Jist Haiverin

At the end of the spring term we were able to launch a locally derived Glow Group which follows the work done by class 2bn at Hazlehead academy on the Willie Rodger national Glow project. The site was officially shoved off into the ether by James Park, a pupil in Mrs Scotts 2bn class.

The new glow group serves a number of purposes. It gives the children who took part a local site to celebrate their achievements but it also provides teachers with an example of what kind of things can be done in a glow Group.

We have included some training materials on the site which illustrate how many of the tasks on the site are done so that a teacher (or pupil) can replicate these for themselves. Tasks shown range from the basic - how to create a new Glow Group - to more advanced work like uploading video to Glow. We will be producing and sharing more work like this in the coming months.

Richard

Willie Rodger is a nationally acclaimed artist specialising in the medium of Linocut printing. Over the past 6 weeks he has been working with groups of children in 9 schools throughout Scotland in a project called In the hands of Willie Rodger.  Working through Glow and using Glow groups, discussion boards, chat and video conferencing the children have been able to meet and work with Willie in the creation of their own work. I have been lucky enough to be able to watch the work as it developed at Hazlehead Academy in Aberdeen.

Art department head Theresa Scott selected her S2 class for the project and set them the task of creating character portraits of people in the class. They then studied the techniques on a DVD provided by Willie Rodger. This prepared them for a masterclass with the artist broadcast from his studio through Glow Meet. The pupils were able to watch the artist at work and to engage with him over the video link.

The children then began working on their own linocut pieces and regularly uploaded images of their progress to Glow groups which allowed them to share and comment on their work. Regular Glow chat sessions, moderated by project leader Angela McEwan of Media Matters, enabled the children to discuss their work with peers from around the country. Willie Rodger held a further video session with each school where children were able to individually discuss their own artwork with the renouned artist.

The project culminated in an online launch of an online exhibition of work from all schools involved. Glasgow’s Poet Laureate, Liz Lochhead officially launched the exhibition in a Glow Meet with all schools involved watching and participating. The exhibition can be seen on the Media Matters website and also in the Expressive Arts national Glow group. It is also covered in the Times Educational Supplement.

Early indications are that this was a great success. Pupils and staff really enjoyed the experience and are already asking what is happening next! This was a great example of the power of the communication tools in Glow. We will be putting together more information on how it was done and also hope to replicate the work in local projects.

Richard

At the end of November Andy and I attended the first Glow Learn training session held at the Stirling Management centre. The course is 2 days of intensive learning. Glow Learn is a large subject and the training struggles a bit to cover all aspects. The training team were great though and the whole experience was positive. The Hoff was on top form and the banter from his colleagues kept the experience enjoyable.  The opportunity to meet with colleagues from other schools and authorities was invaluable. There’s not nearly enough of this with Glow. There were 7 of us from Aberdeen - 2 from the central team and 5 mentors from schools. More mentors will attend future sessions.

I think some teachers have been waiting for a VLE and maybe not really getting to grips with the communication aspects of Glow Groups, preferring instead to load the group with resources. Glow learn will fulfil the resource management function adequately and although it doesn’t contain all the functions of a modern VLE, it has the great advantage of being integrated into Glow. Over the next few days we will be putting our heads together discuss how best to support our schools as they roll this out. 

Richard

For a few weeks now we have been waiting patiently while various technical issues around our automatic provisioning of users were sorted out. This morning we got the news we had been hoping for - Glow and our MIS system are finally on speaking terms. We can now move forward with a good number of schools where we have been working with temp logins.
This is great news. Lots of identity matching and password downloading to do now but we are itching to get going.

Richard

In September the BBC launched a new site for streaming video content.  Learning Zone Scotland is a rich archive of audio-visual material for use in the classroom. A wide range of subjects across all age levels is covered and each clip comes complete with a description and suggested uses to help you find the material that best fits your lesson

Read more on Jist Learnin 

Richard

I have been trying to figure out why I find it so difficult to post regularly to the blog. One reason, I have decided, is that it is too wide ranging - I don’t really want to read a blog which leaps about too much so maybe that’s why I don’t want to write like that. Solution - there was a nano (or was it a micro) presentation at teachmeet in AECC which talked about using a family of blogs rather than a single one (sorry - can’t remember who it was!) . The blogs can be given a common theme and navigation provided between them. So that’s what I have done here. In addition to Jist Haiverin which you are reading I have added Jist Glowin and Jist Learnin. There, respectively, you will eventually find our writings on the subjects of Glow and e-learning. Navigation buttons in the headers link the blogs and the themes are slightly different so you know where you are. Nothing in the other two at present but I did say I was going to write more often so …… 

Richard

Just watching Ewen McIntosh signing off from teachmeet.

Good work Ewan

Richard

Culter, Forehill and Kaimhill Schools have all begun Glowing this week.  We look forward to hearing of their progress and hope that more schools will follow quite soon.

Sheila

Here’s a quick pic of Elsie Young presenting Glow
to a large audience of Aberdeen teachers at the
Inset Day on 16th May at the
Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre

Richard

Thanks to all who texted in questions and comments to the Conference Text Line.

As promised here (Click here) are your (unedited) questions and the teams responses.

Also here is a link to the flyer “First Steps with Glow in Aberdeen” which was available at the conference and answers some of the questions posed

Please come back to this page and leave comments here.

Richard