All posts by Phil Slavin

20#20 Strategy, Glow, Help, Mobile Devices

20#20 Strategy – What can Glow do for us?

By making use of the tools and resources within Glow, the following aspirations have become achievable.  Using Glow enables…

…learners to share their work with their peers and teachers.

…learners to access and share their work with their parents at home.

…dyslexic learners to adapt & manage their own printed materials, increasing their independence and reducing staff input and costs.

…all staff to access their own files and resources from anywhere.

…supply and peripatetic staff to work more effectively.

…easier access to help, support and useful learning resources.

…iPads, Androids and other mobile devices to become the textbook and jotter combined, with files saved and shared through OneDrive.

…schools and offices to become virtually paperless, with potential savings of thousands of pounds every year.

…life-long digital learning profiles to become a reality.

…Bring Your Own Device to become a reality.

…vibrant blogs & websites to be created free of charge, maintained by staff and contributed to by pupils.

…meetings to be more productive, with agendas pre-shared digitally as PDFs and minutes written in a shared-access notebook.

…existing hardware infrastructure (PCs, servers) to become increasingly irrelevant for learning & teaching, reducing the need for replacement leading to further long-term financial savings.

20#20 Strategy, Android, Glow, Help, iPads, Mobile Devices

An invitation to the RM Seminars

RM invite you to come along to the RM Seminar in Stirling. This is a free event and it is CPD accredited. Throughout the day we’ll be running three streams of presentations – two technical and one Glow related. You’ll also get the chance to network with peers and experts. Example sessions include:

– Glow and the Scottish Attainment Challenge
– Managing Mobile Devices with Lightspeed
– Your Network in the Cloud

This seminar takes place on 22nd March and we hope to see you there!
Sign up for free today.

20#20 Strategy, Glow, Help

New Apps in the Glow App Library

Find out about the latest apps in the Glow App Library to accelerate teaching and learning…

LiteracyPlanet
LiteracyPlanet is a comprehensive online program for the development of key literacy skills. For ages 4–15, it features 1,000s of interactive exercises for pre-reading, phonics, sight words, reading, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, grammar and punctuation.
Read more

Good2Go
Whether it be a simple post, an encouraging comment, a skill share, blog or photograph, Good2Go enables children to express themselves, reflect on their passions, skills and qualities, and importantly raise each other’s aspirations and sense of self-worth.
Read more about Good2Go

Q-Files
Written by specialist children’s writers, Q-Files is the world’s first fully comprehensive, free-to-user, advert-free, and regularly updated, online encyclopaedia. It has been designed specifically for children.

School Cloud Systems
On offer from BETT award-winning company School Cloud Systems is a helpful room booking system, allowing staff to book IT rooms, iPads, meeting rooms and sports facilities with single sign-on.
Find out more about School Cloud Systems

Blogs

This month’s blog posts provide a quick and helpful insight into how to achieve even more from Glow:

  • Good2Go provides solutions to some of society’s toughest challenges. Find out how
  • Find out how other schools are using online technology to improve literacy and maths.
20#20 Strategy, Glow

Glow usage in Stirling and Clacks exceeds 100,000 sessions!

Glow usage in Stirling & Clackmannanshire establishments exceeded 100,000 sessions in January 2016!

Over the last year, the number of  monthly Glow sessions has increased by more than 4000%

In January 2016,  Glow was accessed nearly 3700 times every day!

In 16 months since September 2014, when the 20#20 Strategy Group identified the central critical role of Glow, the number of active Glow users has increased from less than 100 to almost 4000

Glow Usage

Glow, Help, Social Media

Yammer launching on Glow O365

Another update to Glow is coming with Yammer being launched later this month, the current target date being 22nd February 2016.  There are initial help guides available within the help wiki – https://glowhelp.wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/O365+Yammer.

Yammer’s launch is slightly different to the previous launches of Delve, Sway and Video because the release of Yammer does impact upon existing services.  The Glow tenancy can only have one community wide social network and this means that when Yammer is switched on, the newsfeed across the tenancy is switched off.
What this means for end users is:

  • The newsfeed icon will no longer be available in the app launcher
  • Newsfeeds within sites will not be affected
  • Users will no longer be able to see the national newsfeed
  • Users will be able to see an aggregated newsfeed of all sites they are following, by using a specific link

The above is detailed here – https://glowhelp.wikis.glowscotland.org.uk/Yammer+and+the+Newsfeed

Email Migration, Glow, Help

February Email Information (Education)

 

Final migration process

 

By Friday the 5th of February, there should be no school/establishment education users accessing Groupwise.  All education staff should be using Microsoft Outlook email.

 

What do I need to know?

 

How do I get help?

Digital Caution and Reflection, Mobile Devices, Social Media

Digital Media Literacy – Do you know?

Should we have a “huge distrust of the increasing use of ‘brands’ in education which leads to increasing competition between the ‘haves’ and further disadvantage among the ‘have nots’?”

Dean Groom discusses…

https://deangroom.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/media-literacy-5-key-concepts-to-teach-this-year/

There are FIVE things that kids need to know about and apply.

  1. All media messages are constructed.
  2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
  3. Different people experience the same media message differently.
  4. Media have embedded values, opinions, and points of view.
  5. Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.
20#20 Strategy, Email Migration, Glow, Help

Final email migration

All remaining Education stirling.gov.uk accounts will be moved over to corporate Office 365 during the week beginning 1st February. All content including contacts, calendar and email will be moved at the same time.

This applies to HTs, DHTs, Admin staff, Technicians, School addresses etc,  it does NOT apply to teaching staff.  They have now moved full-time into the Glow environment.

Once this move has taken place, you will no longer be able to use Groupwise to access your email.  Instead you will be using the Outlook 2013 desktop application.  Look for the shortcut on your desktop,

Outlook

The program can also be found by going into your PC Start menu, then finding Microsoft Office 2013, Outlook 2013.
Your email address and password will not change, and you should use your existing details when you log into Outlook 2013.

This move has been planned for the w/b 1st Feb because it falls before the inservice/holiday week.

You can find help pages provided here: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/st/sctech4learning/know-your-glow/know-your-glow-helpsheets/

and also pages provided by the Office 365 team:
http://inf.ad.stirling.gov.uk/site/?page_id=436

Once you have successfully logged into your stirling.gov.uk account through Outlook 2013, you will be able to do everything you could previously do with Groupwise, plus a lot more:
Including:

  • Adding your glow account to Outlook 2013 to access them both in the same place,
  • Sharing calendars and sharing contacts between your (and others) accounts.