2. Alex Duff (Emerging Technologies)
CURRENT AND NEW GLOW
RESILIENCE
Transforming lives through learning
3. Resilience and Glow
• What have Local Authroties been asked to do?
• Specific examples of what some Local Authorities have done
• How might the Scottish Government and Education Scotland help
support Local Authorities to take this forward?
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4. LA Requirements
All Local Authorities are required to have in place measures to ensure
continuity of learning for pupils.
• This may be required for
• an individual pupil who is absent due to long-term illness, or
• for all pupils in the event of a school closure due to adverse
weather,
• failure of the school heating system, or
• some other reason.
Several Local Authorities have been looking at Glow as one way of
addressing this.
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5. West Lothian Example
• Primary driver was the need for continuity planning in the event of
non-school attendance
• Also a desire to support pupils more generally.
• The Glow Key Contact for West Lothian met with a small group of
classroom practitioners and a member of the National Glow Team,
to discuss the variety of ways in which they might use Glow for this
• The group was very conscious of the need to minimise the amount
of work that this might involve for teachers
• Group decided to capitalise on existing Glow expertise in schools
• Initial focus being to provide support for pupils approaching SQA
examinations.
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6. What did all WL Secondary Schools do?
• All 11 Secondary schools were asked to identify teachers who:
• were already using Glow with their classes, and
• already had learning and teaching resources held within a Glow
Group, and
• would be willing to open up these Glow Groups to pupils from
across the Authority
• This meant that if, for example, a pupil studying Higher English did
not have access to a Higher English Glow Group within their own
school, they would be able to access one in another school.
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7. How was this all brought together?
• It was then decided that a Glow Group would be created at Local
Authority level, with all pupils and teachers from all schools having
contributor rights.
• Within the Group is a page for each subject, with links on the page
to the existing school based Glow Groups.
• Pupils have reader access to the Groups that are not in their own
school.
• Also on each page is a Document store with learning and teaching
resources, and a Web Links web part with links to useful subject-
specific sites.
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8. ‘I’m Winter Ready!’
• All West Lothian pupils were given ‘I’m Winter Ready’ stickers when:
• They had demonstrated they could log successfully in to Glow,
and
• They demonstrated that they knew where to go in Glow in the
event of a school closure
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9. What provision does West Lothian have?
• Initially at Local Authority level, a supporting blog was created for
pre-school, with various Glow Groups created to collate appropriate
school resources
• This year, all schools are being encouraged to identify their
resources locally
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10. Remote Tuition
• Pupils will be able to receive remote tuition or advice from a teacher
in any school across the Authority using the communication web
parts, since each page also contains a Glow Chat, a Glow Meet and
a Discussion Board.
• Not all subject areas or levels were covered initially, but it was
hoped that the range available would increase as more teachers
became involved.
• Provision has now been extended to lower Secondary and to
Primary pupils.
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18. How successful have these groups been?
• Thankfully, this winter (so far) has not been quite as harsh
• During the main three week school closure, supporting Glow Groups
created for this purpose in West Lothian and Aberdeenshire
registered very close to 1million page impressions.
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19. Virtual Campus
• The value of having a national virtual campus is clear, with many
local authorities declaring high level interest in it
• School-level interest in creation of a national solution has been
significantly less
• Many local authorities have created their own virtual campus,
including
• Highlands, West Lothian, Aberdeen City, Fife, North Ayrshire,…
• A National Virtual Campus forms part of the ICT in Education
Programme, to be ‘live’ for the 2013-2014 academic session
• We are currently advertising for new Development Officers, one of
whom will be assigned to the Virtual Campus
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20. What do we mean by Virtual Campus?
• At a basic level, there are two distinct parts to what we mean when
we discuss a Virtual Campus
• Content
The resources that learners should interact with inside the
campus
• e-facilitator/e-moderator
These are teachers who have mastered the skills of helping
learners to learn remotely through making use of electronic
communications.
• Local VCs focus mainly on content at the moment. It is our vision
that the National VC focuses on both content and facilitation.
• Tiree pupils taught French from Hermitage Academy
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22. 540,000 /1,000,000
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23. 68,300 /540,000
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24. How can SG & ES better support LAs?
• Current Glow
• Issue remains of pupils not knowing login details
• School retains ownership of rolling these out
• Media can be used to direct parents to LA contacts
• Moving forward?
• Encourage parents/carers to ‘sign up’ easily?
• Simplify password reminders – force challenge questions?
• Lessen burden on school admin to automate some tasks?
• Virtual Campus
• Keep visual with Regular updates
• Named person(s)
• Keep it realistic
Transforming lives through learning
All Local Authorities are required to have in place, measures to ensure continuity of learning for pupils. They are required to provide learning and teaching opportunities should a pupil or pupils be unable to attend school. This may be required for an individual pupil who is absent due to long-term illness, or for all pupils in the event of a school closure due to adverse weather, failure of the school heating system, or some other reason. West Lothian has been looking at Glow as one way of addressing this.
There are approximately 1,000,000 accounts have been created. That’s the easy part!
Of those 1,000,000, approximately 540,000 have logged in and made use of the system. Why only about half? We believe the other accounts have been created, but either the login details have not been distributed to the individuals, or the details have been distributed, but not used.
Last week, 68,300 of them made use of Glow.
Half the pupils being told to login during school are choosing to login at home
