Category Archives: Glow

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

Learning catalogue

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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

Blogs/blogging, Glow Help, School websites

School websites with Glow blogs

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Can you build our website for us?

In short, no! But we can help. One of the most common requests we get is that we can help schools build new websites in Glow and it is something that requires a sustainable and online support, rather than schools being reliant on someone from ECS . Here is the sustainable and online support!

Getting started

This site is a good place to start. It provides some rationale about why you want to use Glow blogs for a school website and contains help guides and working examples. It is an old site and hasn’t been updated in a long while, but still relevant as an overview of where to start.

A great guide from City of Edinburgh

Kate Farrell and Marco Capriglione of City of Edinburgh Council have written this superb guide: Glow-Blogs-guide-v1-2 (3) for their authority when using Glow Blogs.  Katie and Marco consented to this document being shared nationally. Our thanks to them for allowing this.

Look at other sites as you go

There are some really great school websites around Scotland, the majority of which have been created by schools themselves using just the online support that is available for Glow blogs and WordPress. There is a lot of that, right enough…

Here are some we recommend looking at:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/wl/harrysmuirps/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/st/FallinPrimary/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/pk/perthcitycampus/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/pk/AbernytePrimarySchool/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/pk/PitcairnWebsite/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/pk/Forgandenny/

Plan your layout and keep it fresh

The most successful school websites are active and updated regularly, thereby conveying something of the life of the school. For this reason, Glow blogs are great because they can be updated at any point, by anyone who is made admin of the Glow group that hosts the blog web part and the update posts automatically filter to the most recent content first. This is called ‘dynamic’ content, rather than ‘static’ because it works from a database filtered into categories that will always display content allocated to that category.

It’s all about posts and categories, NOT pages!

To further explain the point above, each bit of content is called a post and that post needs to be added to a category in order that it will appear on your site under your chosen menu categories. For example, this post here will be added to the categories ‘Glow help’ and ‘school websites’ so you should be able to click on either of those categories on this site’s menus and see this post there. Easy!

Categories are what should be used for web content that will be updated regularly and, remember, it’s good practice to have content like this. Why not have each class in your primary school provide weekly update posts of what they have been doing? Or how about having a category for each department in a secondary school, so that they can add departmental news and updates that will filter to their menu category.

When would you use pages?

Pages do not update like categories of posts do, so they should be used for content that will not need to be changed too often. This might be a school ‘About Us’ page or maybe a ‘Contact Us’ page because you will create those pages once and not need to update them again.

What about tags?

Tags are like labels. Let’s use a supermarket analogy to help you understand all of this better. Tesco has aisles of content with big banner headings above each aisle, explaining what is in that aisle: fruit and veg, for example. Think of those as the categories in your main menu. They are filled with products (posts) and those products (posts) are also given a label to explain, specifically what it is. The labels are your tags and users of your site can use them to click and find all posts labelled in the same way. Tesco might tag its tomatoes with the following labels: ‘tomatoes’, ‘Spain’, and add it to the category Fruit and Vegetables.

All modern websites work like this

In fact, if you look at any website you should be able to see it working exactly like Glow blogs do, with regularly updated content (posts) being added to categories so that the website can display them in the correct place. Try Amazon as another example. It has hundreds of categories with other categories underneath them, almost like generations in a family. This is useful to think of as you can, again, have multiple levels of categories in your blogs. Keeping the family analogy going this time, the main, top-leve categories are called ‘Parent’ categories and any sub-categories underneath that are called ‘child’ categories. Get it?

Video help for this

More help here specific to Glow

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/GlowingHelp/?tag=basic-blogging

Click the icon to download the full guide from City of Edinburgh

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

Glow migration update

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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

PLN’s

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Some things to get you started on the professional learning (CPD) Communities

1. Click on the PL Community icon to get to the specialist communities
2. Click on the Scotland map to see the list of local communities
3. The Support area has FAQS, help videos and contact details.
4. Every community has its own hashtag (#stem,
#marysmeals, etc). When you join or share in a
community, you will be prompted to add one or more
hashtags.
5. Almost everything shared on these communities is shared with staff and
guests right across Scotland. Private share items are clearly marked with a
padlock icon. Pupils cannot access these communities.
6. The PL communities are built in the current Glow platform. You
can see your usual Glow menu by clicking on the triangle next to
the Glow icon at the top of the page.
7. Items shared on the PL communities will be moved to the new version of Glow
by December 2013.
8. Given the age of the current Glow platform, there are known issues with
modern smartphones and tablet computers. See the Support area for more
details

We hope your use of these communities helps change the lives and learning of
young people in Scotland.

If you have any ideas for improvement, or issues
needing addressed please email us plsupport@educationscotland.gov.uk
Glow news

RM Unify

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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!

Collaborative tools, Glow, Glow Help, Wikis

User roles and wikis

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Glow Wikis have to be created in a Glow group or school site, they cannot be placed on role based sites (e.g. Staff Home, Pupil Home)

The role a user has in a wiki is defined by their role in the area of Glow that is hosting the wiki, most commonly their role in the Glow group to which the wiki web part was added.

Glow Group Role Wiki Rights
Administrator Edit existing pages, add new pages, delete pages, rename pages, view page history
Web Designer Edit existing pages, add new pages, rename pages
Contributor Edit existing pages, add new pages, rename pages
Reader with Discussions Read only access
Reader Read only access
Collaborative tools, featured tiles, Glow, Wikis

Glow wikis support wiki

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Getting started with wikis: try one!

Glow wikis use a very popular open source platform called Mindtouch and a web search for ‘mindtouch wikis’ will reveal lots of help articles.

The best way to learn about wikis is actually to use one and, to this end, a sample Glow Wiki has been created.

You can access this here.

It covers areas such as:

Creating a page

Navigating around wikis

Levels of Access

Adding images and videos to wikis

Adding further content to a wiki page

How wikis link to Glow groups

Viewing a wiki page history

Forums, Glow Help

Forum moderation

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Moderation may be needed from time to time

Glow Forums are linked to Glow groups. The administrator of a Glow group is also the moderator of Glow forums which allow them to make changes to posts made by other people.

It is always wise to reinforce the expectations you have of anyone using a forum, mainly to use appropriate language and be respectful to others.

space

The video below shows an introduction to the moderation options available to you:

Remember:

  • Lock topic – keep the topic there but stop any changes to it
  • Delete topic – remove the topic and all its associated posts
  • Move topic – move the topic and its posts to another board that I administer
  • Split topic – instead of one topic, create two and then decide which posts should go in each
  • Merge posts – take 2 posts from the topic and merge them in to one
  • Merge topic – take the posts in this topic and put them in to another topic
  • Copy topic – take this topic and its associated post and put them in another board but leave the original in place (live move but it leaves the original in place)
  • Change to sticky – this topic will always appear at the top of the lists of posts, regardless of activity (normally the topic at the top of the list is the one with the most recent post)
  • Change to announcement – this will take the topic and take it out of the topic section and move it to the higher Announcements section
  • View logs – this allows me to see activity in the topic and the overall board
Collaborative tools, Forums, Glow Help

Forum profile avatars

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You can change your own profile in Glow Forums so that other people seeing your posts can know a little more about you

forumsignature

In the post above you can see an avatar – this is the image on the left hand side (in some Glow Forum themes it can appear on the right hand side).  You can also see a signature (this is the text under the post text (name and role in this case))

If you change this then it will change in every post you have made including all the ones you have already done.

Watch the video below to see how to set up your own avatar and signature

*Remember, this will be seen by everyone who shares a Forum with you, on some forums this could be hundreds of thousands of users so keep both things appropriate!

Forums, Glow Help

Why use a forum?

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And if you prefer to read, here’s an outline of what a forum is and how it can be used:

This article provides an overview of Glow Forums, further posts provide more detail in how to create a forum, post entries in to a forum and moderate other users.

Key points about a Glow Forum are:

A Glow Forum has to be linked to either a site (local authority or school) or a Glow group. They are created by adding a web part to the relevant page and then using the functionality of the web part to create the forum. The web part is called Glow Forum.

A Glow Forum can also be called a discussion board. A discussion board is made up of one or many topics.

A topic can be started by anyone. To start a topic the user creates a new post in a new topic. Other users can then join in the topic by making their own posts and replying to existing posts.

When viewing a discussion board the user is shown all the topics. The order in which the topics are displayed depends on when a user last posted – the topic with the most recent post will be at the top of the list. Shown against each topic is the number of times anyone has looked at it and the number of posts in the topic.

Some topics can be given a special status by the moderator – perhaps the topic is an announcement(so it is shown above all the other topics) or it is a sticky (it is shown with the other posts however it will always be returned at the top of the list, regardless of when last posted to)

A moderator of a board is the administrator of the Glow group.

One last thing is that it is possible for any user to view all the boards they are active in by using the Board Index link. This shows only those boards the user has ever accessed, not all the ones they are a member of by virtue of being a member of the Glow group.

What does all this mean in real life?  This scenario attempts to clarify

An English teacher in a school may wish to set up a Glow Forum to allow his pupils to discuss the current class text.  The web part is added to the class Glow group by the teacher and he creates the Forum.

The teacher writes the first post telling the class what the point of the Forum is – he writes a post and because he always wants everyone to see it, he sets that post to be an Announcement – he can do this because he is the Glow group administrator.

The pupils then use the Glow Forum – a first post is entered by one pupil asking for help on one question – this pupil is creating a new topic. Those that can help post replies to this post, all these replies are in the one topic.  At the same time, a different pupil may ask a different question and so they write a new post in a new topic – a separate discussion is underway but all in the same Glow Forum.

One pupil asks a particularly important question about exam technique, the teacher wants this discussion to continue but wants to make sure everyone sees it – the teacher sets this topic to be a Sticky – it is always at the top.

The teacher is interested in this Glow Forum along with others such as in his school’s staff Glow group, in an authority All English teachers group and also a CPD group at national level – by going to the board index he will see all these forums listed along with the recent activity.

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

New Glow

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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

Blogs/blogging, E-portfolios/profiles, Glow Help

E-portfolios

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Background

Many schools and LA’s are looking to use learning logs, or e-portfolios, to record pupil assessment and attainment (Visit the e-portfolio Glow group).

This post explains how to set up a simple e-portfolio using a pupil’s My Glow area and the Glow Blogs webpart.  It uses the K2 blog theme (What is a blog theme?) and is considered by us to be an informal e-portfolio.

Other set ups will be available shortly, including a more structured template and one using a different blog theme.

Process

In this post you will be shown how to:

  • Create a new blog
  • Import a template
  • Add widgets to your blog
  • Change the page settings for the blog

To begin, get your pupils to create a new Glow Blog.

Instructions for creating a Glow blog can be found here (8 mins 55 sec)

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We have created a simple template including an ‘about me’ page and categories.  You can view the template here or have a look at how it might progress here.

This template can be imported straight into the newly created blog, or modified and exported again before putting it in a shared folder where pupils can access.

Templates are imported/exported by visiting the dashboard, clicking Tools on the left hand navigation and then either import or export.  The sample exported file can be found here.  Import it onto your blog to see what is available.

Instructions for importing a template can be found here (2 mins 5 sec)

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Widgets do not automatically appear when blogs are imported from a template.  Widgets are additional boxes of information that can be added to a blog to give the reader more information, such as a calendar, a feed from another website or a list of recent posts. Asking a pupil to put a widget on their blog provides a good opportunity  to discuss with pupils what widgets are and how they are used.  If you are using this template you will want to add on the categories widget and the pages widget.

It may also be a good idea to change the front page to a static page, rather than the latest posts, which is the default setting.

Instructions for widgets and static pages can be found here (3 mins 46 sec)

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It is possible to export a Glow blog too.  You may want to use our template to get you started, modify it, and then export it to share with pupils.  If you choose to do this it would be great if you could share your new template with us.

Glow Help, Web conferencing

Recording a Glow meet

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It is possible for recordings to be made of your Glow Meet session.  You activate the recording within Glow Meet and the recording is made and stored on the Glow servers.  You then have the option of viewing the recordig directly from the server or you could download a copy of the recording on your own local machine.

In Glow Meet a meeting can be recorded by a person who has the role of Host. To be a Host you either have to be an administrator of the Glow group in which the Glow Meet web part is located or you have to be made a Host by someone who already has the Host role.

The document available below gives you full details of how to make a recording and also on how to view it online or download a local copy.

Glow news

Glow Meet-preparing mode

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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

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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.

featured tiles, Glow Help, Glow Resources, Web conferencing

Glow Meet

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Why Use Glow Meet?

Glow Meet is Glow’s web conferencing tool. It has been upgraded and now uses a globally-popular software- Adobe Connect. The tool allows you to share documents, talk to a presentation and has collaborative tools like polls, surveys and chat. Glow TV uses Adobe connect, so a good start would be to watch one of the many recordings in Glow TV and see how it is used.

Here’s a video guide to Adobe Connect for e-learning from Adobe themselves:

And here are some help guides, specifically for Glow:

This help guide assumes you are joining a Glow Meet that someone else has set up and you are joining to take part without worrying about how to set the room up.

If you are setting up a Glow Meet room for others to join then this guide will help you with that.

The role you have in a Glow Meet is determined by the permissions you have in the Glow group where the Glow Meet room is situated. Users with Reader or Readers with Discussions permissions in the group will be Participants in the Glow Meet room.

The meeting will be managed by a user with Administrator permissions in the Glow group. They will have the role of Host in the meeting room.

The document below outlines how to join the Glow Meet and get yourself set up and ready to work with others.

If you want to find out more about the room layout and how the Glow Meet links in to the Glow Group then the document below will assist with that.

English/ Literacy, Expressive Arts, featured tiles, Glow Resources, Health and wellbeing, Languages, learning/teaching resources, Mathematics/numeracy, Religious and Moral Education, Sciences, Social studies, Technologies

National 4/5

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Education Scotland has been working with ADES to co-ordinate development and publication of exemplar learning and teaching materials for staff to use when working towards a qualification at National 4 and 5.

These materials are being developed from a variety of sources, with many being developed locally in schools and local authorities. Materials will be available for all N4 and N5 qualifications by spring 2013.

The materials provide suggestions on approaches to teaching and learning which will promote development of the necessary knowledge, understanding and skills for each subject and level.

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Gigajam on Glow

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Another superb resource for pupils and staff alike, Gigajam allows you to study online to learn various musical instruments.

Gigajam is a unique, interactive method of learning to play a musical instrument. Gigajam includes over 100 multimedia lessons, instructional videos of each exercise, award-winning interactive play-along software, and real-time analysis of your playing.

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How Gigajam lessons work

  • Read easy to follow lesson notes.
  • Watch videos of exercises and techniques.
  • Play your instrument alongside our pre-recorded, professional band while Gigajam Xtractor software records exactly what you play.
  • Gigajam Analyzer software reviews your performance and shows you exactly what to work on to improve your technique.

Gigajam is provided free to Scottish schools by Education Scotland as part of Glow.

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BBC Class clips

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Find educational clips from the best of BBC programmes in the Class Clips video and radio archive. BBC Class Clips (http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/)

Class Clips is the BBC’s archive of educational video and audio material for use in primary and secondary schools. Working with teachers across the UK, the best of current BBC programmes and back catalogue of schools television and radio the best range of clips to help with classroom teaching are chosen.

There are currently more than 10,000 clips in the Class Clips archive, all searchable by level, subject, topic and keyword and all accompanied by notes from teachers on the content and how it could be used.

From major factual series such as:

Wonders of the Universe

Human Planet

and A History of Scotland through to old favourites like Around Scotland and See You See Me, clips cover a wide range of subjects across all age levels, many with broad potential for cross curricular learning.

Class Clips is also home to new, specifically-created educational video.

Talkie Time

is a set of innovative videos for Early and First levels, that let you and your class interact with on-screen characters while learning about Numeracy, Literacy and Health and Wellbeing. Blethering Scots features famous faces discussing Scots language and its place in history, poetry, media and the playground.

All content on Class Clips is free to access and can be streamed directly into class. We’re also in the process of making all our clips embeddable, making it even easier to include them in blogs and web pages.

To find out what clips are available to help with your classes, visit Class Clips and start searching.

Glow news, Glow Resources, Images

Scran

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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!

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Just 2 Easy

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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:

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Twig videos

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A Dynamic Teaching Resource

Here’s the Our Cloud video guide:

click the big round pink logo to go straight to Twig>

  • Over 800 outstanding 3-minute films on science, maths and geography
  • Tailored to the Curriculum for Excellence at levels 2, 3 and 4
  • With keyword search and curriculum links
  • Researched and written by academics, producers, scientists and mathematicians
  • Footage from the very best film archives
  • Supported by teaching & learning packs with diagrams and quizzes
  • Bringing subjects to life with stunning visuals, music and clear graphics – not just outdated programme clips

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

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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

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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.