Category Archives: Glow

Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy for Scotland

The Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy for Scotland was published today.

The strategy aims to create the condition to allow digital technology to enhance learning and teaching across all curriculum areas. In doing so it will enable educators, learners and parents to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technology.

Aim of the Strategy

“In order to realise our vision, partners at both a national and local level must work together to achieve all four of the following essential and interrelated objectives that are central to successful digital learning, teaching and assessment:

• Develop the skills and confidence of educators in the appropriate and effective use of digital technology to support learning and teaching

• Improve access to digital technology for all learners

• Ensure that digital technology is a central consideration in all areas of curriculum and assessment delivery

• Empower leaders of change to drive innovation and investment in digital technology for learning and teaching”

Click here for the full document.

John Swinney on Glow TV

Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills Mr John Swinney MSP will be leading a Glow TV broadcast on Monday the 29th August at 12.45pm.
The blog post below will give you details of how to register and how to submit a question before the event if you are unable to watch live on Monday.  The broadcast will be recorded so you will be able to view it in the Watch Again facility on Glow – we will send out this link after the event.
I’d encourage you to circulate this to colleagues and encourage them to send in any questions in advance as this is expected to be a popular broadcast.
 

Twig, Tigtag & Tigtag Junior

Tigtag and Twig online resources are currently accessible via the Glow login and are used by schools across Scotland.  These award-winning resources provide high-quality videos and accompanying learning materials for sciences, mathematics and social studies. They were procured by Education Scotland in July 2015.  The contract was for one year initially with the possibility of a one year extension.

Education Scotland and Twig World agreed to the further one year extension in March 2016 which means that both Twig and Tigtag, and also Tigtag Junior and Reach Out CPD, will continue to be available to state schools through Glow until 31st July  2017.

It will not be possible for Education Scotland to extend the contract further beyond this date.  Scotland Excel, the local authority procurement organisation, will include Education Software and Digital Content as an additional lot within their re-tender of their Education Materials framework with a start date of 1st April 2017.  It will therefore be for local authorities or individual establishments to purchase digital content via this route in the future.

Please take advantage of these resources while they are freely available to you.  I have ‘priority placed’ tiles for each site on the Glow Council Launchpad.  Please log in to Glow and have a look. Please then try and find a little time to leave some feedback.

You can leave your feedback here.

 

Have you used BrainPOP, Twig or TigTag? I need your feedback.

If you have not yet had the opportunity to try out the BrainPOP and Twig/TigTag resources, you still have time!

Just log into Glow and choose the Council Launchpad.  There you will see tiles for each of these resources.  By accessing through the Glow Launchpad, you will automatically be signed in.

  1. Twig/Tig Tag are premium science resources available through the Glow Launchpad. Funding for Twig/Tig Tag will expire next year.
  2. BrainPOP is very extensive covering almost all areas of the curriculum.  We have had free access to the BrainPOP premium resource since February. Access to BrainPOP was due to expire at the end of April, but I have been able to extend this for a further month.

I would appreciate your honest feedback about BrainPOP, Twig and Tigtag, and if/how you have used it/them…

  • as a class/individual resource?
  • number of pupils involved?
  • the type of content (eg Science) you accessed?
  • whether you would it useful as a paid for resource?

Please use the comments box below to leave your feedback for me.  Your help and input is greatly appreciated. Phil

A useful feature for pupils & teachers using e-Portfolios

GLOW BLOGS READER

Feature in Development

In the coming weeks there will be a Blogs release that will introduce aggregation functionality to the Glow Blogs service. This will allow teachers, students and non-teaching staff to see an aggregate view of latest blogs posts from blogs (public, private and Glow-only blogs) that they choose to follow. It will also be possible to group the aggregate view into different folders/groups which will make it easier for users to manage a large number of blogs that they are following.
This has been implemented in the form of  a plugin that will be activated across the network for all users.

The Glow blogs reader allows you to ‘follow’ a number of Glow Blogs. In following blogs you will be able to see which of these blogs has been updated in your dashboard rather than have to visit each site to check for updates.

We envisage that this feature will be particularly useful to teachers whose pupils are using the Glow Blogs e-Portfolios.

Click on this link below to get more information on this upcoming feature:  Glow Blogs Help

April Online Learning Opportunities

Bitesize

The BBC have updated their Bitesize app for Android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.bbc.bitesize

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education

Twig is a premium resource for Maths, Geography & Sciences available for free, once logged in to Glow

https://www.twigonglow.com/Shibboleth.sso/RMUnify?target=https://www.twigonglow.com/secure

Scholar

All Stirling & Clacks Senior Phase pupils were sent Scholar cards earlier in the year, and should now have access to their Scholar accounts – which they can use without a password if they are logged into their Glow account (password only needs to be entered once). 

The next Scholar online live session is National 5 Maths (http://scholar.hw.ac.uk/Resources/Live_Online_Sessions/Upcoming_Sessions.html)

Scholar have also updated their ‘watch again’ service with a wide range of subjects – please share this with pupils.

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/st/sctech4learning/2016/03/07/back-catalogue-of-scholar-homework-sessions-now-available/

 BrainPOP

A reminder that as part of the e-safety competition, we have free access for all Stirling and Clacks pupils and staff to BrainPOP resources until 30th April (closing date for the e-safety competition).  BrainPOP includes resources for English, Maths, Science, Technologies, Humanities, Arts, Health & Wellbeing, Computing as well as e-safety. 

To get free, immediate access to the BrainPOP resources, please log in to Glow, then select the Council Launchpad, then select the BrainPOP tile.

You will be automatically logged in and able to access all resources.  You will be directed straight to the digital citizenship resources (to support the e-safety competition) but you also have free unrestricted access to all of the other curricular related animated videos and teaching materials.

Please see below for further information on BrainPOP:

BrainPOP creates cross-curricular award winning cross-curricular digital content that engages students through animated movies, learning games, interactive quizzes, and supports teachers whilst adding excitement to lessons.

  • 700+ topics; 10,000 hours of teaching material
  • Animated movies explain concepts from across the curriculum
  • English, Maths, Science, Technologies, Humanities, Arts, Health & Wellbeing, Computing and online-safety
  • Interactive quizzes and high quality educational games
  • Lesson ideas, worksheets, and graphic organisers
  • Non-fiction research texts
  • Vocabulary guides
  • Printable activities
  • Mapped to the Curriculum for Excellence for primary and secondary schools

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.

Email Migration from Groupwise completed

The Groupwise email server will shortly be closed down, please ensure that you are now accessing your email via Outlook in Glow Office 365.

All Education establishment staff and centre staff (including education admin staff) have all been provided with a Glow account that gives them access to a fully functional Office 365 with unlimited web storage, free Office 2013 downloads on home computers/tablets, a Glow email address and an extensive range of tools provided within the Glow environment.

The reason for providing everyone in Stirling and Clackmannanshire Education with this set of tools is to improve sharing and support, communication and collaboration between

  1. Educators across all establishments
  2. Establishments and the central education team
  3. Educators and Establishments across Scotland
  • All Education staff should view their Glow account as their primary or priority account, including school admin staff in all sectors.

 

A limited number of Education staff have been provided with a second account, in the stirling.gov.uk O365 environment.  This account is limited to email, contacts and calendar – it does not currently provide any additional benefits beyond this.

The reason for providing a limited number of Stirling O365 accounts to specified staff is to

  1. Ensure that establishments continue to have access to certain corporate services (eg servicedesk, e-financials, shared HT diaries etc), and corporate staff addresses
  2. Ensure the GCSX account holders continue to have access to GCSX mail
  3. Ensure that external ‘others’, including prospective parents and agencies can continue to get in touch using the long-established email addresses that are published on the internet and in existing school and council literature
  • Corporate stirling.gov.uk accounts should be checked for new mail from external agencies, used when accessing corporate services, and when the formal corporate email address is required or deemed to be the most appropriate, given the circumstances.

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.