of discussion boards later in the year, when pupils were working towards a second writing assessment, this time on discursive writing. Here the power of the discussion boards really shone through. Pupils each selected a topical issue and in their essays expressed and developed a line of argument. Pupils reviewed their peers’ work, and then used the discussion boards to questions assumptions, challenge arguments and discuss their differing views in depth.

Discursive essay – feedback

Ingredients

In order to use the discussion boards for peer assessment, David created a Glow Group and gave his pupils Contributor rights. He used features, such as the News and Web links web parts, to provide information on learning intentions and background reading.  The default Discussions web part was used for the first writing assignment and David later created a new discussions web part for the second assignment.

Recipe

If you’re interested in replicating, or building upon any of David’s ideas, then you may find the ’how-to’ video clips below useful. These show how to create, use and modify discussion boards.

* how to post a message on a discussion board and attach a filePeer assessment in Higher English

* how to read a message on a discussion board and view an attached filePeer assessment in Higher English

* how to create a new discussion boardPeer assessment in Higher English

Impact

David Falconer talks about the impact of the Higher English Glow GroupPeer assessment in Higher English

At the end of the writing tasks, pupils commented on how valuable they had found this process of peer and teacher assessment to be. They appreciated the comments and support of their peers and recognised how the feedback would enable them to improve their work. Pupils spoke of an increased sense of confidence, that they had viewed the task with greater purpose and undertook it with more attention that they might otherwise have done, knowing that their work would be published to their peers and reviewed by them.

This approach to the writing assignments particularly encouraged the less confident members of the class. David felt that they had performed better than they perhaps might have done through more traditional methods of reviewing and marking work.

David commented that peer assessment like this is perhaps less well used at the upper stages of secondary than in first and second year. His Higher pupils had thoroughly valued the forum it provided to explore and develop their work.

Click to enlarge image

Overview

Amy Lumsden and Ruth Torrance teach P1A at James Gillespie’s Primary School in Edinburgh. Following introductory training in Glow, Amy and Ruth were keen to investigate if the Glow tools and functionality could support learning and teaching in their class. ‘People who help us’ is one of the Social Subjects topics covered by P1 pupils at James Gillespie’s and Amy and Ruth felt it would be an ideal pilot to determine if Glow could be used successfully with pupils as young as P1. As part of the school’s ICT strategy, early years pupils are ‘buddied’ with older children when they go to the ICT suite. The older pupils help the younger ones by discussing tasks with them and helping with keyboard entry. With the support of P5 buddies, Amy and Ruth were able to devise Glow tasks that could be done individually in the ICT suite or covered as whole class activities on the interactive whiteboard in the classroom.

Video Clips

Impact

Amy and Ruth have shown that well planned use of Glow functionality can impact positively on the learning and teaching of P1 pupils. In addition, the Glow Group that they have developed with resources, activities and tried and tested methodology has become an invaluable CPD resource for other staff at James Gillespie’s. In the video clip below, Amy and Ruth sum up their views on the impact that Glow had on the teaching of the People who help us topic.

Click to enlarge

John Johnston is an ICT Development Officer with North Lanarkshire Council. Alison Burrows is McCrone teacher at Kilsyth Primary School, responsible for Music, Drama and PE for P1-7. This Cookbook will look at what John has set up in Glow for embedding media and how Alison used this in Kilsyth Primary School.

John was very keen to encourage the use of audio and video in the classroom. He was also keen to use Glow for the pupils to be able to share or publish any audio or video files they had produced. A barrier that John perceived was that if these audio and video files sit normally in a document store in Glow the playback would be governed by different browsers and machines and could be complex for the user. John wanted to find a way for teachers to be able to simplify the whole play again processes. He wanted to get around this issue by changing a document library into a “media showcase, which plays on the page.”

In this Cookbook we will look at what John has designed and used for the GarageBand Glow Group and how Alison has used the same principles for music and drama at school level.

In this cookbook, we will find out:

• What the ICT for Pupils – GarageBand Glow Group looks like
• What the Kilsyth Primary Drama Glow Group looks like
• How to add an imported web part into your Glow Group and make use of embedded media players

Context

Click to enlarge

John thinks that children can all work happily on the creation of media in class but it is more interesting for them to be able to take the next step and look at publishing that media. The benefits of being able to have a wider audience are huge. John notes that this is very easy to do with some internet tools and feels that this was a little bit trickier inside Glow.

Principally this is because the main way of storing files in Glow is using a document library and this is basically a list of files – a not very attractive interface. When you click on these you don’t know how individual computers are going to handle the different files.

What John has done is to use “a little bit of javascript and a little bit of flash to produce players in the actual document library. So the link to the document, if it’s a media document, is turned into an embedded player”.

He tells us, “you can just use the import web part and put this into your page and have it invisible.”

Any file which is then put into the document library will be displayed in an embedded player. This just plays in the user’s browser and means they don’t have to worry about the software available on the user’s machine.

John feels that one of the strengths of Glow is that the upload of a single file is such an easy process. It is very simple for pupils to be able to upload what they have created into the document library. It is no more complicated to upload a video or an audio file in Glow than it is to upload a word document. The changes John has made take over after this point to make it easier for people to access the files. Pupils can then listen to or watch what they have done immediately.

GarageBand – click to enlarge

At North Lanarkshire local authority level in Glow John set up a GarageBand Glow Group as a trial of how all this was working. Glow was able to complement other tools the authority is using to promote the use of ICT. John has used this group when he has been out working with different schools in the authority and encouraged pupils, as part of using GarageBand, to upload their creations onto Glow and be able to share these with each other. The pupils can then use the discussion board in the group to leave comments on all pupils’ work.

John has taken the Anarchy Media Library and is hosting it on a Glow web hosted site. He has made some small changes to the code, for example, to the splash screen which currently reflects North Lanarkshire. He has produced some code in an xml web part which he has exported and made available for others to import. You will be able to view John’s How-To video in the Recipe section of this Cookbook. You will also be able to follow a link to download the web part for your own use.

Alison Burrows

Alison Burrows is McCrone teacher at Kilsyth Primary School. As part of Curriculum for Excellence the whole school was using Scotland as a theme across learning. Alison decided that Glow would be a good fit for Music and Drama and decided to take a Scottish theme and develop projects with the pupils along those lines. She decided to do Scottish poetry and traditional Scottish songs. She utilised Easispeak microphones and Flip cameras which she borrowed through John Johnston at the Computer Centre. A Glow Group was used as the final step to showcase the pupils’ work. John had added the media plus web part to the Glow Group, so the pupils were able to play back, with one click, all their audio and video files, straight from the browser. They used the discussion board for the pupils, teachers and development officers to leave feedback on the performances which worked very well.

Ingredients

What did John need to put the Media Plus web part together in the first place?

• Glow Web Hosted space with the Anarchy Media Library residing on it
• An xml web part to contain the code John worked on to link to the Anarchy Media Library
• Exporting this web part as a file to have it ready to be imported into other Glow Groups

What did John set up for the ICT for Pupils – GarageBand Glow Group?

• A Glow Group built at local authority level
• Set Contributor membership for all teachers and pupils across North Lanarkshire
• Remove the Glow Groups page
• Change the name of the Discussions and Documents pages to Help and Discussions and GarageBand Playground respectively
• Add the xml ‘Media Plus’ web part to the header of the GarageBand Playground page and remove its frame
• Edit the display options of the document web part to only show one link to the file
• Add a new discussions web part called Music Review and Commentary to the GarageBand Playground page

What did Alison and John set up for the Kilsyth Music and Drama Glow Groups?

• A Glow Group built at school level
• Set Contributor membership for all teachers and pupils in Kilsyth Academy
• Set membership for ICT and Glow Development Officers
• Change the name of the Glow Groups page to become a Videos page and add a new documents library to this page
• Add the xml ‘Media Plus’ web part to the header of the Documents and Videos pages and remove its frame
• Edit the display options of the documents web parts to only show one link to the file

Recipe

Kilsyth Primary – Music videos – Click to enlarge

The first video below acts as a virtual tour by John of the ICT for Pupils – GarageBand Glow Group. The second video is Alison’s tour of the Kilsyth Primary School Drama Glow Group. The video which follows is John’s How-To video. Beneath this you will find a link to a pdf file with written step-by-step instructions and containing a link to allow you to download the ‘Media Plus’ web part to import into your own Glow Group. You will also find a link to John’s original Podcast showing the How-To video and the pdf at the bottom of the Impact section. Details are:

Tour by John of the ICT for Pupils – GarageBand Glow Group (2:13)
Embedding Media in Glow

Tour of the Kilsyth Primary School Drama Glow Group (1:39)
Embedding Media in Glow

How to Display Media in Glow (6:11)
Embedding Media in Glow

Link to John’s Embedding Media in Glow Help Document

Link to John’s Glow Scripts document to enable the download of the Media Plus web part

Please note that if you’re downloading John’s Media Plus web part for use you may have to unzip this first (if you’re using a PC) before importing it into your own Glow Group

Impact

John speaks about using Glow for uploading files, “One of the nice things about Glow, in fact my favourite thing about Glow is that it’s very easy to upload single documents and it’s very quick.”

John is perfectly happy for people to use what he has written to make all of this work more smoothly in Glow.

As John says, “It’s just a wee hack of Glow really that people can take and put on their own page by importing the web part. You don’t need to be able to do anything else. I’ve borrowed somebody else’s stuff and then fixed it up so that it works with Glow and then people can borrow my stuff and then use that.”

Kilsyth Pupils

Alison thought that this method of presenting work within Glow, which was easy for everyone to access was great. The pupils were performing, and rather than this just being done once at an assembly, it was there for everyone to see and access at different times. For the first time in the school Primary 1 to 7 had been working on the same project and were all able to see each other’s work. This hadn’t been able to happen before. Pupils were very interested in accessing siblings’ work and the upper school were very keen to see what the lower school had been up to. John Johnston and Eileen Mallaghan (North Lanarkshire Glow Development Officer) were invited to leave comments for the pupils on the discussion board as well.

As Alison says, “The pupils loved this. The Primary 1’s thought it was magical! .. The entire school was able to get involved in this.”

Below are videos showing interviews with John, Alison and pupils from Kilsyth Primary School:

John speaks about embedding media in Glow (4:06)
Embedding Media in Glow

John speaks about embedded media in the GarageBand Glow Group (2:25)
Embedding Media in Glow

John speaks about Alison Burrows’ use of Glow at Kilsyth Primary School (0:58)
Embedding Media in Glow

Alison speaks about using media in Glow at Kilsyth Primary School (4:46)
Embedding Media in Glow

Christina and Lauren speak about their project at Kilsyth Primary School (1:51)
Embedding Media in Glow

Katelyn and Craig speak about their project at Kilsyth Primary School (2:17)
Embedding Media in Glow

Links to further information

North Lanarkshire – ICT and Technical Services Centre Podcasts

Using a Documents web part to Display Media Files in Glow

John posted on his blog in June about another way he has discovered to embed media in Glow.

Original blog post – Glow, Javascript and XSL

On Anarchy Media Player

Noticeboard – Click here to enlarge

Alison Smith, P7 teacher at Highlanders Academy Primary School in Inverclyde, was looking for an after school responsibility and looked at taking an ICT club. Given that she’s also the Glow Mentor at Highlanders she had planned to find a purposeful use of Glow and this seemed like the ideal opportunity to team these up. She had in mind that each school in Inverclyde has to produce a 4 page spread in the Greenock Telegraph and this responsibility usually sits with the P7s. She had worked with a previous P7 class to produce a paper version of a newspaper which the pupils had really enjoyed. Alison thought it would be ideal to undertake something with the ICT Club, using Glow and also getting them ready for the spread in the Greenock Telegraph. The Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group was born.

In this cookbook, we will find out:
• What the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group looks like
• How the pages and web parts were used to become a newspaper

Context
The Club started earlier this year and the pupils were told what kind of things the group would be working on and asked who would like to be a part of this. Alison met initially with the pupils in the ICT Club to discuss what the features of using Glow as a newspaper would look like. They planned together what pages would be required in the Glow Group. They then opened up the planning process to involve the rest of the school and the nine members of the Editorial Team went around all the classes conducting a survey, asking all the pupils and teachers what they would like to see in the group. Many of the suggestions from the rest of the school were what the Editorial Team had already planned.

Editorial Team Working – Click here to enlarge

The pupils then got down to work planning their first edition. They decided that interviews would be a good idea for a regular feature. For example, if there was a netball competition on then the pupils would go and interview the classroom assistant responsible for taking the netball team. They would interview someone if there was something interesting going on in the school or generally pick a random member of staff in the school to interview. There are also a couple of articles which the Team will write for every edition on things which have happened or are about to happen in the school. The very first edition contained a feature introducing the Editorial Team themselves. They chatted about why they had volunteered for the team and what they were hoping to learn from working on Highlanders’ Highlights.

Once the team had put the first edition together they went around every class introducing it to the pupils and the teachers. The teachers were then aware of the structure of the editions. This would make it easier for the Editorial Team every week to ask for submissions, such as homework tips.

Parental Involvement
The school felt that it would be easy to involve the parents of the older pupils in the school with Highlanders’ Highlights as they would naturally log on and show their parents from home but they wanted to find a way of making sure they were involving the parents of the younger pupils. They decided to run a workshop for parents to get them involved and let them have their say. As a parent would come in, a member of the Editorial Team would go and get that parent’s child and get them to log into Glow. This allowed the pupil to show their own parent through the group. The school had a lot of good feedback from this event, especially from the parents of the younger pupils.

Parental Comments – click here to enlarge

They decided to get parental feedback at the workshop and build this into improving Highlanders’ Highlights. Parents asked for several sections to be added, the annual holiday list, the school menu, when the gym kit days were for each class, homework tips for each class and the school newsletter being added to Glow. Highlanders’ Highlights was a great way to simply get parents more involved in the school.

Enterprise Showcase
Inverclyde runs an Enterprise Showcase each year and Alison was asked to present on what they were doing at Highlanders. Highlanders’ Highlights was a perfect example of what was being looked for in the remit and they were already doing it and making a great job of it so it made sense to showcase this use of Glow to the rest of Inverclyde. It was the perfect opportunity to get the pupils on the Editorial Team involved and let them share their enthusiasm. The teachers were able to stand back at the event and allow the pupils to take everyone through what they were doing and encourage them to log into Glow and leave a comment on it.

Ingredients

Click here to enlarge

The Noticeboard
This page acts like the front page of a newspaper with taster items for what’s in a particular edition. The News web part contains headlines of the different articles to be found. There is a picture of the Editorial Team and a What’s On This Week? web part letting everyone know what’s coming up in the school. There are also web parts containing the Question of the Week and Celebrating Success with highlights from each class.

Discussions
The discussions page spans all of the issues and provides useful feedback from all of the teachers and the classes. There is also feedback here, left by the parents during the workshop and from teachers across the authority from the Enterprise Showcase. Replies have been typed by the child of a parent or by the Editorial Team during the showcase event with the poster’s name being given.

Documents

click to enlarge

The documents page contains a folder for every edition of Highlanders’ Highlights. The Editorial Team upload their articles into these folders and leave news items to point people to particular articles.

Homework Tips
This was a page which was requested when the Editorial Team were doing their research. It contains information for pupils and parents on the days gym kit will be required and a section for each class reminding them what they are working on for homework at the moment. It also has a web links web part with links to suggested external educational websites which parents have found particularly helpful.

Fun Page

The Fun Page – click to enlarge

This page is divided into an upper and a lower school with puzzles created by the Editorial Team from external websites and contained in a text editor web part.

Menu
The menu page contains an image of the school menu from the Inverclyde Council website. This allows parents to view information and decide whether their child will be having the school menu or a packed lunch on any given day. This was a page requested by the parents after the Parents Workshop.

School Holidays
This is Megan, on the Editorial Team’s favourite page! It contains information from the Inverclyde Council website to remind pupils, teachers and parents of when the holidays are coming up. This was another page requested by the parents.

Newsletter
The final page of the group and another one to be requested by the parents is the Newsletter page. A text editor web part contains the most recent issue of the school newsletter meaning that parents don’t have to worry if  they have mislaid it.

What did Alison and the pupils need to do to allow for the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group to work as a newspaper?

• A Glow Group built at school level
• Set Reader with Discussions membership for all teachers and pupils in the school
• Set the Editorial Team up with Administrator membership of the group
• Add extra pages for Homework Tips, Fun Page, Menu, School Holidays and Newsletter
• Add Folders for every edition into the Document Library and upload articles into these folders
• Make use of the News web part on the Noticeboard for headlines for each edition
• Change the title of the What’s On web part and use this for school events
• The Editorial Team had to delete old News and What’s On items every week
• Add text editor web parts for the Question of the Week and Celebrating Success and edit these every week
• Add an image of the Editorial Team to the Noticeboard page

Recipe
The first video below acts as a virtual tour by Alison of the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group. The videos that then follow show how some of the elements within the Group can be recreated. Details are:

Tour of the Highlanders Highlights Glow Group (4:26)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to change the title of the What’s On web part (1:18)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to add text editor web parts for the Question of the week and Celebrating Success (4:42)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to add folders to the document store for the editions (1:11)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to upload articles in the folders in the document store (1:28)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to add a new page for Homework Tips (1:37)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to edit the information in the Homework Tips text editor web part (2:00)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

How to add images and text into the text editor web parts on the Fun Page (2:37)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Impact
Mairi Nock, DHT at the school notes how the pupils themselves really bonded as the Editorial Team. She comments on how they have all found different aspects within the production of Highlanders’ Highlights which they have strengths in. She speaks about them at the Enterprise Showcase:

“They appear to be quite quiet but when you listen to what they’re saying, they know exactly what they’re doing and they know why they’re doing it. They sat there with a lot of staff from other local schools [at the Enterprise Showcase] and went through exactly what they do, and what they do on a weekly basis and it was great. They had staff from all sorts of schools who posted very very positive responses.”

Enterprsie Showcase Comments – click to enlarge

A member of staff at Port Glasgow High School was so impressed that she came to Highlanders with her school’s system of positive response slips for each of the four pupils and an Easter Egg for each of them. She said this was because the pupils had taught her so much about Glow.

Parents were very positive about the project especially when they were involved in a workshop as it allowed the pupils to introduce it to them. One parent in particular had been very pleased about information regarding external educational websites that she was always looking to use with her child at home. Having the links available on the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group suited her in particular. In terms of the Eco nature of the project, the school had just got its first Green Flag last year and a lot of the parents were saying they were happier to have less bits of paper having to go home. The Highlanders’ Highlights really hit the mark as far as this was concerned.

Highlanders’ Highlights also became a great “hook” to get staff onto Glow. It became the only way of getting on with your class, as another teacher, and having a look at what was happening in the school and being able to make suggestions for homework tips etc. Classes and teachers were also asked to post responses to discussion boards and so everyone could become involved. As Mairi Nock notes,

“it’s been a learning curve for everybody in the school.”

The pupils are obviously very proud of what they’re doing. Chloe tells us,

“I thought it would be very good to do because we weren’t doing it for ourselves, we were doing it for the school.”

Megan adds to this,

“[I wanted to be involved] because we’re eco-friendly”

Megan tells us,

“my parents are really proud of me because they know I have a lot of responsibility and they always go online and see how it has turned out.”

Chloe echoes this,

“that’s the same with my mum and dad. They say they are very proud of me and that they want me to become a journalist because I write articles.”

Alison points out that as time went on, after the initial edition it has really been over to the pupils and they have been responsible for directing and putting everything together. It takes hardly any reminders to keep them on track.

Alison Smith speaks about the Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 1 (4:17)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Alison Smith speaks about the Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 2 (2:59)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Mairi Nock, DHT, speaks about the impact of the project (2:12)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Mairi Nock speaks about parental involvement (2:31)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Mairi Nock speaks about staff involvement (0:59)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Chloe, Chloe, Megan and Jason talk about Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 1 (3:10)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Chloe, Chloe, Megan and Jason talk about Highlanders’ Highlights – Part 2 (3:32)
Highlanders’ Highlights School Magazine in Glow

Through their involvement in the Highlanders’ Highlights Glow Group, the editorial team have been actively engaging with a range of Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes. This range will depend upon many factors, namely, which roles the different pupils took within the team and which web parts were used. Amongst others, they include:

HWB 2-10a – I recognise that each individual has a unique blend of abilities and needs. I contribute to making my school community one which values individuals equally and is a welcoming place for all.

HWB 2-11a – I make full use of and value the opportunities I am given to improve and manage my learning and, in turn, I can help to encourage learning and confidence in others.

LIT 2-01a - I regularly select and listen to or watch texts which I enjoy and find interesting, and I can explain why I prefer certain sources.

I regularly select subject, purpose, format and resources to create texts of my choice.

LIT 2-06a – I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in an appropriate way for my purpose and use suitable vocabulary for my audience.

LIT 2-22a – In both short and extended texts, I can use appropriate punctuation, vary my sentence structures and divide my work into paragraphs in a way that makes sense to my reader.

LIT 2-24a – I consider the impact that layout and presentation will have and can combine lettering, graphics and other features to engage my reader.

TCH 2-03b - Throughout all my learning, I can use search facilities of electronic sources to access and retrieve information, recognising the importance this has in my place of learning, at home and in the workplace.

TCH 2-04b – I can create, capture and manipulate sounds, text and images to communicate experiences, ideas and information in creative and engaging ways.

Tags to further Outcomes can be seen at the bottom of this page.