Category Archives: Glow news

Glow migration updates, Glow news, learning/teaching resources, Working with others

Learning catalogue

Leave a comment

Launching in new Glow in the Autumn, around beginning of September

The learning catalogue is a very exciting new project from Education scotland that will launch in new Glow. There will be a number of inter-disciplinary learning experiences in a catalogue that can be accessed and signed-up for  by learners. This catalogue will launch in Autumn with an Autumn theme and will continue to grow as a resource as the seasons progress.

Creative partners

The catalogue content is being developed in conjunction with creative partners and industry experts and offers learners a vibrant and creative learning environment with some outstanding opportunities.

A blog for now…

The learn cat is hosted in a Glow blog for the moment just to showcase what will be on offer come Autumn and to allow for planning around these opportunities.

Here’s an extract from the new blog which explains more

Join learning experiences to learn from and with each other across Scotland and beyond to become a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor.

LanguagesMathematicsSciencesSocial StudiesTechnologies

Learn about different curriculum areas

This is the curriculum colour palette.  Learning experiences can be about one curriculum area or can involve a mixture of curriculum areas.

  • Orange – Expressive arts
  • Leaf green – Health and wellbeing
  • Red – Languages
  • Blue – Mathematics
  • Purple – Religious and moral education
  • Green – Sciences
  • Turquoise – Technologies
  • Pink – Social studies

Curriculum sandwiches show you where the learning takes place and the curriculum areas you will learn about. The thicker the slice the more you will learn about that area.

In the kitchen. Main emphasis Health and Wellbeing, other area mathematics

Learn in different places

storytellingMuseumLearning JourneyKitchenGardenDigital storytellingcreativity challengesConsolarium Code ClubCollection of the weekArt workshop

LearnCat is here to help you learn.

LearnCAT

Email LearnCat at learncat@educationscotland.gov.uk to

  • Join a learning experience
  • Ask a question
  • Share an idea for a learning experience

LearnCat will read information for you when he has sound waves by his ear.

Learn CAT sound file

Each season a new collection of learning experiences will appear.

Education Scotland would like to thank Creative Partners, Local Authorities, educators and most of all young people for their support in the development and implementation of these learning experiences.

This catalogue is maintained by Education Scotland

Glow, Glow migration updates, Glow news, MS office 365

Glow migration update

Leave a comment

Where can I find out what’s happening with Glow?

RM and Education Scotland have created a new blog to update stakeholders on the process of migrating to Office 365. This blog contains the most accurate and up-to-date information on all that is happening with the new Glow and the move to the new environment.

What about PKC users?

We will update users in the authority as and when we have further information to give you, but this is the place to go for accurate updates as they stand just now.

What is new Glow anyway?

Information on the new Glow tools, provided by MS Office 365 can be found in this Glow group which is dedicated to providing users with more details of the migration project.

Glow news

RM Unify

Leave a comment

RM Unify has been in place for staff now for a few weeks. The new launchpad and app library for Glow is a welcome improvement and transforms the way Glow looks and operates.

But Glow’s rubbish, isn’t it?

Glow has had its critics over the years but your Glow login gives you access to so many tools and excellent resources that you may want to reconsider your take on it.

But it’s really hard to use…

Fair enough, Glow groups and the act of navigating through its inner depths was never easy, let alone actually creating the kind of content that 21st century learners and teachers began to require. However, that initial Glow offering has been seriously improved upon in recent times and the Glow we have today is a whole lot better than it may have been the last time you checked it out.

So what should I be using Glow for?

Blogs, wikis, forums and the web conferencing tool, Adobe Connect are all globally-recognised, ‘best of breed’ softwares that you are given safe, secure and free access to using your Glow login. In addition to all of that, you get relevant and dynamic resources like Twig videos, the Daily What and Just 2 easy tools. Collaboration and Creativity is easier now than ever and these are 21st century skills that we all need to embrace. Glow makes this possible with a single login and a secure environment.

What about new Glow?

Well, it’s complicated! Microsoft and RM are working in partnership during 2013 to launch the RM Unify alongside Office 365 suite of tools. Office 365 provides email, blog tools, forums, wikis and cloud versions of its core products: Word, Powerpoint and Excel. In some ways, it is a lot like Glow, because it also gives you Sharepoint for collaboration within a group structure. Sharepoint is actually the software used for the clunky old Glow we are moving on from, albeit in a much, much earlier (2003) form.

What about after 2013?

The RM/Microsoft contract runs until December 2013 and, after that, present Glow will be switched off, so to speak. The Government has appointed a working group (ICT Excellence group) to propose what Glow should evolve into beyond the present contract and they will implement that solution for 2014 and beyond. Their thinking is that Glow should be a single sign-on to access any tools/resources teachers and learners wish/need to use and that it should not be limited to one platform. In some ways, you can see how we are moving towards that already, with the App approach in RM Unify and all the different tools that are accessed using a Glow login.

So will we still have Microsoft 365 and RM Unify in 2014 and beyond?

That is undecided at the moment. It may be that we only have Microsoft 365 for this one year, 2013, and then the core suite of tools may be provided by someone else, like Google’s Apps for Education suite. It may be that, since they are both free, a Glow login in 2014 would allow you to choose to use either one of those and others. Edmodo is becoming very popular as an extremely easy way to share to classes and it may be that Glow in 2014 and beyond would include such tools as that. Dropbox is the most popular file-sharing platform out there and it may be that Glow uses something like that for its file-sharing.

So should we just forget about training and development of Microsoft 365 in 2013?

No. Absolutely not. These changes are very welcome and a tremendous leap forward. What you need to remember is that the tools we have nowadays have a lot of common features and most content can be shared between services/platforms fairly easily via a simple export/import. Web email via Office 365 Outlook will have many benefits, as will online softwares in the cloud. One Note will be available as an online interactive notebook and that will have massive opportunity for classroom use. It is beginning not to matter so much what platforms we use, as long as we become familiar with Cloud computing and storing stuff online, rather than on devices. Think of the way Apps can be on any device/platform and you begin to understand how a Glow login may work, a bit like the ‘sign in with Facebook’ process that may web services have, you will see how Glow logins will become  more and more valuable as a way to use one account to access a host of different tools and resources.

We are getting there!

Blogs/blogging, E-portfolios/profiles, featured tiles, Glow news, MS office 365, School websites

New Glow

Leave a comment

Glow e-portfolios

Tens of thousands of pupils are currently using Glow Blogs as their e-portfolio solution.
If this is the case for your school, you will be keen to know if pupils and staff will still have access to these once your Local Authority’s Glow content is migrated into Microsoft Office 365 and the current Glow becomes read-only.

The timetable for migration is currently being negotiated with Local Authorities, but it is hoped that the transfer of the Glow content which has been identified as being possible to move, will be migrated over to Microsoft Office 365 between January and August 2013. After migration, the current version of Glow will be read-only, until it is finally switched off in December 2013.

It is worth noting that My Glow content will not be migrated to Office 365 and that content held there can continue to be accessed, used and edited until current Glow ceases. Equally, it should be noted that Glow Blogs will not be migrated at this stage and a decision on the long term future of the blogs is still to be made, as can be seen below in the statement from Craig Munro.

The future for e-portfolios in Glow

Many people have been keen to know whether the WordPress Blogs, which Glow Blogs are built on, will continue to be available within Glow after current Glow ceases.

On 19th December 2012, Craig Munro, Strategic Director for Strategy, Performance and Corporate Resources at Education Scotland, made the following announcement regarding the future of Glow Blogs:

“Stakeholders raised concerns about the plan to migrate away from the current WordPress implementation of Glow Blogs. In response to this, and to increase user choice, we continue to seek clarification on the feasibility of making available a new installation of WordPress that will be available in parallel with SharePoint Online. In the meantime you have my assurance that the data sitting in the current version of WordPress will continue to be available to you while we consider the next steps.
A working group made up of representatives from Local Authorities and SQA continues to develop the user requirements for a new Glow e-portfolio solution. We will continue to keep you updated as we work towards the final solution.”

This should reassure schools that they will continue to have use of the Glow Blogs for at least the duration of current Glow.

However, there are still some limitations of access that are important to be aware of.

Creating and accessing e-portfolios during 2013

As mentioned above, over the coming months each Local Authority will have its migratable Glow content moved over to Microsoft Office 365. This will be done on an Authority by Authority basis, with each Local Authority being given its date for migration well in advance of it happening. Until that point, there will be no change in the functionality of current Glow.

After the content which is possible to migrate from Glow Groups, school and Local Authority sites is moved to O365, these areas of current Glow will become read-only. Again, note that not all content can be migrated. You may wish to read the post Migration of existing Glow content to Microsoft O365 for further information.

So, what will all of this mean for e-portfolios?

Existing e-portfolios

The good news is that Glow blogs will continue to work as they currently do once current Glow becomes read-only.

A pupil’s e-portfolio can still be accessed via any appropriate links, such as the View link in the Glow Blogs web part in their My e-portfolio Glow Group, by a button they created on their Glow Light screen, or, for both staff and pupils, via the links added to a school e-portfolio Glow Group.

Content can be added to e-portfolios as at present, as all Dashboard functionality will remain unchanged. Also, existing content can be edited or deleted. Access to the Dashboard will still be possible from the link in the Glow blogs web part or via the Edit links in the e-portfolio itself. Staff can continue to leave comments and, where appropriate, posts can still be included in the Profile page, for e-portfolio themes which include that.

Pupils will still be able to create a button on their Glow Light screen to take them straight to their e-portfolio.

So, as long as a school Glow Group has already been set up housing the links to the pupils e-portfolios, there will be no change to the access to or use of e-portfolios that have already been created, once current Glow becomes read-only.

New e-portfolio creation

If pupils are following the guidance in the National e-portfolio Glow Group to create their e-portfolio, they will still be able to do this even after current Glow becomes read-only. This is because pupils create their e-portfolio in a Glow Group within their My Glow area, and since My Glows will not be migrated to Microsoft Office 365, they will never become read-only and therefore can continue to be used, edited or added to as at present until current Glow ceases.

There is however a limitation regarding staff access to a pupil’s e-portfolio if it is created during read-only period, or, if a new pupil joins the school with an existing e-portfolio and staff need to gain access to it.

So, what can be done in these situations? Read on to find out!

Staff access

Once current Glow becomes read-only it will not be possible to create any new Glow Groups on the school site, create new web parts, add new web parts to a page, add new items to a web part, edit existing items or customise a web part.

This means that once current Glow becomes read-only it will not be possible to create a school e-portfolio Glow Group to house the links to pupil e-portfolios, as is currently the advised method.  If a school e-portfolio Glow Group does already exist, it will not be possible to add any new content to the web links web parts in it. So, effectively, it will not be possible to house the links to new pupil e-portfolios within current Glow. This would mean that staff would not have any access to the pupil e-portfolios.

So, another method will have to be employed to give staff access to the link to a pupil’s e-portfolio.
It may be that you choose to place the link within the migrated web links web parts within Microsoft Office 365. It will be possible to edit these and add new content, so would be a feasible solution.
Or, the pupil could email the link to their e-portfolio to all staff who could then use the link from their email, or store it in their own My Glow in a web links web part, as My Glow areas will not become read-only. This would mean that each member of staff would have to save each link for themselves, so this option would have to be carefully considered.

Remember, this will only affect e-portfolios created after current Glow becomes read-only.
There will be no impact on existing e-portfolios.

Summary

– Glow Blogs will remain active and usable until at least the end of current Glow, in December 2013.
– Existing e-portfolios can still be used and staff can still access pupil e-portfolios from the existing links in a school Glow Group
– Pupils will continue to be able to create new e-portfolios
– The main limitation once current Glow becomes read only is that new school e-portfolio Glow Groups can’t be created and new links can’t be added to an exising Group (or existing links  edited). Schools will have to use a different way of giving staff access to the pupil e-portfolios, such as using the migrated e-portfolio Glow Group within O365.

Click to Enlarge

Glow news

Glow Meet-preparing mode

Leave a comment

A host in a meeting room can go into ‘preparing mode’.

When you are in preparing mode, your screen layout will change but everyone else in the room will remain as they were.  This means you can navigate to one room layout and make changes there whilst everyone else looks at the first layout.

To go in to preparing mode you can either click on the icon which resembles a pencil and ruler (to the left of the room layouts) or go to the Present menu and choose Preparing Mode.

An alert will warn you that you are entering preparing mode and a small icon of a pencil and ruler will remain at the top right of the screen to remind you that you are still in that mode.

In Preparing Mode you can carry out tasks like moving or resizing pods, uploading PowerPoints or getting a whiteboard ready without the other attendees’ screens changing.

To exit this mode and return to controlling the room click the ruler icon and select Exit Preparing Mode or click again on the icon or menu option – all result in the same output.

Glow Help, Glow news, Web conferencing

Breakout rooms in Glow Meet

Leave a comment

The Host in the meeting room can create breakout rooms for the attendees. You might want to do this if the main meeting room has too many attendees to allow good collaboration or if you want different groups of attendees to consider different issues at a point in the meeting. Breakout rooms are separate from the main room and have their own selection of pods to work in. The Host can visit the breakout rooms during the session to facilitate activities.

The document above will give you the details of how to create, start and end the break out rooms.  Some other key points are:

Breakout Room Layout
The layout of the breakout room will take the format of the selected room layout in the parent room at the time of the breakout room being created.  Therefore, if you are going to create a number of breakout rooms that you wish to all look the same, the quickest way would be to create that layout in the parent room, open up the break out room section, delete any rooms that are there then create new break out rooms (Add Breakout)

Breakout Room Number Limitations
There are limitations within Adobe Connect which result in 5 breakout rooms being possible and 50people can be assigned to any/all breakout rooms at the one time.

Reviewing Breakout Room Outputs
If you have people in a number of breakout rooms, once they all come back to the main room, you may wish everyone to see what went on in each breakout room.  You can do this by adding a new pod to the main room, from the pod menu you will see a sub menu to the pods from each break out room which you can now add like you would any other pod.

Glow news, Glow Resources, Images

Scran

Leave a comment

Scran is a charity & online learning resource base with over 360,000 images & media from museums, galleries, archives and the media. If you haven’t had a play around with scran, you might be surprised by the gems that can be found. There are thousands of useful photos and bits of audio and video, as well as full learning packs that can be used as an independent resource.

English Teacher?

A great example of the kind of resources that could prove very useful is some excellent Edwin Morgan content that English teachers will find extremely useful. There are audio recordings, images and video all related to, arguably, the most popular Scottish poet taught in our secondary schools.

Art or Design?

Scran also has numerous learning content packs and associated resources on modern-day designers such as Alessi and there is a wealth of content related to the study of Art and Art history and design through the ages.

Video Introduction *remember that you access through Glow, not the method outlined in video!

Animation, Glow news, Glow Resources

Just 2 Easy

Leave a comment

J2E offers a whole set of online software tools just for schools and it’s all available for FREE through Glow. This is just the kind of addition to Glow that you are missing out on if you do not use your Glow account.

Here’s a nice video introduction to ONE of the many tools J2E offers through Glow:

English/ Literacy, Expressive Arts, Glow news, Glow Resources, Health and wellbeing, Languages, Mathematics/numeracy, Religious and Moral Education, Sciences, Social studies, Technologies

Daily What News

Leave a comment

The Daily What News is a top quality Glow resource that your account gives you access to.

A news service just for schools in Scotland, The Daily What News provides a sophisticated and interactive news service for Glow users, with articles written by a specialist news content editor especially for a schools’ audience. Articles are published every school day and there are two versions of each article. In addition, three articles each week which are published in Gaelic.

The articles are arranged in news categories and are tagged according to CfE subjects and experiences and outcomes. The articles are archived and searchable from the main homepage, giving users a rich learning resource that offers learners the opportunity to make meaningful and relevant connections across different curricular areas. Many of the articles feature an interactive activity that provides Glow account holders with a fun way to extend or cement users’ learning on the story’s topic. Users can also use their Glow logins to take part in forum discussion topics for each article.

Teachers will find the Teachers’ Area Blog an excellent resource. Beneath each daily news article there is a link to a blog post that provides Glow users with a wealth of lesson ideas and suggestions for several curricular areas from the one news story. The posts are written by a specialist education content editor who links the news story to CfE outcomes and experiences and provides links to other interesting and relevant content.

A recent article in the Sport category focused upon Rangers’ fans’ trip to Manchester and how their behaviour was better than on a previous occasion that had led to trouble in the city centre. The article would surely be a popular one with young people and, because they are known for their reluctance in reading, it is of note that it would be of particular appeal to boys. There is even an interactive activity attached to this article which invites learners to test their knowledge of SPL club nicknames. What better way to engage reluctant learners in purposeful and relevant learning? In theTeachers’ Blog, lesson suggestions were offered in a number of CfE subject areas (Social studies, Health +Wellbeing, English+Literacy) and links were provided to video content and discussion stimuli that would encourage even the most reluctant learner to engage with such relevant and meaningful subject matter.

This is, of course, just one example. There is already a good stock of interesting content on the site, with stories ranging in topic from the floods in Pakistan, for a World focus, to how young people made an impression on the Scottish Parliament, for a story that is closer to home. Each school day sees another story added to the archive, so we are building a wealth of content that Glow users can benefit from.

Whatever the story’s subject-matter, it is always the case that it will be written in a manner that is appealing and relevant to our learners. Add to that the interactive activities and lesson suggestions in the teachers’ blog, and you might just find thatThe Daily What News is just what you have been looking for!

Here’s an Our Cloud video guide to give you a guided tour:

Glow news, Glow Resources, Glow TV

Glow TV

Leave a comment

If you don’t use Glow TV regularly in your classroom, you probably want to check it out!

Glow TV has several programmes on every single school day and over 18 months worth of recorded content that can be ‘watched again’ at a time that suits you and your class. Programme themes cover a whole host of interest areas on topics such as: CfE, SQA, GTC, HMIE, Literacy, Numeracy, Health and Wellbeing, Glowing Thursdays, World of Work Wednesdays, Creativity, Games Design, Daily What Newsround and just about every curricular area. There is sure to be lots of great content that you can find useful.

The ‘Watch Again’ facility is a bit like the online efforts of the major TV channels. There is an easy to use area in Glow that allows you to browse all recorded programmes by category and watch them when it suits you. It also allows you to add programmes to your own, personal, schedule when you register for events so that you can keep track of your own planning.

Signing-up for these events/programmes is easier now, too. Instead of having to complete a sign-up form for every event you want to take part in, all you have to do is register once for Glow TV and then choose your username from a drop-down list whenever you wish to sign-up to a specific event. Easy.

A lot of the LIVE programmes include live debate/discussion on important topics in Education, as well as many online training programmes and experiences for young people to collaborate and interact with presenters.

So, with a whole schedule of programmes you can tailor to your own personal guide, easy sign-up and channel categories to make it easy to find recordings and watch again, Glow TV is a brilliant addition to Glow’s assets.

To register for Glow TV and then be able to have your own personal schedule and easy sign-up for programmes, click here.