Glow Scotland

February 25th, 2013

Featured professional learning community – Assessment

Con Morris

Comments: none Tags:  : Categories CPD, Curriculum for Excellence, National Groups, Probationers

The Assessment community is a relatively ‘new kid on the block’. It was kick-started by Jemima Anderson of Education Scotland when she organised a series of web meets on a range of topics; including moderation, National Assessment Resource, profiling and using Glow to support the assessment process.

In this short video, Jem introduces the main features of the community. 

One thing that impresses is the way that Jem, and others in the community, reach out and support colleagues in other communities. They do this is by adding suggestions to other colleagues’ intentions and shared items, so assessment is for all, right enough!

If you want to join the Assessment community, you’ll find the home page at http://bit.ly/assesshome on Glow. The community hashtag is #assess.

 You’ll find a range of online professional learning communities at http://bit.ly/plcommunity and do please drop us a line plsupport@educationscotland.gov.uk

September 26th, 2012

Think we are all bird-brained? Think again!

Dawn Adams

Comments: none Tags: Tags: RSPB Scotland
 : Categories CPD, Curriculum for Excellence, National Groups, Outdoor Learning, Pupils

RSPB Scotland is now on Glow!

We’re passionate about wildlife and wild places, and getting kids excited in the natural world is one of our top priorities! We’re the largest wildlife conservation charity in Europe (with the largest wildlife club for children in the world), and united with our one million members we are a strong voice speaking out for nature.

We’re eager to help teachers understand why outdoor learning is important and how it fits seamlessly into Curriculum for Excellence. We’ve researched the wide benefits to children of being connected to nature (download our Every Child Outdoors report), and all of our work – across all ages and stages – is linked to the Curriculum. Not only do we teach children about Scotland’s amazing natural heritage, we can help you understand how to engage your pupils in the world around them through CPD sessions.

In Scotland we have seven Living Classrooms, which are our outdoor learning centres based on RSPB reserves. We also visit schools to help them develop their wildlife-friendly school grounds or to support their Eco-Schools work. We have over 20 youth groups dotted around the country, and we’re even official John Muir Award providers!

At the end of the day, our world will be richer in nature when we all have a connection to it, and appreciate the amazing lessons it offers us. The opportunities to engage with us are truly endless. Come and take a look at our new Glow group here, give us a call, or email us at educationscotland@rspb.org.uk. We’d really love to hear from you!

September 26th, 2011

Pupils’ Common Room – bursting with resources for pupils

ggallacher

Comments: none Tags:  : Categories Glow, Learner Resources, Mathematics, National Groups, Pupils, Technologies, Uncategorized

It’s great to see so many pupils across Scotland using the Pupil Area on the national site within Glow. The area is full of great resources and is now one of the more popular areas in Glow. Join in by logging in to the Glow National Site

For those interested in the designing of computer games you can have a look behind the scenes at some game design companies including Denki and Honeyslug. These video resources have been created by Education Scotland and some have been made available with kind permission of the companies. These should inform and inspire budding game designers, they also explicitly demonstrate that you don’t have to be a programmer to be involved in making computer games.

Here are just some of the resources available:

September 2nd, 2011

Screening Shorts – New Moving Image Education Resource

GerryQ

Comments: none Tags: Tags: CfE, CPD, Creative Scotland, Education Scotland, English, Expressive Arts, film, Glow, Glow Groups, Learning and Teaching Scotland, Literacy, media literacy, moving image education, National glow groups, video
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Expressive Arts, Glow, Glow Groups, Learner Resources, Literacy, Media Literacy, Moving Image Education, National Groups

The team is currently busy working on Screening Shorts, a major new online resource to help teachers exploit moving image education in the classroom.

Developed by Creative Scotland and Education Scotland, Screening Shorts will be unveiled at SLF 2011, 21-22 Spetember 2011.

The resource will provide:

• Approximately 50 downloadable short films, free to Glow users
• Film tutorials explaining the core concepts of film language
• Lesson examples in film format showing how short films can be used for a wide variety of classroom activities
• A link to CPD opportunities and activities for teachers wishing to explore how to use moving image across Curriculum for Excellence
• A gateway to the growing Moving Image Education online community on Glow.

Watch this space for more information before and during SLF 2011…

August 14th, 2011

Glow National Site refresh

pcurrie

Comments: 4 Comments » Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow, Local authorities, National Groups, Uncategorized

With the new school term comes a new national site for Glow. It’s clean and fresh and there are a good few new resources and groups that users are sure to enjoy. We wanted a site that featured links for all users, so we’ve taken away some of the links that were just for staff and they can now be found in the national staff area, instead.

Glow TV will be a huge part of what we do in the coming year, so the new site features prominent links to both the full schedule and a monthly calendar, as well as a link to the schools’ channel page that explains how schools can get involved. In addition to that, we have an area devoted to showcasing local authority Glow groups and blogs and we welcome suggestions from LA’s keen to share their work with users around Scotland.

We will be launching a new Education Scotland blog in the coming weeks and each team will have a category to showcase its work, with the Glow groups for each CfE team being used to store materials. For that reason, we have taken away the links to CfE subject groups for the moment. These will be replaced very soon with links to the blog categories for each team/ subject area. For the moment, national groups can, of course, be accessed by clicking the ‘all national groups’ link.

We are confident that users will like the new site and appreciate the importance of having a national site that is appropriate for all users. In saying that, we welcome suggestions for improvements, so please feel free to comment on the new design and let us know what you think.

August 11th, 2011

Explore the past and explain the present with Whose Town?

nstewart

Comments: none Tags:  : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Edinburgh City, Learner Resources, National Groups, Social Studies

Whose Town? is an innovative resource for teaching social studies. It is a fun and interactive digital resource which brings Edinburgh’s history to life. It has been made available to all Glow users and can be found in the Whose Town? Glow Group, you can follow the link from here or from the National Site.

It is built on the City of Edinburgh’s heritage collections and is linked to the Curriculum for Excellence second, third and fourth levels.

Whose Town? looks at Edinburgh and Scotland’s past from 1850s to the 1950s through the eyes of people who lived there. There are 14 lives to discover who lived in Victorian times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and in the Fifties. Archival material is collected in a digital box and hidden in an attic for pupils to uncover and examine. Each life is captured at a particular point in history, creating a snapshot of their life: a Life in a Box.

Discover how life was for Levi, a destitute and orphaned boy in late Victorian Edinburgh or learn about Robert Louis Stevenson, a young writer studying at Edinburgh University, but destined to travel the world. Learn how nine year old Bessie became the youngest Suffragette or uncover Italian Luca’s story as he established an ice cream business in Musselburgh. Nancy tells what life was like as an evacuee in the country and then as a schoolgirl in a city at war. Hear a first hand account from Hugh about his time working on Edinburgh’s trams in the Fifties or the early days of television from Bill.

There are over 450 unique and original documents for teachers and pupils to explore. Maps, newspaper articles, photographs, objects, documents, video and audio clips, and the bits and bobs that everyone collects are all used to bring each person’s history to life. Whose Town? also contains a wealth of support materials for teachers from lesson plans to ideas on how to use archival materials in the classroom.

Whose Town? is a Heritage Lottery Funded project. It was developed by Edinburgh City Libraries in collaboration with Edinburgh Museums and Galleries and Edinburgh City Archives, and has been supported by many partner organisations.

For more information contact the Digital and Information Team at Central Library in Edinburgh on 0131 242 8047. You’ll also find a wide range of supporting material on Edinburgh City Libraries, Museums and Galleries’ online image library, Capital Collections.

July 26th, 2011

Glow TV

pcurrie

Comments: 2 Comments » Tags: Tags: CfE, CPD, Edinburgh International book Festival, Education Scotland, Glow, Glow Featured, Glow Meet, Glowscotland, glowtv, Scotland, Scottish Book Trust
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Early Years, Events, Expressive Arts, Glow, Glow Meet, Health and Wellbeing, Learner Resources, Literacy, Local authorities, Mathematics, modern languages, Moving Image Education, National Groups, Pupils, Religious and Moral Education, research, Sciences, Social Studies, Technologies, Uncategorized

Glow TV is our way of bringing the National Glow Meets to you from the one, easy to find, place. Launching for the start of the new term, we have a major schedule of ‘programmes’ planned for the coming session, including, hopefully, a whole series of programmes on topics such as: CfE, SQA, Glow, Glowing Thursdays, World of Work Wednesdays, Creativity, Games Design and Moving Image Education.

This is, of course, in addition to the many exciting events we already broadcast through Glow, such as the author events from the Scottish Book Trust and Edinburgh Book Festival, as well as those hugely popular one-offs like the Dr Who event and the NASA astronauts one, for example. All of these Glow national events will now be accessed through the one central place, Glow TV.

We are now using new software for Glow Meet (Adobe Connect) and this software allows us access to a recording of a Glow Meet, instantly from within Glow. That got us thinking that we could really develop the idea of Glow Meets further and offer a kind of ‘Watch Again’ facility, a bit like the online efforts of the major TV channels. Okay, so we don’t have the equipment or resources that the major TV channels do, but we have created an area in Glow that provides users with a schedule and allows users the opportunity to add programmes to their own, personal, schedule when they sign-up for events.

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.

It is hoped that a lot of the programmes we bring you will include live debate/discussion on important topics in Education, as well as many online training programmes.We have managed to procure a little room in Education Scotland’s Optima office in Glasgow and turn it into our very own Glow TV studio, which even has a couch and a coffee table, so that our presenters look like true TV professionals in the making!

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.

June 30th, 2011

New Resource in Glow

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: none Tags: Tags: Bank of Scotland, banknotes, bawbees, beads, Museum on the Mound
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Glow, National Groups, Pupils

Where was tea once used as money?
Why do we use coins?
What can you find on a banknote?
How do banks keep cash safe?

Find the answers to all of these questions in Glow’s new resource Beads, Bawbees and Banknotes!

Beads, Bawbees and Banknotes is an interdisciplinary resource about MONEY, produced by the Museum on the Mound in Edinburgh.

It takes the form of five Powerpoint presentations with associated video clips, and is intended for flexible use by teachers and pupils.

Please feel free to save, edit and adapt the presentations for use in the classroom, and print off images for study and display purposes.

The resource is aimed loosely at upper primary pupils. However, it can be adapted for any age group or level, and has potential as a transitional tool.

In addition a disc with folders of high-resolution images and other additional material will allow you to study the design of coins, banknotes and old savings adverts more closely. This disc will be available from the Museum on the Mound – info@museumonthemound.com shortly or visit their website Museum on the Mound.

Beads, Bawbees and Banknotes will be a valuable addition to any Financial Education work that you undertake in the new term.

May 16th, 2011

Cooking Live in Glow!

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: none Tags: Tags: Cardomom Cookies, Iraq, Simple Acts
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Events, Glow, Glow Meet, Health and Wellbeing, National Groups, Pupils

The season of Simple Acts continues on Wednesday the 18th May at 11am. Why not join us to learn more about the Simple Act of ‘Cooking a Dish from Another Country’?

Tickle your taste buds with new sensations as they cook a dish from Iraq, with the special ingredient of Cardomom. Follow step by step as you too make Iraqi Cardomom Cookies. The scent of a country can be realised through its food, so let the smell fill the air and enjoy the cookies.

The full recipe is available in the Simple Acts Glow Group when you sign up so you can cook along with Victoria Beesly or watch and try cooking the lovely cookies later on. Join us and find out more not only about cooking delicious cookies and the story behind their original creation but also about the country that they come from!

Sign up and join us on Wednesday 18th May in the Simple Acts Glow Group.

May 2nd, 2011

Working on the River Clyde

Jennifer McDougall

Comments: none Tags: Tags: Inverclyde, River Clyde, Tall Ships, WoWW
 : Categories Career Opportunities and Pathways, Curriculum for Excellence, Glow, Glow Meet, Inverclyde, National Groups, Pupils

This WOWW event will demonstrate some of the employment opportunities that exist in riverside and coastal communities and the variety of work that can be accessed in the maritime and shipping industry as well as demonstrating how to maximise the benefits of the water for all communities.

Inverclyde’s location has also enabled the area to host a range of water based events in the last twenty years and a key employment role within Inverclyde Council is Events Management. In July 2011, Inverclyde will welcome around 60 Tall Ships to the James Watt Dock for a four day event and today’s guests represent companies involved in the day to day activities of Inverclyde’s maritime and shipping industry and also have a key role in ensuring that this event goes smoothly.

Our speakers for this event will provide an overview of their jobs and also give pupils an sense of how their work relates to the Tall Ships Event.

Captain Ron Bailey is Clydeport’s Harbour Master at the Ocean Terminal
Helen Drummond is Inverclyde Council’s Events Manager and the Project Manager for the Tall Ships Event
Also attending will be a River Pilot, Kenny MacLeod from RNLI and Peter Stewart Coastguard Sector Manager for the area from Largs to Lochgilphead with responsibility for operations during the forthcoming Tall Ships Event.

Sign up and join us on Wednesday May 11th from 2-3pm in the World of Work Wednesday Glow Group.