About Glow

How Glow supports Curriculum for Excellence

Across the world, technology is transforming the way people experience education. Glow will place Scottish education at the front of the revolution. It will enable education authorities, schools and teachers to educate Scottish children and young people to high technological standards. It will also link the national educational community in a powerful communications network - for everyone’s benefit.

Teaching

Together, Glow and Curriculum for Excellence will help us to teach, because:

Glow provides a new way of delivering curriculum guidance and resources which will promote creative learning and teaching

Curriculum for Excellence offers teachers greater freedom to teach in innovative ways for which Glow provides the tools.

Photograph of a pupil using Glow on the sofa

Learning

Together, Glow and Curriculum for Excellence will help us to:

make learning active, challenging and enjoyable
connect the various stages of learning from 3 to 18 through the use of a common range of important services
encourage the development of high levels of accomplishment and intellectual skill
provide a wide range of experiences and achievement of a suitable blend of what has traditionally been seen as academic and vocational
ensure that the assessment tools built into Glow support learning.

Personal choice

Together, Glow and Curriculum for Excellence delivers more choice for everyone.

Both will provide opportunities for children and young people to make appropriate choices to meet their individual interests and needs, leading to successful outcomes.

Glow will empower children and young people by engaging them in independent learning and providing them with direct access to a wide choice of information.

Curriculum for Excellence embraces a wider definition of how and what children should learn and experience and Glow supports this by accommodating different learning styles.

Getting ready to use the new Glow services to deliver Curriculum for Excellence

Communication and collaboration

Both Glow and Curriculum for Excellence are about the ‘how’ of teaching as much as the ‘what’ of teaching.

Our 750,000 learners and 50,000 teachers in almost 3000 schools can have a high-speed broadband connection to Glow. These Glow services will allow our learners and teachers to communicate at any location or time.

Think about a project or lesson you have taught in the last year - how could it have been enhanced by the ability to communicate and collaborate with teachers in another part of the country? What difference would it make if it were easy for learners from different schools and regions of Scotland to meet safely online to work together while learning?

Sharing resources

Together, Glow and Curriculum for Excellence aim to give teachers more freedom to teach in innovative and creative ways. Through Glow you will be able to search for and download lesson plans, content and graphics by subject or by curricular category.

Do you currently share any resources that you have created?
What resources that you have created would you be willing to share with other teachers in the future?
For which areas of the curriculum would you find it helpful to have additional multimedia resources?

Working in groups

GlowGroups are online community interest groups offering members access to a whole range of social and communication tools to support collaborative learning.

What sort of GlowGroups might you want to set up or join? Do you run any school clubs that could use this? Do you belong to any formal or informal groups that could use this service?
Which national groups would you like to see set up for you?
What groups could pupils join or even be allowed to run?
How could you use GlowGroup facilities for CPD?
What could you do in your school to start to consider how Glow services will deliver many of the materials, tools and CPD that will be required to see Curriculum for Excellence become reality?

The values behind Glow

Glow will promote social inclusion and the rights and responsibilities of individuals and communities.

'A Scotland in which every child matters, where every child, regardless of his or her family background, has the best possible start in life'
Scottish Government

The aims of Glow

Glow will support the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence - successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors to society - by enabling pupils to:

learn independently and collectively
access information
research projects
link up with peers across Scotland and across the world
access school and curricular resources.

It will support the four capacities by enabling teachers to:

identify and collate content, courses and tools for their teaching
share ideas and good practice with colleagues elsewhere
engage in online and connected communities of interest
track and monitor their pupils’ progress
undertake necessary administrative functions using efficient technologies.

It will support pupils and teachers by providing:

compositional and publishing tools which can be tailored to the skill levels of a wide variety of users.

Find more information in the Scottish Government publication A Curriculum for Excellence - The Curriculum Review Group.