SG Drama Glow Group. Click to enlarge.

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

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

In this cookbook we focus on the work of one teacher, Clare Todd, and how she uses Glow Groups with each of her Drama classes. In the Recipe section, video clips show how you can replicate Clare’s use of surveys for self-evaluation.

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.

Homework dropbox. Click to enlarge.

Drama teacher, Clare Todd, attended the training having been put forward as the representative for her department. She comments that she “was really excited when I first heard about Glow. It was exactly what I’d been looking for.” What Clare wanted was a collaborative area where pupils could find learning resources, use forums to discuss their work, hand-in homework and use surveys to evaluate their learning. While she didn’t have the skills to create her own website, she could immediately see the potential for Glow to deliver what she was needed.

Clare first created a Drama Glow Group open to all pupils in the school. The Group showcases current work, with videos of recent trips, photos of class productions and discussion boards where pupils can post comments. All pupils can interact in this Glow Group and get excited about what they might be involved in as they progress through the school.

Clare Todd: Drama Glow Groups – part 1 (7:14) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

Next Clare created a Glow Group for each year group, with separate pages for each teaching group. This structure allows her to upload materials appropriate for each class, guiding pupils in their learning. In the Standard Grade Glow Group, for example, there are links to theatre review websites, discussion boards where questions are set for homework, and a spreadsheet where pupils assess themselves against grade-related criteria.

The Documents area of each Glow Group has proved particularly useful. Learning resources are uploaded, so that pupils have access to all the materials, such as the course handbook, from home.

As a number of colleagues in other departments have also done, Clare has created a homework web part, where pupils can submit work for review. This has proved very successful in encouraging pupils to complete their homework, and in addition it allows Clare to monitor the progress of draft pieces before final submission. Clare gives feedback either within the web part or in more detail on the pupil’s document which is then returned to them. Permissions on the web part are set so that while Clare can see everyone’s work, pupils can see only their own.

Clare Todd: Drama Glow Groups – part 2 (2:29) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

Survey questions. Click to enlarge.

Survey results. Click to enlarge.

With many of her classes Clare has used surveys for self-evaluation exercises. The surveys are quick to create, easy for the pupils to respond to and, as the data is automatically collated, pretty painless for the teacher to review. For multiple-choice type questions, such as “When working in a group, I contributed imaginative and sensible ideas”, a bar chart provides a valuable overview of the responses. For free-text questions, such as “What were your main strengths in Drama?”, the bar chart view is less useful, but viewing pupils’ individual responses provides excellent personal feedback. When first experimenting with the survey options, Clare had hoped that it would provide a means of creating vocabulary tests, but having been introduced to Glow Learn by one of her colleagues, now feels that would be a more effective tool for assessments and tracking progress.

Ingredients

For each year group Clare required:

* a Glow Group

* the relevant pupils given Contributor membership of the group

Recipe

Having created each Glow Group, Clare has added many features, such as discussion boards, video clips, surveys and a homework web part. The video clips below focus on the use of surveys and show to replicate each part of the process from creating a survey to viewing pupils’ responses. A cookbook about Clare’s colleague, Kayleigh Brown, shows how to create and use the homework web part.

* How to create a survey (4:15) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

* How to add the Survey web part to a Glow Group (1:54) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

* How to change the permissions on the Survey web part (2:37) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

* How pupils respond to a survey (1:44) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

* How to view the results of a survey (2:42) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

Impact

From the outset Clare was impressed with how Glow would support her learners and it has lived up to expectations in day-to-day usage in the classroom. She’s already looking ahead to the next stages in her own learning and progression, ready to explore the potential benefits of using the assessment and tracking facilities offered by Glow Learn.

The use of Glow at Glenwood has grown very rapidly over just a few months, not just with Drama 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) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

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) “Just what I’d been looking for…”

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

Irene Stewart

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

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

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

Glow wiki

Glow wiki

Wikipedia describes a wiki as:

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

Glow itself describes wikis as:

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

wiki web part

front page of the SG Music wiki

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

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

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

wiki group page – click on this to enlarge

Ingredients

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

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

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

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

Recipe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impact

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Glow Wikis

Getting Started with Glow Wikis Cookbook

Scotland’s Schools Wiki

Irene Stewart

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

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

The Topics Page – Graphical Interface

In her Standard Grade Listening Glow Group she has made use of a Graphical Interface to cut down the visual complexity for the pupils. There are many topics within Standard Grade Music and Irene was attracted by the potential of simplifying a Glow Group by using hidden pages and placing links within a graphic for the pupils to access different web links and materials. The Glow Group is set up to be used both in class and at home for the pupils. For example, on Irene’s Voices page she will want the pupils to use this in class to get an idea of the different voices by following the links to different web sites with examples. However, Irene has also placed links to examples for the pupils from You Tube and the pupils will be able to access these from home where they cannot get access to them in school. The pupils will be able to go home and consolidate their learning by using the links which demonstrate the concepts from the Voices topic.

Ingredients

What did Irene need, to be able to use a Graphical Interface Glow Group with her pupils:

• A staff Glow account within Bellshill Academy
• Her pupils provisioned and allocated their Glow usernames and passwords
• A Glow Group created at school level
• S3 pupils set up with membership of this Glow Group
• Several hidden pages created
• A text editor web part with a graphic and links set up to the hidden pages
• Several graphical interfaces also set up on some of the hidden pages
• New links and documents web parts created for each hidden page

The Noticeboard Page

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

After a brief introduction on the Noticeboard page the Glow Group moves on to the Help Page where there is a discussion board set up for the pupils to use for Standard Grade Listening. Currently the pupils have been making more use of the Discussion Board in the Standard Grade Music Homework Glow Group that Irene has set up. But she feels they will also begin to make use of the one in the Standard Grade Music Listening Glow Group next session.

In addition to creating the hidden pages and linking to them from the image on the Topics page, Irene has created new web parts to contain documents and web links for each of these topic pages. She will continue to add materials to these web parts for the pupils to access in the new session.

The third page of the Glow Group is really the main page – the Topics page (see screenshot above). This is the page the pupils will use to access the other “hidden” pages within the Glow Group for each of the topics. The names of these pages do not appear in the page tabs at the top of the Glow Group but clicking on the links from the Topics page will still take the pupils to these pages. This saves the Glow Group from being cluttered with many page names along the top.

The top part of the Voices hidden page

On the Voices hidden page Irene has created a second Graphical Interface with links to various web sites with examples. Some of these are You Tube videos which the pupils will be able to access from home. When the pupils click on these they will open in a new window which the pupils can then close when they are finished to return to the Voices page.

Recipe

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

Irene’s tour of the Glow Group – (3:33)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

Building the Graphic (4:59)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

Creating the Hidden Pages (4:56)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

Saving the Links into a Word Document (3:12)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

Adding the Links to the Graphic (8:13)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

Impact

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

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

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

Why Irene first decided to use Glow (0:40)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

How Irene found it when she first started to use Glow (0:36)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

What the pupils thought of using Glow (0:50)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

How Irene uses Glow with her pupils (0:40)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

How Irene would like to take Glow forward (1:00)
Std Grade Music – A Glow Group using a Graphical Interface

You may also find these 2 Help Sheet articles from the Glow Blog useful:

How to add hidden pages to a Glow Group – Part 1

How to add hidden pages to a Glow Group – Part 2

Click to enlarge image

Overview

Kenny Stewart is Principal Teacher of Computing at Grove Academy in Dundee. All S1 pupils at Grove follow a common ICT course aimed at providing them with the ICT skills they will need for life-long learning. With the introduction of Glow to Dundee, Kenny saw an opportunity to consolidate the digital resources used in the ICT course into a Glow Group. In this cookbook, Kenny describes how he and his staff have structured the Glow Group to provide their pupils with anytime, anywhere access to learning intentions, course materials, homework exercises and how the group can facilitate personalisation and choice for the pupils.

Video Clips

Graphical User Interface

Kenny has introduced a graphical user interface to the group which allows pupils to navigate to a topic area by clicking on an image. Kenny was inspired to add the GUI element to his group after reading a cookbook outlining the work carried out by David Lines, Senior Officer (Curriculum) in Midlothian’s ICT Development Team. David has been a driving force behind the use of graphical user interfaces in Glow to streamline navigation. David has created a CPD tutorial aimed at showing users how to create engaging user interfaces using commonly available tools and the Text Editor in Glow. The tutorial is contained within a Glow Group and David has opened the membership of this group to all staff in Scotland. The link to the group is below (Glow login required).

Creating a Graphical Interface

Ingredients

What Kenny used to develop the Computing – S1 Course Glow Group:

1. A Glow Group
2. Multiple Documents web parts
3. Image web parts
4. Text Editor web parts (for the graphical user interface and coloured text)

Impact

From his commentary, it is clear that Kenny is very positive about the ability of Glow to support the learning and teaching of the S1 course. The group makes use of a number of Glow tools to add impact:

• The Text Editor web part allows Kenny to publish lesson learning intentions, provide advice on projects and attach support documents for homework and project work
• Web Links web part provides a quick jump point to frequently used web sites
• Document web parts –populated with worksheets, homeworks and assessment materials all providing the pupils with anytime, anywhere access to resources
• Discussions web part –  provides opportunities to explore topics more deeply

In making use of a variety of Glow tools, Kenny and his staff have developed a Glow Group that is engaging and relevant for their pupils. The group provides an easy access point for a variety of information sources, stimulus to deeper learning and opportunities for collaboration.

In the video clip below, Kenny sums up his views on the impact that Glow is having. 

Barry Wright is an English teacher at Carluke High School in South Lanarkshire. Last year he participated in a Building Glow Communities event held at Stirling and, with a number of other English teachers, created the War Poetry Glow Group on the National site in Glow. In this cookbook, Barry describes the purpose and content of the Group.

Context

A number of ‘Building Glow Communities’ events take place each year. The aim of the events is to bring together practitioners to discuss ideas, share interesting practice and to collaborate in building national Glow Groups. Further information about the BGC events can be found here. The Glow Groups created at the events can be accessed from the Join In! page of the Glowing Potential Glow Group on the National site. Click here to go directly to the Join In! page.

At the English BGC event last year, Barry teamed up with other English teachers to develop a Glow Group to support the teaching of war poetry.  As Barry explains in his commentary about the Group, pupils often find the topic inaccessible, as they may have little understanding of the historical and social context. The aim of the Glow Group then is to provide historical background, biographical information, sounds, video clips and images which will enable pupils to develop greater understanding and gain some empathy with the experience of the poets.

The Noticeboard page of the Glow Group contains links to information about a number of conflicts, from the Crimean War through to the current conflict in Afghanistan.

Other pages of the Glow Group focus on five poets:  Alfred Lord Tennyson, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Alan Seeger and Carol Ann Duffy. The pages contain texts of poems (where permissible under copyright law), biographical information, images, video clips and audio recordings. Notes and guidelines about critical response to poetry are provided to develop pupils’ written skills.

Barry Wright provides a tour of the War Poetry Glow GroupThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

Ingredients

The War Poetry Glow Group was created on the National site. By default, school staff do not have the rights to create National Glow Groups, but once a Group has been created (as in the case of the War Poetry Glow Group) they can be given Administrator rights to it.

If there is a theme or area of the curriculum which you feel is not represented by a national Glow Group, and would be interested in running such a Group, please contact LTS (glowadmin@ltscotland.org.uk).

Recipe

The ‘how-to’ clips below show how you can replicate some of the ideas used in the War Poetry Glow Group:

* How to add, edit or remove pagesThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

* How to add text to a Text Editor web partThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

* How to add images to a Text Editor web partThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

* How to create hyperlinks in a Text Editor web partThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

* How to use a table in Text Editor to display images, text and hyperlinksThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

* How to add an audio file to a Text Editor web partThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

Information on how to create additional Documents web parts (mentioned in the ‘how to add a sound file’ clip) can be found here.

The War Poetry Glow Group also displays YouTube videos in XML web parts. Note that if YouTube (and similar sites) are blocked in your school, using Glow to link to the site will not circumvent this. However, it can be a useful way of directing pupils to a video clip that you would like them to watch from home.

* How to use the XML web part to display video clips The War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

Impact

The aim of this national Glow Group is to support English staff teaching war poetry and to provide resources which will help their pupils not only to engage with the poetry, but also to understand the social context and the impact of each conflict.

The Glow Group is open to all staff and pupils to be used as a resource bank of information and ideas. Barry and the other administrators of the Group would also be pleased to hear from schools who would be interested in working collaboratively on War Poetry.

Barry Wright describes the purpose and impact of the War Poetry Glow GroupThe War Poetry Glow Group on the National site

Click to enlarge image

Karen Maitland is a teacher of Biology at Queensferry High School in Edinburgh. Karen is an advocate of the use of technology aimed at enhancing the learning and teaching process.

In this cookbook Karen will talk us through how she uses Glow to support the learning and teaching of Standard Grade Biology.

Context

Through the appropriate use of technology in class, Karen has aimed to enhance the experience of her pupils during their time in the Biology Department. Through various websites and podcasts, Karen looks to provide her pupils with the opportunity to access advice, information and resources out with the barriers of the traditional school day.

With the introduction of Glow to Queensferry HS, Karen was keen to investigate how best to use the tools and functionality to further enrich the learning experiences of her pupils. In this cookbook, we will hear Karen outline how she has created a Glow Group to act as a one-stop-shop revision source for her Standard Grade Biology class.

Ingredients

What Karen has used to set up the group: 

1. A Learning Space Glow Group
2. News web part to post learning intentions
3. XML web parts to display a Voki
4. Web links web part
5. Text Editor web parts to play mp3 audio clips
6. Discussion web part
7. Page Viewer web parts to give students access to relevant web sites from within the Glow Group

Recipe

In the first video below, Karen talks us through the revision Glow Group. The other video clips will take you through how to replicate some of the activities that Karen demonstrates in the group:

For video support on using Glow Learn, follow the link below:

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

Karen is very positive about how the tools and functionality of Glow can support her teaching. Karen makes use of a number of Glow tools to add impact to the revision group:

• The News web part allows Karen to direct the pupils to new material published in the group or to give instructions on upcoming work
• Text Editor web parts which are used to embed mp3 audio files that have been downloaded from the BBC Bitesize web site. The audio clips provide the pupils with further reinforcement and opportunities to study the material at a greater depth
• Web Links web part provides a quick jump point to other revision web sites
• Page Viewer web parts which give the pupils full access to external web sites for revision without having to leave the Glow Group
• The Learning Space web part which provides a route into Glow Learn where Karen has organised her resources in a structure to match the teaching progression of the course
• Going forward, Karen is keen to make use of the Monitoring and Tracking capability within Glow Learn to issue homeworks and assessments, have Glow Learn mark these automatically and quickly establish where her pupils are having difficulties with their learning

In making use of a variety of Glow tools, Karen has developed a Glow Group that is engaging and relevant for her pupils. The group provides an easy access point for a variety of information sources and stimulus to deeper learning. 

Robert Anderson is a Technology teacher at Penicuik High School in Midlothian. Many of the learning and teaching materials that Robert uses with his classes are digital resources, such as Powerpoint slides and pdf versions of reference guides. Currently these materials are stored on the school network, but Robert is uploading many of them to Glow Learn. The advantages that he sees are that pupils then have access to the resources beyond the school day, encouraging pupils to learn at a time and pace that suits them. Additionally, Glow Learn allows Robert to set assignments that pupils complete and return online, to set assessments which are marked automatically, and to combine the tracking benefits of Glow Learn with collaborative Glow tools such as discussion boards.

In the video clip below, Robert shows how he organises resources in Glow Learn. He has chosen to upload his resources to the school shared area in Glow Learn, which means that the resources can be seen and used by any member of staff across his school. Using the school shared area from the outset (rather than uploading to the ‘My Resources’ area) offers many benefits: encouraging inter-disciplinary working, the sharing of good practice, and reducing the need to ’recreate the wheel’. Robert explains how, in order to keep resources organised systematically, the school shared area is structured according to department, subject and level.

* Robert Anderson gives a tour of his Glow Learn resources and coursesStoring, tagging and sharing resources in Glow Learn

click image to enlarge

Robert also emphasises the benefits of linking (’tagging’) resources to specific curricular objectives. Tagging gives an indication of the content of the material and the level it is intended for and is particularly valuable if resources are being shared within a school or authority or nationally. Other staff looking for content to support their teaching can then use Glow Learn’s search facility to find resources, not only by entering a keyword (as in Google), but by selecting a specific curricular objective. As the store of tagged resources in shared areas in Glow Learn develops, this will become a very powerful method of searching for content.

click image to enlarge

Note that since Robert’s video and the how-to clips below were recorded, Curriculum for Excellence has been added to the Glow Learn list of frameworks. It’s now possible to tag resources to  CfE outcomes and therefore possible to search through all the shared areas in Glow Learn for content relevant to specific outcomes. Click the image to the left to see an example of the display of CfE outcomes in Glow Learn.

Recipe

If you’re interested in starting to use Glow Learn, the clips below will help you to get started. Further information is also available through ‘Learning about Glow’ area of the GlowScotland website.

 * uploading a resource to Glow LearnStoring, tagging and sharing resources in Glow Learn

* creating a Glow Learn courseStoring, tagging and sharing resources in Glow Learn

* enrolling pupils on a Glow Learn course
Storing, tagging and sharing resources in Glow Learn

* setting viewing and assessment optionsStoring, tagging and sharing resources in Glow Learn