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

Context

Click to see full image

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pages

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

Past Papers Page

Click to see full image

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

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

Notes Page

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

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

Blog Page

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

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

Pupil Voice Page

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

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

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

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

Ingredients

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

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

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

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

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

Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alan Jenkins

Alan Jenkins is a music teacher at St Aidan’s High School in North Lanarkshire. After receiving a small amount of training in school Alan could see that he wanted to make use of it. He wanted to use Glow to share instrumental performance videos with his pupils. Alan felt that pupils will have pieces of music demonstrated to them in school but then this moment is gone and it is difficult for the pupils to remember what to do. He feels this is an issue that Glow provides a solution for.

Guitar Course

The intention was to let all pupils hear how a piece of music should sound but also to be able to follow along with hand positions and fingering and be able to replicate this themselves at home. This is available in guitar, keyboard and drum-kit. The original films have been captured straight-on but Alan plans to film from different angles to get better views of hand position and fingering.

Some of the videos can be quite large and sometimes this causes problems when uploading and playing within Glow’s document libraries. Alan is considering using Glow wikis as a development from his current work.

This Cookbook will foucs on how Alan has started to make the instrumental performances available to St Aidan’s pupils and his tour will take you through what he has currently set up in the Glow Group. The how-to videos in the Method section will focus specifically on how to link to a document from an image in a text editor web part. There are further videos in the Impact section where Alan discusses his motivation and his future plans.

Ingredients

What did Alan need to do to allow his pupils to make use of the Instrumental Performance Videos Glow Group:

• A staff Glow account within St Aidan’s High School
• Pupils provisioned and allocated their Glow usernames and passwords
• A Glow Group created at school level
• S3 pupils set up with at least Readers with Disucssion membership of this Glow Group
• Audio and video files uploaded to folders within the document library
• Various pages with text editor web parts and images linked to the audio and video files
• A Discussion Board started to encourage pupils to ask questions about the videos and the performances
• An alert set for Alan on the Discussion Board

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

Discussion Board

Alan thinks that the Discussion Board is an essential part of the Instrumental Performance Glow Group. He feels it is very important for the pupils to be able to ask questions about the pieces of music that they may still have after viewing the videos and when practising themselves. Alan has an alert set for the discussion board so that he will be sent an email when a pupil asks a question even if it is during the school holidays.

Recipe

In the first video below, Alan takes you on a virtual tour of his Glow Group. The following videos will show you how to replicate what Alan has set up in his Instrumental Performance Glow Group.

Alan gives a tour of his Instrumental Performance Glow Group (7:08)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Adding a text editor web part to the page (1:12)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Working with a large image file by uploading it into Picture Library (1:42)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Inserting an image into a text editor web part (1:01)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Copying the link from the video file in the Document Store (1:04)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Adding the link for a document into the text editor (3:57)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Setting an alert for a discussion board (2:07)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

Impact

The following videos are interviews with Alan where he speaks about different aspects of Glow. Although this is early in St Aidan’s High School music department’s use of Glow, Alan is already getting favourable feedback from the pupils about his Glow Group.

Why Alan wanted to use Glow (1:04)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

What the pupils use Glow for (0:55)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

How the pupils have reacted to using Glow (0:52)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

The Discussion Board in Glow (0:54)
Sharing Instrumental Performance Videos at St Aidan’s High School

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

• St Aidan’s High School Transition – Interactive School Map
• Using a wiki as an evidence store for pupil e-portfolios

Click to enlarge image

Overview

In June of 2010 when this cookbook was recorded, Hazel Lowe, affectionately nicknamed Mrs Maths by her pupils, was seconded to Perth and Kinross council as a Numeracy Support Teacher. Following an introduction to Glow, Hazel set about discovering how she could best utilise the Glow tools and functionality in her support role. In this cookbook, Hazel gives us a flavour of the comprehensive Glow Group that she has developed which is aimed at providing stimulus and support for numeracy across the curriculum in Perth and Kinross.

Video Clips

Ingredients

What Hazel has used to develop her Glow Group: 

1. A Glow Group
2. Additional page tabs
3. Multiple Document web parts
4. Picture Library web parts

Benefits

Hazel’s Numeracy and Mathematics Support Glow Group provides a number of benefits to staff in Perth and Kinross:

• A single point of contact where staff in P&K know they can find up to date information on numeracy and mathematics
• Detailed information, presentations, resources, sample lesson plans and examples of practice on particular topics relating to numeracy across the curriculum
• A place where staff can collaborate to develop resources
• A place to showcase and celebrate practice
• Access to presentations, reports and group discussions archived from CPD events

In the video clip below, Hazel sums up her views on the benefits of the group.

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

Emily Greenhorn teaches Geography at Jedburgh Grammar in the Scottish Borders. Following an introduction to Glow Learn (the virtual learning environment available to Glow users), Emily was keen to capitalise on the functionality provided to produce a Glow Learn course to support the learning and teaching of her Higher Geography class outwith the classroom. With Glow Learn, Emily was able to create a virtual course structure that matches her classroom course. She populated lesson and topic folders with digital resources (Worksheets, presentations audio and video clips) so that her pupils could access them anytime/anywhere.

Video Clips

Ingredients 

To enable pupil access to the Geography resources through Glow Learn, Emily needed to:

1. Create a Glow Learn course
2. Add resources to the course
3. Enrol her pupils on the course

If you would like to replicate what Emily did, follow the link below for cookbook video support on using Glow Learn:

Glow Learn cookbook videos

For downloadable versions of Glow Learn helpsheets and training guide, follow the link below (Glow login required):

Glow Learn guide and helpsheets 

Impact

Glow Learn enables Emily to organise her resources, replicating the structure of the Higher Geography course as it progresses. Pupils benefit from being able to access specific resources that support their learning at a particular time during the course and, because of the structure, are able to dip back into particular units of work as required. This has given them a form of support that they would not have otherwise had.

The Modern Languages Department in James Young High School in Livingston, West Lothian, is always looking for ways to provide pupils with innovative and interesting resources and activities that will help them develop their language skills.

Sophie Martin and Amanda Lyons have been using Glow Learn this year as a means of sharing resources with pupils.

Context

This year, Sophie and Amanda have created Glow Learn courses to share resources with their Advanced Higher German and Higher French classes respectively. As well as using Glow Learn, they also created a Glow Group for each class. You can find out more about the Glow Groups in the following cookbooks:

Encouraging independent learning in Advanced Higher German

Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communication

Glow Learn

Sophie and Amanda have always been keen to support pupils with their studies outside of the classroom. One of the areas of the Modern languages courses that they have previously found most difficult to support pupils with though, is listening practice.

Often, the audio files that they would wish to use for this are large and so have been difficult to share with pupils. Their only means of doing this was to put the files individually onto pupils’ USB memory sticks, which was time consuming. The alternative of emailing the files to all pupils was also difficult, given the file sizes.

This session, they decided to upload the audio files into Glow Learn.

Sophie created a course for Advanced Higher German and uploaded audio files to support listening practice along with Microsoft Word and Powerpoint files to support reading practice. She was also able to upload Smartboard files that she had saved during her lessons to give pupils continued access to teaching materials. Amanda did the same for Higher French.

They then enrolled the appropriate pupils onto the courses, so enabling them to access the resources. The only limitation in pupils being able to hear the files was that they needed to have a media player on their own computer that would play the files. This, however, was not an issue for any of the pupils.

There is much more functionality available within Glow Learn, but as they were just starting out, both Sophie and Amanda wanted to keep it simple.

Pupil access to the Course and Resources
The pupils access the resources within the courses by clicking on the Glow Learn link in the Lefthand Navigation bar. They then click on See My Courses. This shows them all courses they have been enrolled on. Pupils then click on the name of the course they want to view. This gives them access to all resources within the course (unless any resources have been hidden by the teacher, or the teacher has limited the dates that resources are visible. You can learn more about this in the Glow Learn Training Guide (Glow login required), or in other cookbooks.)

Ingredients

To share the files through Glow Learn, Sophie and Amanda had to:

- Create a course in Glow Learn
- Add resources to the course
- Enrol the appropriate pupils onto the course

The following videos will explain how to create a Glow Learn course, add resources to it, and enrol pupils onto it to give them access to the resources. Further information about other aspects of Glow Learn can be found in the Glow Learn Training Guide, or you may wish to explore other cookbooks relating to Glow Learn. These may contain additional videos on other elements, such as the Monitor and Mark facility.

How to create a course in Glow Learn
Écoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening practice in Modern Languages
How to add resources to a course in Glow Learn
Écoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening practice in Modern Languages
How to enrol pupils onto a Glow Learn course (5:39)
Écoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening practice in Modern Languages

Impact

Glow Learn has given Sophie and Amanda a vehicle for easily sharing large files with pupils to support their listening practice. This has given them a form of support that they would not have otherwise had.

Combining this with their ability to use the Discussion Boards in their Glow Groups to ask questions of their teacher and their peers, the pupils now have a means of collaboration and communication and a way of accessing resources that has enhanced their studies.

Some of the pupils from Amanda’s Higher French class talk about the impact that having access to audio files through using Glow Learn has had. 

Pupils: Benefits of having access to the listening files (1:02)
Écoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening practice in Modern Languages

Amanda Lyons teaches Modern Languages at the James Young High School in Livingston, West Lothian. Keen to encourage independent learning, she wanted to create an environment for the pupils in her Higher French class that would allow them to take responsibility for their own learning and enable them support one another.

Context

Amanda began by creating a Glow Group. She wanted to make the Group as simple as possible for pupils to navigate around, and so decided to create a Group which had only a single page. 

To do this, she used the ‘Glow Group Document Library’ template when creating the Group, rather than the default ‘Full Glow Group’ template.

This simpler type of Glow Group comes with only one page and one web part by default – a Document store. However, Amanda then customised the page to suit her and her class’s needs.

She removed the Document store from the page, and added in two other web parts:

Discussion Board

The Discussion Board in the Glow Group has been used extensively through the year by the pupils in Amanda’s Higher French class. It has been used for two main purposes.

The first purpose has been for peer support.

When pupils have been doing homework and have encountered a problem, such as not knowing how to say a particular English phrase in French, they have been able to post a question on the Discussion Board to ask for help. This help has regularly then come from their classmates, but also, Amanda herself has been able to support pupils in this way too.  This has really opened up the range of people that a pupil can get support from and does not rely on Amanda always being the person that the pupils turn to.

The second purpose of the Discussion Board has been for Amanda to let the class know what their homework is.

She has done this by giving the information in the text of the post, but also, has been able to attach appropriate documents to the post. For example, she has attached Powerpoint presentations to posts and directed pupils to carry out tasks relating to particular slides in the presentation.

This method of advising of the homework tasks has had great advantages. Amanda can ensure that the pupils are clear about the task, rather than risking them perhaps copying the instructions incorrectly into a homework diary; she can supply resources and supporting documents for the homework tasks in a very simple way – previously she would have had to either copy the files onto each pupil’s own USB memory stick, or print out paper copies; the pupils have constant access to the information about the homework, as well as access to the resources, both in school and at home. Even if a pupil has missed the lesson when the homework was issued, they can find out the details from the Discussion Board in the Glow Group without having to ask the teacher.

Web Links

The other web part in the Glow Group is the Web Links web part.

Amanda has used this to direct pupils to useful websites that are suitable for supporting and challenging them throughout their Higher French course. She has modified the display of the web part to show the Notes field. This is a really nice touch as it gives pupils additional information about the website, helping them easily identify which site might best suit their needs at any given time.
 

Glow Learn

Amanda has also made use of Glow Learn to give her pupils access to resources.

She has created a course with a range of different resource types and enrolled the pupils onto the course to enable them to view the resources.  One of the most beneficial things she has found from doing this is being able to upload sound files, which the pupils then use for French listening practice. As sound files can often be quite large, it has previously been difficult for Amanda to find a suitable way of sharing the sound files with pupils. She has found Glow Learn to be an excellent way of doing this and the pupils have really benefited. Learn more about this and the pupils’ thoughts on it in the cookbook ‘Ecoutez! – Using Glow Learn to support listening in Modern Languages’

 
Ingredients

So what did Amanda have to do to create her Higher French Glow Group?

- Create a Glow Group using the Glow Group Document Library template.
- Make all of the pupils in her class members of the Group
- Remove the Document store web part from the page
- Add in a Discussion Board
- Add in the web links web part and modify the view to show the notes field.

- Create a course in Glow Learn
- Add resoures to the course
- Enrol pupils onto the course

In the following videos, we can take a look at Amanda’s Higher French Glow Group then find out how to replicate some of the elements in it in the subsequent videos. In a separate cookbook we will find out how to replicate Amanda’s use of  Glow Learn.

Overview of the Higher French Glow Group (4:56)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications
How to create a single page Glow Group (3:03)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications
How to add members to a Glow Group (5:36)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications
How to create a voki (5:00)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications
How to add a Voki to a Glow Group (5:01)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications
How to add posts to a Discussion Board (2:26)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications
How to add web links and display the Notes field (4:50)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications

Impact

Amanda has found using Glow to be a tremendous benefit to both her and her class.

Channel of communication
She has found that it has provided a great means for the pupils to communicate and collaborate with one another. Most pupils have been very motivated to do this, although less secure pupils were less likely to post in the Discussion Board. They did, however, still benefit from reading posts made by others.

It has also been a good way for the pupils to communicate with Amanda herself. As she is not in school on a Wednesday, the pupils are still able to leave messages for her on the Discussion Board, which she can pick up from home if she chooses, or can answer on her return to school. Equally, if she needs to communicate something to the pupils whilst she is not in school, she can do this through Glow.

The Discussion board has also been very useful to Amanda as a way of issuing homework and sharing resources, reducing the time she needs to spend photocopying worksheets or putting files onto pupils’ memory sticks. She can upload the file once and it is forever available to all.

In the following video, some of the pupils talk about the benefits they’ve had from using the Discussion Board to access and upload homework and to support one another:

Pupils: Benefits of the Discussion Board (1:33)
Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications

Listening
Perhaps the greatest impact that there has been though is the way in which Amanda can now share sound files with pupils and so give them a means of practising their listening skills. She has found Glow Learn to be extremely useful for this. She has also explored uploading recordings of the pupils speaking in French, so that they can listen back to these and use them as a way to improve their pronunciation.

You can find out more about this in the cookbook ‘Ecoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening in Modern Languages’

Overview

The Maths Higher Glow Group pages

Colette Agnew is a Maths Teacher at Chryston High School in North Lanarkshire. She was trained as a Glow Mentor in January of 2009. She began to set up Glow Groups within the department which would support pupils at different levels. In 2009/2010 Colette set up a Glow Group to support pupils across the yeargroup studying Higher Maths.

Although there is a wealth of material available to focus on in Colette’s Glow Group, in this Cookbook we will look at some of the background behind the decisions Colette took in structuring the Maths Higher Glow Group and in particular what she has done with Discussion Boards to enable peer assessment. Another Cookbook on the school will focus on how Colette customized Document Libraries to support pupils by sharing resources. Please note that a lot of the general information available here is repeated in the other Glow Cookbook on the Group.

In this cookbook, we will find out:

• What the Chryston Maths Higher Glow Group looks like
• Why Colette structured it in this way
• How Colette has customised discussion boards for use in peer assessment
• What the pupils themselves feel the impact of this has been

Context

When Colette first started thinking about what she wanted to do with her Higher class she knew one of the main aspects she wanted to focus on was the use of the Discussion Boards. She is very interested in finding ways to employ formative assessment but notes that it is very difficult to take time out of the higher course to make room for peer assessment. Doing this on Glow gives her an option for including this. The Discussion board for the peer assessment has been customised by Colette, she added extra columns to make it very clear to them exactly what was expected when reviewing a piece of work.

SuperBilly

The Maths Higher Group is open to all 3 Maths Higher classes. Colette made the decision early on not to create separate groups for each class as she wanted to be able to allow for discussion with the pupils across all classes. She didn’t want to have to set up access to central resources several times for each class. Her way around this issue was to have different pages within the group to cater to individual class announcements as and when this is required.

The following is a quick review of what is available on each page of the Glow Group:

Noticeboard Page
The Chat room on the Noticeboard page is always teacher moderated and only usually open the night before a big exam. General what’s on and General web links web parts can be found here – more detailed web links are available on other pages in the group. The SuperBilly image is a bit of a mascot for Colette’s class, he features on PowerPoints and other materials and was designed by Colette’s husband who is also a Maths Teacher.

General Discussions Page
Pupils know that help with anything is available here. It is designed for pupils to help each other as well as getting help from the staff. The web part goes through periods of higher and lower usage depending upon the level of work being asked from the pupils in class. There is always high usage of it before an exam.

Documents Page
Previously, before using Glow, the worked solutions found in here would have to printed off and photocopied for pupils. They often comprise materials which need to be made available to the pupils to be worked through at home as there often isn’t enough time in class to go through them. Pupils who don’t get access to Glow will still be able to get access to them in this way but access to machines is offered to the pupils during lunch and after school.

Peer Assessment Page

Peer Assessment Instructions

Colette was looking for a way to use Glow that was other than just storing materials initially and she was keen to use it for peer assessment. The pupils are encouraged to do this at home. If they don’t have access at home then they are asked to do it in school at lunch time. Colette scans in samples from jotters which can often only be a part of an exercise. These are anonymous when they’re placed up into Glow.

Colette deliberately picked pieces of pupil work to scan in which would allow her to make an example of teaching points she wanted the pupils to pick out themselves. She didn’t ever put a piece of work on in which everything was wrong or something which was perfect because she always wanted them to be able to spot something to make the piece of work better. Colette wanted to leave on the time and date column so that she could speak to them about doing it last thing at night or at the last minute before it was due etc.

She was very clear with them about respecting each other and being positive about what they were saying. The pupils, although some were initially reluctant, did get very motivated and stuck into the peer assessment. They also felt very good and thought it looked very official when it was their work which was chosen to go up onto Glow. Colette got positive comments back from parents about this. Colette feels pupils will be more into the way of doing peer assessment in Glow when they start it lower down in the school and working in this way will just become second nature to them.

Peer Assessment Document Samples and Discussion Board

Colette noted that it was difficult to get some of the pupils motivated to do this. She has a lot of very able mathematicians in her class and they felt that if they already knew how to do something then why should they spend time supporting other pupils who didn’t. To direct them better and encourage them here Colette made sure that she had put very clear instructions for them on the Peer Assessment page so they were in no doubt about what they had to do. She had to get the PT to refocus a few of them and get them to take the peer assessment seriously and put work and effort into looking at others work.

Unit Pages
Colette has split pages into her group for the 3 units in the Higher course as she wanted to make the delineation clearer for the pupils. She feels this made it easier for them to find the materials they needed to use to prepare for the NAB. Each page starts by listing the Learning Outcomes for each NAB which comprises the topics they cover in class. This makes it easier for the pupils as in class they don’t always cover things in this order. When the pupils are coming to use the materials for studying then having the Learning Outcomes at the top reminds them which area something is part of when they’re looking for references to it in websites etc. The school is very lucky to have a wealth of resources to support the teaching in the classroom. As has previously been mentioned Colette feels that Glow has allowed her a way to make the online materials available in a very accessible format.

Unit 2 page

In addition, within the document libraries, Colette will put up more complex worked examples. This is to enable the more able pupils to work their way through these as Colette wouldn’t necessarily have time to run all the way through these in class. For speed these would often be hand-written examples which she could scan in and get up there quickly without using equation editors.

The weblinks web parts on these pages mainly contain links to Scholar as Colette feels it can be difficult for the pupils to navigate their way around Scholar to get to the appropriate sections. She has provided web links which take the pupils to specific points for the topics they are covering.

The school also has a subscription for SuperMaths World and Colette has made available links to this. This programme has materials to support Maths from pre-school all the way up to Advanced Higher and it can be particularly important here to minimise how long pupils have to spend finding appropriate resources. To get around this, links suggested by Colette take them to exactly the correct point. She feels it is very useful to direct them to these materials because they complement the Boardworks and Scholar materials by being a bit more light-hearted in terms of providing materials in a games-based format. Colette has displayed notes in the web links web part to the pupils of log-in details for these resources. There is another Glow Cookbook available which investigates more fully how Colette has done this and a link to this Cookbook is available at the bottom of this Cookbook.

Pages for each Higher Class
Because there are 3 Higher classes Colette has made a page for each class. This allows them to make announcements pertinent to a particular class, without having to replicate the links for all the materials across 3 separate groups. As an example here you will notice that Colette was able to use the announcements web part to leave information for a particular pupil who was absent but whose parent had requested additional work. On these pages are little reminders for the class about deadlines etc for homework and tasks.

Class Announcements

Although other teachers may be reluctant to use Glow with their Higher class the pupils are not being disadvantaged as they are still getting access to all the materials in the Glow Group and the extra support. Colette has alerts set up on all of the discussion boards for all of the classes and would therefore get an alert in her email system when a pupils in another class has asked a question. This means that for other teachers who may not be on Glow Colette can forward them the email and they can be made aware of where pupils require additional support.

There is also a survey available on each class page. This is work Colette is getting ready for the future in the group and still considering how she is structuring the survey. She wants to be able to use it to get the pupils, after their prelim exam, to identify what topics they would like her to focus on for additional support.

Credit Revision Page
This was particular aspects that Colette thought needed to be highlighted for the pupils to work on and she has made more Boardworks resources available to support the pupils here.

Study Tips page

Study Tips

Colette uses this for all years in the Maths Glow Groups. One of the biggest complaints they get from pupils is that they don’t know how to study and Colette feels it is valuable to have this available for them in the group. It is easy for her to use the same material for each different Glow Group.

Exam Success Page
This page contains more links to Scholar including a Glossary and Practice Texts. All pdfs of the past papers are also available on this page for the pupils.

Past Paper Help Page

Past Paper Help

This page contains an excellent customised Discussion Board that Colette has put together and she encourages the pupils to use the filter for the past paper they’re working on in order to be able to get help from the teachers and from each other on specific questions. The pupils, when entering a new discussion, get a choice of a drop down list for all the past papers and questions. Colette really likes the way this makes it much easier for the pupils to be able to use it.

Ingredients for the whole group

• A Glow Group for the Maths Higher
• All Higher Maths pupils set with reader with discussions membership of the group
• Teachers set with membership of the group
• A Noticeboard page containing general what’s on information, web links and a Chat Room
• A general Discussions Page
• A general Documents page
• Pages for each of the units within the Maths Higher containing text editor web parts with learning outcomes, document libraries and web links web parts
• Pages with announcements web parts and surveys for each Higher Class
• A Credit Revision page containing a Document Library
• A Study Tips page containing a text editor web part
• An Exam Success page with web links and document library web parts
• A Past Paper Help page with a customized discussion web part

Ingredients for the Peer Assessment Page

• A text editor web part to hold instructions
• A new document library with folders for the different peer assessment samples
• A new discussion board with additional fields and a customised view to allow pupils to peer assess the samples

Recipe

In this Cookbook we will focus on how Colette has set up various discussion boards through the Maths Higher Group. We will mainly focus on the Peer Assessment page but we will also have a look at how Colette has put together the discussion board on the Past Paper Help page.

The videos begin with a tour through Colette’s Maths Higher Glow Group. In the videos which follow we will look at rebuilding a unit page of the group and in particular at changing the columns displayed within the web parts to allow for additional information to be displayed to the pupils.

What does the Chryston Maths Higher Glow Group look like?
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards

How to add a text editor web part to the page and use this to list the guidelines for the pupils for peer assessment
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards

How to create a new document library and add this to the page
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards

How to create a new discussions board and add this to the page
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards

How to add new columns to the discussion board
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards

How to change the view of the discussion board
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards
How to add a customised discussion board to the Past Paper Help page
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards

Impact

Colette began to think of using Glow for her Higher pupils initially in terms of a Discussion Board to allow them to support each other with the teachers help. However, she quickly moved on to thinking about how the Group could be set up in terms of having a page for each unit within the Higher to organise resources for the pupils. Initially there wasn’t going to be a page for every class in the Group but just the one group across all of the Higher pupils. However, Colette began to think about announcements which it would be useful to make to individual classes, for example on a second prelim which may be offered to that class only. It also became obvious that not all staff would be willing to support the work with their own class and Glow, this meant that Colette could support across all of the Higher classes just by giving them access to the joint Group. Groups for different levels such as Standard Grade are set up in a similar way for the whole yeargroup with separate pages for each class but still within the one group. It became much easier to manage access to Glow in this way. Colette will go into the other Higher classes and let them know when she’s done something to the Glow Group or made something available for them.

Colette’s head of dept is very positive about the use of Glow and has supported Colette with all her work in setting things up for the pupils using Glow. Colette will use time at Dept meetings to show other teachers what she has set up and made available in Glow and let other teachers know that if they are keen to add things that may be of use generally, across all of the classes then it would be better to place that into the unit pages for example.

In terms of impact on teacher workload, one of the things that Colette finds particularly useful about Glow is about scanning in handwritten materials and uploading these to document libraries to make them available for pupils. “Although document libraries are great for PowerPoint files and much slicker online versions of support materials etc, handwritten solutions with maths symbols can be very quickly scanned and uploaded into Glow document libraries without taking the time to use complex equation editors and formatting.”

Colette feels the impact Glow has had on pupils has varied across the classroom. This, she feels, is because she has some very able pupils who know their stuff and don’t need a lot of help or support. A lot of the impact is difficult to judge because the focus of the web links and the documents being made available is about providing resources they can access in a central location and that they can access as a cohort.

It allows the pupils to take responsibility for more self-directed learning. For Colette, it also means that once she has all of these links set up in the group, they are there to be used over with classes the following year. All she has to do is change the membership of the group and remove the discussion boards used the previous year, providing new ones for the incoming classes. It is deliberately set up in this way that would allow the group to be used as a template which could get used from year to year.

Initially she had included links to the SQA site but then wanted to go further to make it easier for the pupils and have the past papers available directly in the group. She is keen though that the pupils still have responsibility for directing their own learning within the Group but that she has made things as clear as possible for them in the way she has chosen to organise it. It is organised in a way which means the pupils get the best out of their self-directed time without having to trawl through lots of materials which are not suitable.

Her class make very good use of the group. This is the first time it’s been used for Higher classes, but her class used it last year to support them with their Credit Standard Grade. She feels they have grown in their use of Glow. Last year it was mainly the discussion boards they were making use of together but then Colette has pointed out that there weren’t as many external or support resources available to them. This year, they are making less use of the discussion boards and more use of the resources. Collette notes there is now no excuse for homework exercises being lost etc as they are always available in the document store here. “It doesn’t matter if pupil is staying at mum or dad’s or gran’s house, as long as there is a computer there or a library nearby then it can be accessed.”

For future development within the Glow Group Colette would like more of an idea of what pupils were finding useful to direct next year’s work. Was it the discussion boards, or the web links or the resources within document stores which were more widely used by the pupils? Which unit page on the Glow Group was more use made of by the pupils to direct their learning? Colette may make more use of survey web parts with the pupils to discover the answer to these questions.

What do the pupils think about using Glow for Peer Assessment?
Peer Assessment in Maths Higher using Discussion Boards