Practising Mandarin. Click to enlarge.

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

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

Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning Tai-Chi. Click to enlarge.

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

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

Santa visits Lynburn. Click to enlarge.

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

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

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

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

The Wedding invitation. Click to enlarge.

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

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

Ingredients

For her P5 class Glow Group Jacqui:

* created a Glow Group on the school site

* added all her pupils as ‘Contributors’

* added additional pages

* created multiple Documents, Web links and Discussions web parts

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

Method

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pupils' own Glow Group. Click to enlarge.

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

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

Context

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

One pupil's page. Click to enlarge.

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

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

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

Ingredients

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

* created a Glow Group on the school site

* gave her pupils Administrators of the Group

* created a page for each pupil

The pupils themselves then:

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

* added a Glow Image Gallery web part

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

Method

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact

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

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

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

P2 building an igloo – learning about Antartica

Overview
Nathalie Spence is a probationary teacher at Onthank Primary, Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire. Following an introduction to Glow, whilst a student teacher at the University of the West of Scotland, Nathalie was keen to use Glow to support the learning and teaching with her P2 class.

In this activity the P2 class worked together to build an igloo with recycled plastic milk jugs.

Video Clips
Watch a tour of the P2D Glow Group

Onthank Primary – P2 Igloo ProjectIngredients

Using Glow to support the class work, Nathalie went through the following steps:

1. creating a Glow Group at school level
2. making pupils in the class members of the group
3. adding new pages/changing the names of pages
4. creating a Picture Library and Discussions web parts

Recipe

The ‘How-to’ videos below show how to replicate many of the elements Nathalie has used in the P2 Glow Group.

How to add, remove or rename pages in a Glow GroupOnthank Primary – P2 Igloo Project

How to create a new Picture Library (or other web parts)Onthank Primary – P2 Igloo Project

How to compress images before uploading to GlowOnthank Primary – P2 Igloo Project

How to upload and view images in a Picture LibraryOnthank Primary – P2 Igloo Project

How to rename the Discussions web part
Onthank Primary – P2 Igloo Project

How to add and reply to posts in a Discussion Board
Onthank Primary – P2 Igloo Project

Impact

Nathalie – “This project is a really good example of linking home and school through Glow. Using our topic Antarctica where we built a life size igloo using milk cartons was a great success. The children took photographs of each process and were able to put them on to Glow. A discussion board was used and allowed us to show the parents at home the actual process that we were going through and then at the end the finished product. The parents came in to school for a presentation and they commented that the fact that they were able to go back to Glow and see the processes that the children went through and discuss this with them actually made the parent understand exactly what the children were learning about.”

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

Context

Click to enlarge

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

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

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

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

Supporting particular areas of the curriculum – focus on Literacy

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

Click to enlarge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ingredients

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

- Create a Glow Blog in a Glow Group

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

- Add the widgets he wanted

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

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

Impact 

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

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

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

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

Building the Curriculum 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nation e-portfolio Glow Group

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

Context

Barr Primary

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

Barr Primary School

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

Recipe

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

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

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

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

Impact

The senior pupils at Barr Primary School

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Olivia and pupils

Olivia Wexelstein teaches a P4-7 class at Wellwood Primary School in Fife. She has been using Glow since January 2010 and is very positive about the opportunities it has opened up. Glow is rapidly becoming embedded into daily life in the classroom: to share learning, to record pupils’ experiences and achievements, and to give pupils a voice.

This cookbook looks at the P4-7 Glow Group which Olivia and her class use daily. A second cookbook to follow in Spring 2011 will explore how Olivia has created e-portfolios within Glow and how pupils use these to reflect on their learning.

Context

Seeing Olivia’s Glow Group for the first time a couple of things are immediately apparent – and appealing. Firstly, the Group is constantly evolving with more content and extra pages being added as learning progresses in the classroom. Secondly, there is a strong sense of identity – this is a Group that the teacher and pupils have very much made their own working space. For example, for reading work the class splits into 5 small groups. Each group has their own page in the Glow Group, with a photo of the group members, a list of learning intentions, an image of the book they are currently reading and a document area where they can upload their written work. Pupils are proud of their group and keen to share this with their parents and carers at home.

Olivia Wexelstein talks about her P4-P7 Glow Group, part 1Embedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

Cake baking – click to view

The most recent Maths topic saw the class cooking fairy cakes together, to gain practical experience of measurement and weight. Photos of the activity have been uploaded into a Picture Library, providing an excellent record of pupils’ learning experiences. A Discussion Board web part was used to capture and display the results of a class discussion about common examples of weighing and measuring. Pupils were then able to continue to add to the discussion board as other examples sprung to mind.

The Maths page also includes links to ‘weight’ related games and Olivia has also embedded games from the BBC website directly within the Glow Group. She finds this aspect of Glow – being able to collate resources, links, learning intentions and discussions all in one place – very valuable and finds that it supports even the youngest members of the class in working independently.

Olivia Wexelstein talks about her P4-P7 Glow Group, part 2Embedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

Solar System page – click to view

The class is currently working on a rich task about the Solar System. The topic started with some brainstorming to discover what pupils knew about the solar system and what they wanted to find out. Photos of the pupils at work, discussing and drawing up mind maps, have been uploaded to a Picture Library as a record of pupils’ understanding and learning experiences. At the conclusion of the topic similar mind maps will be recorded to show how the pupils’ understanding has progressed.

Solar System – pupils' key questions

Pupils are leading the learning on the rich task. They have set themselves a challenge, brainstormed a list of key questions to be explored, and decided upon activities. One day pupils were delighted to receive a surprise visitor to the classroom – Spud Lightyear! Pupils have enjoyed interacting with Spud and designing activities for him.

Pupils clearly feel a sense of ownership and are highly engaged in their exploration of the topic. The challenge, questions and activities are all prominently displayed on the ‘Solar System’ page so that pupils can refer to these whenever they wish. Throughout this topic Olivia again has found Glow an excellent tool, as it allows her to bring together a wide range of content and activities, that is easy for pupils to find and use.

Survey on pupils' use of ICT at home

Parents and carers do not yet have their own Glow accounts at Wellwood, but Olivia has been keen to get them involved. She recently ran workshops to introduce parents to Glow, and was delighted with the very positive response, with parents keen to understand how their children were using Glow in school and how they could support them at home. Olivia added a Parents page to the Glow Group, where parents can post up any queries about Glow and respond to a survey about what access to technology their children have at home.

A survey is also used on the ‘Celebrating Success’ page. Each week pupils nominate their peers for each of the Curriculum for Excellence capacities. Previously this feedback had been gathered on paper, which proved time-consuming. Using the survey, pupils can log on to Glow at any point during the week to submit their nominations. On Friday it is then a straightforward matter for Olivia to look at the survey results and announce the winners.

Blogs are a new feature within Glow, introduced in August 2010. Olivia has integrated these into the P4-7 Glow Group, with each member of the class having their own blog. A blog – described by one pupil as a ‘personal diary’ – allows the user to add text, images, audio and video. The Wellwood pupils are using their blogs to write about what interests them and share this with an audience both within their class and beyond. The blogs include creative writing and descriptions of school trips, along with posts about school holidays and likes and dislikes. Pupils have been keen to use their blogs at home during evenings and weekends, as well as in class. Olivia is delighted with her pupils’ responses, seeing even previously reluctant writers keen to update their blog. This motivation and increased confidence with writing is paying dividends with the quality of written work in the classroom.

Wellwood pupils give their feedback about using GlowEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

The pupils’ blogs are a key element of the e-portfolios which Olivia is creating in Glow. These are still under development and a further cookbook in Spring 2011 will explore how they have progressed.

Ingredients

Olivia created her Glow Group on the Wellwood site in Glow. She has customised the Glow Group by:

• adding new pages/changing the names of pages
• creating multiple Documents, Web links, Picture Library and Discussions web parts
• using Text Editor web parts to display learning intentions
• using XML web parts to embed games from the BBC website
• creating surveys 

Recipe

The ‘How-to’ videos below show how to replicate many of the elements Olivia has used in the P4-7 Glow Group.

* how to add, remove or rename pages in a Glow GroupEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

* how to create a new Picture Library (or other web parts)Embedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

* how to compress images before uploading to GlowEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

* how to upload and view images in a Picture LibraryEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

* how to create a survey and add it to a Glow GroupEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

* how to change permissions on the Survey web partEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

* how to respond to a survey and view survey resultsEmbedding Glow in daily learning and teaching

Impact

Olivia is delighted with her pupils’ response to Glow and the impact it is having on their engagement with learning: “This has been the children’s first experience of using Glow. It has had an amazing impact on their learning. They are more engaged and feel in control of their own learning. Glow is very flexible allowing the content to be tailored to the current needs and requirements of the class. The children are very motivated to use Glow in the classroom and are always excited to see and use new content as it is put on.”

Glow is also having a significant impact on the way Olivia teaches:“Teaching has become easier as it very easy and quick to focus learning in the area you require through the use of web links, instructional text boxes and discussion boards.” 

Parents have also noticed the impact Glow is having on their children’s enthusiasm for learning: “The feedback from parents has been very positive and they love being able to share with their child the learning that has taken place in school. One of the things the pupils like best is the ability to upload their work into Glow to share with their parents and others which is something they were unable to do before.”

Photo credits (images used in ‘how-to’ videos): Mads Boedker, Ernst Vikne, Turbojoe, Mike Monteiro, Royalty-free image collection

In order to look at how the Group was used, this cookbook will be split into four parts. This part, part 4, looks at the use of pictures and videos within the Group. Part 1 looks at the use of hidden pages, Part 2 at the use of Glow Meet and Part 3 focuses on how the Glow Blog was used. All four parts will contain the same overview in the ‘context’ section, with the different elements being explored in the ‘Focus On’ and recipe sections.

Context

Jan Pollok, Quality Improvement Officer and Glow Key Contact for East Dunbartonshire Council sent out a Targeted News item from the Local Authority site in Glow, asking for schools to volunteer to attend the Scottish Learning Festival (SLF) to take part in LEGO activities. Jan had initially wanted to choose two schools, but after responses came in from schools, she decided to invite the four schools named above.

Jan met with Joanne Connolly, one of the Glow Educationalists from the National Glow Team, to discuss how Glow could support the schools before SLF and also how it could be used during and afterwards.

As a result of this conversation, Jan created a Glow Group at Local Authority level to enable the four schools to have direct sight of it. The layout was then designed and built, after consultation with the schools.

Initially, the Primary 7 teachers from the schools met with Jan and Joanne to discuss the activities that the pupils would be undertaking at SLF and to give their input to the Glow Group structure and content. It was agreed that the Group would contain hidden pages, with only the Noticeboard Page visible and links to the hidden pages provided there. This gave the Group a sleek and simple look and made it very easy to navigate around. You can learn more about hidden pages in Part 1 of this cookbook series.
We can look at the Group and its layout in the following video:

Tour of the SLF LEGO Glow Group (11:48)
LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos

Elements of the Glow Group

A range of different web parts were incorporated within the Glow Group:

Glow Meet
The first part of the Glow Group that was used was the Glow Meet page. It was agreed at the initial meeting that a Glow Meet would be held to enable the children to introduce themselves and become more familiar with Glow Meet. It also provided an opportunity for the schools to check their equipment was working. You can find out more details about it in part 2 of the cookbook series.

Picture Library
Both before and after the Glow Meet, the pupils spent time in their classrooms using the ‘We-Do’ LEGO kits that they had been given to allow them to practise prior to attending SLF. They took photos of the models they built and these were uploaded to the Picture Library on the ‘Our Photos’ page of the Group. Find out more in the ‘Focus on’ section of this cookbook.

Document Stores
There are two Document Stores in the Glow Group.

The first is on the Documents page. This was there to give pupils a place where they could perhaps write instructions on how to build a particular LEGO model and share those with others by uploading to the Document store. It was also discussed that pupils might do creative writing about the models they built and those pieces of writing could also be uploaded and shared.

The second Document store was created through the Advanced Settings link, in order to have a fresh, new, empty web part, rather than just a duplicate of the original Document store on the Documents page. This Document store was named Video Files and was added to the ‘Our Videos’ page. A folder was created for each of the schools, along with a fifth folder for SLF. Schools could use this to upload videos of their LEGO models in action, since the ‘We-Do’ kit includes software enabling the models to be programmed to move and make sounds. Find out more about how this Document store was used in the ‘Focus on’ section below.

Discussion Board
A discussion board was added to the Discussions page. This was originally intended for staff to ask questions about preparations for SLF and for pupils to discuss the activities they had been doing with the LEGO kits. However, the discussions about these activities naturally transferred themselves to the final page of the Glow Group, the Glow Blog.

Glow Blog
A page was created to host the Glow Blog.
The Glow Blog web part on the page enabled pupils to make quick posts about the activities they were doing. It was also used during the Scottish Learning Festival and afterwards. You can read more about this in Part 3 of the cookbook series.

In the next section, we will focus on one of the elements briefly described above. The others are focused on in the other three parts of this cookbook series.

Focus on: Pictures and Videos

Pictures

Click to view

A Picture Library was added to the Glow Group to enable the schools to upload photos of the LEGO models they made prior to attending SLF. This enabled the pupils to share their work with other schools, log on at home and show their parents what they had created in school and also learn from one another.

The picture library was configured to show only two columns – a thumbnail of the photo and a description of it. This allowed the pupils to describe their picture or simply add a comment.

During the Scottish Learning Festival, many photos were taken of the pupils participating in the LEGO, animation and video activities. These were then made into a collage by pasting all of the images into a Microsoft Word document then capturing the collage as a single picture using an image capture tool. This single image was then uploaded into the Text Editor web part, giving another way of sharing images between all four schools.

Videos

Video files were added to the Glow Group in two ways.

Prior to SLF, some of the schools recorded short video clips to show the models they made in action, since the software that accompanied the LEGO kits enabled the models to be programmed to move and make sounds.

Click to View

These video files were then shared by uploading them into the ‘Video Files’ Document Library on the ‘Our Videos’ page in the Glow Group. Members of the Group simply had to click on the file to play the video.

During the Scottish Learning Festival, the pupils made stop/start animations with LEGO models. The animation videos were then added to the Glow Group. This meant that they could be watched by pupils who had not attended SLF and could also be shown to parents. In this instance, this was done by uploading the files to a free online hosting site called screencast.com. This site then provided an embed code which was pasted into the xml web part in the Glow Group. This enabled the videos to play within the web part, simply by pressing the play button. You can see this in the SLF LEGO Glow Group Tour video clip earlier in this cookbook. The recipe section below provides a ‘how to’ video to enable you to learn how to do this for yourself.

Ingredients
In order for the East Dunbartonshire schools attending the Scottish Learning Festival to be able to upload images and videos to the SLF LEGO Glow Group, the following was done:
- A Picture Library was added to the ‘Our Photos’ page
- A new Document Library was created and added to the Documents page
- Text Editor web parts were added to the Videos Page in the Group and the video files of the pupil animations were added to those.

Additional work was done to create the other elements of the Glow Group which have been touched on in the ‘elements of the Glow Group’ section above. These are covered in the other parts of this cookbook series.

Recipe
In the following videos we will look at how to replicate some of the elements mentioned above. In particular, we will look at creating hidden pages and linking to them:

How to add a Picture Library to a Glow Group (2:03)
LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos
How to create a second Picture Library for your Glow Group (4:27)
LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos
How to change the columns shown in a Picture Library- adding a description field (4:38)
LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos
How to embed a video file in the xml web part (3:55)
LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos
How to create a new Document Store (5:57)
LEGO activities at SLF: Part 4- Pictures and Videos

Impact

Using the Glow Group has had a great impact on the schools involved in the LEGO activities.

They have had a place for communicating and sharing their learning.

Pupils have been able to share with others, both in their own school and outwith, the models they have built, through use of the picture library, Document store for videos, and through their blog posts.

Staff have been able to use the Group to meet virtually using Glow Meet and to plan using this, so eliminating the need to travel to actual meetings. Glow Meet has also enabled the pupils to speak to one another and to the Glow Team, prior to attending the Scottish Learning Festival, which helped reassure them before attending such a large event.

The use of the picture library provides and excellent means of formative assessment, showcasing the work pupils have done and providing an opportunity for peer review.

In all, the Glow Group has been highly beneficial to all who have used it.

Read the other parts of this cookbook series:

Part 1: Focus on – Hidden Pages

Part 2: Focus on – Glow Meet

Part 3: Focus on – Using a Glow Blog