Weekly Brief – MDLT Blog

National Glow Password Reset for Staff – 30th August

From 30th August August all adult Glow users in Scotland will be required to change their Glow password. This is an annual process to ensure the security of Glow accounts.

The process will start from Monday30th August to ensure that all educators will be required to update their Glow password at least once a year.

We would like to encourage everyone when they are updating their password to review the Glow Community Rules .

When setting up a new password it it vital to remember – Be secure: always keep your Glow password to yourself and remember to log out of Glow when you are no longer using it.

The Digital Learning Team recommend using the Three Random Words method to select a new password. You can find Password Guidance on Glow Connect to help stay safer online and to find out what makes a strong password when using Glow.

When prompted to choose a new password there is a minimum requirement and a password rating is displayed to reflect this. The Change Password button will only be enabled when the minimum requirement for this account type is met. A full guide on how to change your Glow password can be accessed here- Glow Password Change Guidance

Any issues with changing passwords should be directed in the first instance to your schools Glow Administrator.

‘Moray – let’s chat online safety’ workshop for parents and carers

As part of the new ‘Moray – Let’s chat online safety’ campaign, NSPCC Scotland are delivering monthly sessions for parents and carers via zoom covering what children do online, what the risks are and what you can do to help keep children safe online. To book your place on the session on eventbrite click – HERE

Teams meeting co-organiser functionality in Glow

When scheduling a meeting staff can now add a co-organiser to meetings scheduled within Team in Glow. After inviting people/scheduling your meeting, you can add up to 10 co-organisers to help manage your meeting. Co-organisers can be added in the Meeting Options screen which is accessible after the meeting has been created. Only those who have been added as named attendees can be promoted to co-organisers. Co-organisers are displayed as additional organisers in the meeting participant list and have most of the capabilities of the meeting organizer.

A co-organiser can perform the following actions –

Open the Meeting
Admit people from the lobby and switch off the lobby
Manage Breakout rooms
Present content by default
Change another participants role to allow the to present content
Make changes to meeting options
End the meeting for all

Due to these extra capabilities it is not recommended to add a learner as a co-organiser as this could result in meetings which are only attended by unsupervised learners.

This additional functionality could be very useful in staff meeting or for those who arrange meetings on behalf of other. More details on adding a co-organiser can be found – here.

Funding Available for LEGO League Challenges

Funding Packages for the FIRST^® LEGO^® League 2022 – 2023

There is limited funding available through the IET (Institute for Engineering and Technology) for the FIRST^® LEGO^® League Challenge. This is a yearly challenge based on a real world scientific theme. This year’s theme is renewable energy.

This video gives you an overview of what’s on offer: WELCOME VIDEO

You can choose to complete the challenge in your classroom (with a classroom pack) or to enter a team to attend a competition. There are 3 Levels:

Discover (4-6 year olds) – You get a class pack of LEGO DUPLO sets and resources on energy.
Explore (6-9 year olds) – You get 5 LEGO robots and 5 related LEGO sets per class. Along with engineering notebooks and guides.
Challenge (9-16 year olds) – You get 3 LEGO robots and 2 LEGO challenge packs to build a series of 15 energy related challenges for your robot to complete. The competition element is to code your robot to complete the challenges against either a classroom opponent or in a external competition event.

This would be particularly suited to a upper Primary Class or Primary/Secondary STEM Club. All the LEGO, instructions and resources are provided if you are successful with funding.

More information on the funding and an application form is available HERE

More information about the FIRST^® LEGO^® League can be found HERE.

Changes to Google Additional Services for Staff Glow Accounts

From 1st February 2022 Education Scotland Digital Services are reversing some of the changes made in Sep 2021 which limited Glow accounts access to Google Additional Services such as Google Maps.

From 1st February staff Glow accounts will regain access to Google Additional Services; however learners will remain unable to access these products when signed into Glow. This is due to the age restrictions outlined in the T&Cs for these services. Please note it can take a few days until the change is rolled out across all accounts, so please be patient. To test if your account has been updated please access G Drive or Google Classroom before attempting to open an Additional Service like Google Maps. If you are able to open the Additional Service then your account has been updated, if not please give it a bit more time.

It is still recommended that Glow users do not link their Google account to other services which are approved for use, but use the sign up with an email option whenever possible.

Note: YouTube is still set to “Restricted Mode” and therefore cannot be accessed whilst signed in to Google with your Glow account. This may be reviewed later in the year. More information about Google Additional Services available on Glow Connect here.

Education Scotland Cyber Security Fundamentals and Internet Safety (level 4) Materials

Education Scotland have collaborated with Girvan Academy in South Ayrshire to produce a set of resources that combine the SQA Level 4 units in Cyber Security Fundamentals and Internet Safety. These resources reinforce that every learner should have the knowledge and skills to use the internet and online services safely, allowing them to spot potential risks and recover from any potential harm they face while using online services. The course materials and teacher packs are available, along with many other resources, for all levels of learning from the digilearn.scot website.

Additional resources include a Teachers Toolkit based around the three key internet behaviours of Consume, Create and Communicate. Each of the these behaviours have different levels and types of risk. The toolkit will help educators diagnose, understand and then support learners with their digital needs.

Before starting with the toolkit, it is suggested that Educators find out what their learners are using and doing online; and the issues or risks this presents. With this information the toolkit can be used to locate appropriate information, resources and professional learning to support you in planning meaningful CRIS learning.

Cyber Resilience and Internet Safety Resources

Support for hearing impaired and deaf learners

Offer for Moray Educations from the Moray Sensory Education Service.

If you have a hearing impaired/deaf child in your class it will be really difficult for them to hear you effectively when you are talking to them via a video or using a Loom; even if they can see your face! This is because the quality of sound output from computers etc is poor when listening through hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Sensory Education Service (SES) works with children who have hearing loss, and visual impairments, and most of our young people will use subtitles in the home when watching television. We are now adding subtitles to videos, and Looms, for pupil’s online home learning and then sharing it with them, using a link to our private YouTube channel.

If you intend making a loom or video and know you have a hearing impaired child in your class; please send us the link and it will allow us to support you in ensuring equality of access.

Our contact email address is – mses@moray.gov.uk

For more details on the Moray Sensory Education Service click – here

You can also find details on the accessibility tools in Microsoft Office 365, which we use in Moray through Glow –

Glow Update – Password reset, potential copyright infringements, Google Meet and SharePoint

Glow Password Change Reminder

The national learner Glow password reset began on the 24th August and staff will be prompted to reset their passwords from 7th September. Please note you will be prompted to change your password on login so no action is required prior to this.

It is recommend that staff encourage, where possible, learners to update their passwords to ensure they know them in the even of a local lockdown or requirement to learn remotely. As part of the password reset we would encourage everyone when they are updating their password to review the Glow Community Rules .

For full detail on the password reset and advice on setting up strong passwords see our previous blog post – here or visit Glow Connect – here

Changes to Google Meet functionality for external guests

Google have made some changes to the G Suite for Education offering within Glow which impacts staff’s ability to conduct Glow Meet sessions with non Glow users. Full details on how this could affect meetings with external guest (non Glow users) can be found in our previous blog post – here

Storage and publishing of Copyright Material in Glow

Education Scotland have reported that they have received concerns from publishers and content providers that some Glow users in Scotland may have contravened copyright legislation by storing or publishing non-licensed materials through Glow. This included the posting entire books on publicly available websites/social media. While it is recognised this was done with the best of intentions to assist in teaching and learning it does contravene copyright regulations.

Please be aware copy written materials should not be published or shared on blogs, Google Sites or social media without a license or permission to do so. Unlicensed materials should not be stored in Glow if they fall outside of the fair dealing requirements which allow extracts of licensed material to be used for “giving or receiving instruction”.

More details can be found in our previous blog post – here on the content providers website or the CLA (Copyright Licensing Agency) website – here

Moray Glow SharePoint Site Updates

Following an audit of the Moray Glow SharePoint site we have identified a large number of document storage sites which have no content in them and have not been accessed in the last 12 months. These sites will be made read only from 31st August and deleted during the Autumn holiday. If you wish to retain any of these sites contact details will be posted at the top of each site with instructions on what action is required. This is the initial phase of a larger SharePoint project intended to create a more user friendly document storage space, the design of which will allow for flexibility, security and longevity.

What Glow should be used for?

The Digital Learning Team are receiving increased requests and queries with regards to creating Glow accounts for non-teaching/non education staff, the storage/sharing of sensitive information through Glow and allowing external users to collaborate using application accessed through Glow, such as Teams. We would like to remind everyone that Glow’s remit is as a tool to enable learning and teaching with stringent guidelines on account eligibility. Non Glow users can not be added to Teams or access SharePoint sites. More details on what constitutes appropriate uses of Glow can be found here – Glow Appropriate Use .