Author: Pam McDowall

Midweek Byte 26th August

Week Commencing 24th August

S&Q Report

Here is the Standards and Quality Report for 25/26. Click on the image to access all the links.

Glow Updates

Canva is now available!

For everything you need to know about Canva in Glow, check out our handy guide available here!

🔑Glow Password Reset

The pupil password reset took place on 11th August and Staff passwords change on 25th August. Staff will be prompted to change their password the next time they log on.

Back to School with Glow

Check out this handy guide from Glow Connect for all you need to know about Glow! Back to School August 2026.

🔐Phase 3 Security Updates: Auto blocking of network traffic from out with the UK

Glow have now rolled out Phase 3 of their security changes.

What’s changing?

They have rolled out a security change within Glow that will block Glow users from accessing Glow from identified high risk countries.

Timeline for this change

RM have now enabled this change.

Why are they blocking network traffic from some countries?

They heard at Cyber UK earlier this month how increases in geo-political tensions are changing the landscape, and that cyber is now a fundamental part of modern warfare, we also heard how AI is accelerating the pace of disruption.

It’s critical that they respond to the changing landscape and the increasing threat. Standing still is no longer an option. They’ve been looking for some time at ways in which they can strengthen the safety of Glow for all users and one of those ways is to block internet traffic from some high risk nation states.

What countries will be blocked from accessing Glow?

China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Ukraine and Russia.

How will this impact Glow users?

If a Glow user tries to access Glow from one of the identified blocked countries, they will be presented with the error message below.

This means that Glow users will need to be aware of this change before travelling and assuming they will be able to access Glow.

VPN User experience

They are aware that some users use VPNs to access Glow so again, this may impact if the VPN appears to come from one of the blocked countries.

Additional information

Please note that they will be regularly reviewing the global landscape and as a result, some countries may be added to the list, and some may be removed.

Midweek Byte 19 August 2026

Week Commencing 17th August

đŸ‘đŸ»Welcome Back

We hope you all had a great summer break. This session we will be posting our Midweek Bytes every Wednesday to keep you up-to-date with all the latest digital news so keep checking every week!

🔑Glow Password Reset

The pupil password reset took place on 11th August so if they arrive in class and haven’t logged on, remind them to choose 3 random words. Glow Connect have a useful post to help with this.

Administrators are able to bulk set passwords for students for whole groups/classes. In previous years this meant the whole class would have the same, potentially very insecure password as the admin setting could override any password controls resulting in (for example) a class all having the password “1234”.

This year, to close this loophole, Glow have instigated a process whereby users will be forced to change their password on first login to something known only to themselves, and which must comply with password strength rules.

Remember Staff passwords change on 25th August.

đŸ«Upcoming Professional Learning

All our Professional Learning (PL) can be found in our PL Calendar which is available here. In addition, our Learning Loop allows you to see what key PL is coming up in Term 1.

There is still time to sign up for our PL Network if you are interested in applying for the Digital School Award, Course ID: 94473 or Digital Wellbeing Award, Course ID: 94474. If becoming an AI Champion is something you are interested in, sign up for our AI series, Course ID: 94446 – you have until 26 August!

Google in Glow

Renfrewshire has its own Google Tenancy within Glow. You can access this from your Launch Pad by clicking on the Google Drive tile or if you can’t see it, click on App Library and add it from there.  This will automatically sign you into the Google tenancy where you can access all the great Google tools like Drive, Docs, Google Gemini and Notebook. If you want to access your Google account from the browser, when you sign in remember that the first part of the account is your Glow username then @re.glow.scot Why not check out our useful Staff Toolkit for Google to learn more?