GLOW GLOW and more GLOW!

Yesterday, I arranged a very last minute glow session with a few East Lothian 'Glow' colleagues. Initially, Dave R, Brian C and I decided to meet so that we could explore the glow portal further. After a few skype chats and a couple of emails on Monday night, our trio developed into a small gathering. By chance, Ollie B, David G, Ewan Mc and Paul Smyth (RM) were available to join us. This was great. From 4-615pm we explored the portal (I am sure we would have spent even more time together, but the portal is taken offline during the week after 6pm). During our informal gathering, we investigated the use of HTML, flickr badges and, of course, talked non-stop about glow (It was great!!)

Today, Paul returned for more glow feedback. He joined my INT1 class for our first glow ‘Biology’ lesson. He observed the lesson and activities. More importantly, he was able to chat to the pupils about their experiences and views.

My INT1 pupils have been working on their 'Health and Technology' projects for three months now (2 year INT1 Course, replacing SG Science at Knox). If the accommodation is available, we spend one period every one to two weeks in the ICT suites. They have created an array of fantastic slide shows that they can now share and comment on within the trial portal. We plan to give a presentation, around Christmas, to a member of management and any staff who are free at the time. This proved to be a fantastic experience for the pupils and myself two years ago (the first Intermediate 1 cohort to pass through Knox)

We did encounter a few more problems today, the majority involving the pupils uploading their own documents. Glow has a ‘banned words’ policy. When I set up the glow group for the class, I forgot to change this setting. Glow has about five settings for filtering words:


Full filter
RMPS allowed
Biology allowed
PSE allowed
No filter

As a Biologist, I am sure you can imagine, many of the words that we use are banned. One particular case today was ‘body fat’. This is a physiological measurement that we study during this unit. I would have tried to alter the filter had time allowed.

My pupils are really enjoying this exciting experience (So am I as you have probably guessed!).

Dave and I are still in the midst of writing a feedback report for RM. The experiences of Today and last night have brought attention to a few more ‘glow usability’ issues. We will submit our report along side Leeann McMillan (Kings Meadow Primary school) towards the end of this week.

I would like to thank Paul Smyth for visiting today (and last night). I hope our lesson provided useful feedback.

Thank you to all of my East Lothian colleagues who popped in last night. I felt our seesion was very useful. I would also like to thank my Biology class for being fantastic ambassadors for Knox Academy.

(blogger.com is, yet again, not uploading JPEGs for me. I am very angry......VERY ANGRY!!).

I will try and post images later.