Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

June 2009 Volume 7(3)

CILIPS Conference: Schools

A glowing report

Glow, the Scottish Schools Digital Network, has great potential for librarians. Elspeth Scott outlines how it can be used in daily work, for professional development and in supporting pupils and staff. On page 12, Glow’s development is described.

Glow, the Scottish Schools Digital Network, is the first national education network of its kind and has created interest around the world. It is a portal combining communication and collaboration tools and a virtual learning environment.

All 32 of the Scottish Local Authorities have signed up to use Glow and around two thirds of them have already begun implementing it in schools. Although initially including only pupils and staff in schools, Initial Teacher Education institutions are now joining Glow, there is a pilot with an FE College, and HMIE are also using it. Local authorities can decide who they wish to be involved so public library staff could also be included. Some authorities are following a phased roll-out programme but it is possible to request your Glow account before your school is provisioned. A pilot for including parents in Glow is also under way – the Glow community will eventually be very comprehensive.

I was lucky enough to be involved in the very early pilots of Glow where I worked with two science teachers and a first-year class, testing the different elements of the portal and seeing first-hand how enthusiastic pupils were about this way of working, and how Glow allowed staff to integrate a wide variety of approaches and resources in a manageable way. For the last two years I have been seconded as an ICT and eLearning Staff Tutor in Dundee and, as we are an Early Adopter Authority for Glow, a large part of my work has been in developing the use of Glow across the authority.

Glow has been designed as a tool for teaching and learning to support the introduction of a Curriculum for Excellence. I think it offers great opportunities for librarians. We already have skills in locating, evaluating, organising and managing information. We can, by virtue of our position in schools, see the bigger picture and the links possible across the school (and, because we’re pretty good at communicating with each other, between schools and authorities as well); and we have expertise in the skills which pupils and staff will need to make use of all the facilities of Glow. Whether it is called information skills, information literacy or critical literacy, this is a field in which we are the experts. This gives us the chance not only to participate in, but lead developments in education. A number of school librarians are Glow Mentors already and Learning and Teaching Scotland has recognised the crucial role we can play. It has encouraged us in the development of one of the first national Glow groups for staff, and it has suggested to authorities that librarians, getting involved as a group, are very likely to appreciate and use Glow’s potential.

Glow groups are collaborative working environments which include news, ‘what’s on’, web links, document stores and discussion forums, and many other tools can be added as required. For example, Glow Meet, which is a web-conferencing tool incorporating a shared whiteboard and application sharing, and Glow Chat, which allows moderated chat and synchronous discussion. Video and audio files can also be embedded. Although Glow itself does not support blogs and wikis, the web part called the Page Viewer allows them to be run and used through Glow. Glow also includes a more traditional form of VLE, Glow Learn, which allows the organisation of courses and allocation and tracking of work, and is particularly powerful when used as a Learning Space within a Glow Group allowing the integration of the collaboration tools.

There are three main areas in which librarians are likely to use Glow: in their daily work; for professional support and development; and in supporting pupils and staff in their schools. In daily work examples of use might include: using Glow groups for pupil librarians, book clubs, IL development, book reviews, gathering suggestions, getting feedback from users; Glow meet for author or other ‘virtual visits’; Glow Learn in LRC induction; for IL work and to add resource lists directly into relevant courses. Glow Groups are a good way to build communities of professional practice. The national Glow group, and local librarians’ Glow groups (we have been using one in Dundee for over a year) allow the sharing of resources, dissemination of information, discussions of issues of concern and even virtual meetings.

The skills I highlighted earlier put us in a strong position to support our users and to raise our profile and status in our schools and authorities.

Elspeth Scott, Dundee City Council, was speaking on Glow at the CILIPS Conference on 2 June.

More information
The national Glow Group for school librarians Contact Elspeth by Glow Mail: ddescott863@ea.dundeecity.sch.uk

View CILIPS Annual Conference 2009 presentations on Slideshare

Information Scotland Vol. 7(3) June 2009

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.

Last updated: 31-Jul-2009