Castlefield Primary's African adventure

Caroline Gibson - Castlefield Primary School

Caroline Gibson: Glow has been good for teaching and learning for me this year, in terms of self- and peer-assessment the children have got really involved with, and I think they found it really good not to have to just talk to each other about how they were working. They have been able to access a lot more information through it and been able to share a lot more information with each other because of it.

Glow Cam (pupil):We’re working on a project about Malawi because one of the teachers, Mrs Gibson went there last year and she’s going again this summer.

Caroline Gibson And the children in this school are really excited about joining up with children in other schools already and because I told them the other day there’s also the possibility of linking possibly with a school in Malawi to do videoconferencing with - that was really exciting for them.

Glow Cam (pupil):I think it’s quite interesting to see about other people in different countries.

Glow Cam (pupil): We’re learning something different, that’s it’s better to know about other children than care about yourself.

Caroline Gibson The children definitely liked going on Glow more than having to write on paper and were really excited that they knew they were doing that instead of writing.  They particularly like using the chat and the discussions, that’s the main thing that they love the most, and they’re really keen to be using the videoconferencing.

Glow Cam (pupil): I’m left handed and any time I write with a pen or something it always smudges; it’s really annoying!  But like with Glow it’s all on the computer and you can’t smudge it on the computer.

They also have a ‘My Glow’ page, so they can have their own page where they can put on their own photos, web links, contacts and things like that on there as well.

Glow Cam (pupil): When you first come on and you put in your start page and you pick your own background, which is like you can get bubbles round it and that.

Glow Cam (pupil): You can look at your pictures and if you are to go onto Mrs Gibson’s, you could see her pictures and see what she’s been writing.

Caroline Gibson A Glow Group is a group set up for a specific purpose, so I had one set up for our African rich task and our electricity topic.  During the African rich task it was really useful to have documents on there because I had saved PDF files of books and I had printed off one copy - that didn’t go very far between the class. Then, when I was able to save it to Glow and all the children could be accessing it at once, we found that really useful in terms of researching and things like that, and I put on other documents and African stories and things that I’d found on the internet. So that saved them from having to do their own web searches.

The other thing that Glow is helping with is joining together teachers throughout Scotland, I think, and having Glow Groups at a national level or a council level now where teachers that don’t know each other can share experiences and share ideas; it’s going to be something that’s really useful in the future.

Glow Cam (pupil): Save paper, get Glow.

Glow Cam (pupil): Get Glow because it’s good fun and it’s easy and you don’t get smudgy if you’re a lefty and you don’t get dirty with it.

 [End of recording]