Glow Portal Training Guide - Firefox

Glow Portal Training Guide
Glow Portal
Training Guide
Firefox version
Author: Glow Team
Doc Ref: GC329
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Ref: GC329
Glow Portal Training Guide
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................... 3
Tutorial 1 – Getting Started .......................................................................... 6
Logging on to Glow ..................................................................... 6
Navigating the Glow portal........................................................... 8
Tutorial 2 – Navigating Glow....................................................................... 14
Staff Home .............................................................................. 14
School site............................................................................... 16
Local Authority site ................................................................... 18
National site ............................................................................ 18
Glow Groups............................................................................................. 19
My Glow................................................................................................... 20
Changing pupil passwords .......................................................................... 21
Changing your profile ................................................................................ 25
Logging off ............................................................................................... 27
Author: Glow Team
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Glow Portal Training Guide
Introduction
This booklet provides an overview of the Glow portal and its potential use in
learning and teaching. It will provide you with information on how to navigate the
Glow portal and outline some of the different areas you can use. It includes an
overview of:
•
Logging on to the Glow portal
•
Navigating around the Glow portal using the left-hand navigation bar and
other links
•
The different areas of the portal including Staff home, School site, Local
Authority site, National site, Glow groups and My Glow (personal site)
•
The tools within areas of the Glow portal e.g. web parts such as ‘Latest news’
Glow is web-based and can be used wherever and whenever users have access to
an internet connection. Each Glow user has their own unique username and
password, which gives access to information and resources appropriate to the
user’s role, thus, a pupil’s access to Glow will differ from staff users.
Please note that this guide has been written using Internet Explorer 7 on a PC
and some of the screen shots may vary slightly from the version you are using. It
will provide an overview of the Glow portal from a staff user’s perspective.
What is the Glow portal?
A portal is a web site that acts as a gateway providing users with access to a
variety of related sources of information, resources and applications. The Glow
portal provides teachers, support staff, pupils, parents, local authority staff and
other stakeholders with anytime, anywhere access to online educational resources
and tools.
The Glow portal provides various ways in which users can communicate and
collaborate. It is the hub into which many other applications and services can be
integrated. Some of the available tools include:
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Glow Portal Training Guide
Email, Instant Messaging, Chat, Discussion Boards, Web Conferencing (including
whiteboards and application sharing), Web Hosting, Secure File Transfer, MIS
data views and Video Streaming.
Why use the Glow portal?
Use of the Glow portal has benefits for all who
participate in the learning and teaching process.
Users can share ideas and knowledge, helping
to provide a more stimulating and engaging
educational experience. The opportunity to use
integrated tools in a single environment will
enhance the learning and teaching process.
The Glow portal provides a set of integrated tools in one environment with wide
ranging benefits for a variety of users. It can help to:
•
Enable increased communication and collaboration between local authorities,
schools, teachers, pupils, parents, the wider learning community and beyond
•
Provide a coherent and consistent environment for accessing data and sharing
learning resources within schools, as well as between schools, the local
authority and nationally
•
Facilitate the sharing of best practice and collaboration on learning resources
for the benefit of all schools and teachers across Scotland
•
Give teachers and pupils a personalised view of their online resources through
a simple interface that provides anytime, anywhere access to communication
tools
•
Provide access to a wealth of resources and services using a single sign on
•
Support children and young people in their learning from any location and as
they move between locations
•
Allow learners to work at their own pace and support a range of learning
styles
•
Motivate and engage users
•
Break down geographical, social, denominational and disciplinary barriers to
learning
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Glow Portal Training Guide
•
Allow parents to actively participate in their children's education
•
‘Push’ specific information out to users according to their roles, interests and
group memberships
•
Provide a set of integrated tools to enhance learning and teaching
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Glow Portal Training Guide
Tutorial 1 – Getting Started
The purpose of this tutorial is to provide an overview of how to access and
navigate the Glow portal. In this tutorial you will find out about:
•
Logging on to Glow
•
Navigating the Glow portal
•
Changing your theme
Logging on to Glow
1.
Open your web browser and in the address bar enter the Glow web address:
https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk. The Glow log on screen will appear.
2.
Type in your username and password.
3.
Click on the arrow. Depending upon your browser settings, a security alert
may appear informing you that you are about to enter a secure site.
4.
If this alert does appear, click OK. The first time you log on you will be
prompted to set a new password.
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Your new password must have a minimum of 1 lower case character(s), a
minimum of 1 non alphanumeric character(s) and a minimum length of 8
characters.
5.
Type in your old password.
6.
Enter a new password.
7.
Retype your new password.
8.
Click the arrow. The password management screen will appear.
9.
Click on Click here to continue.
10. Retype your username.
11. Type in your new password.
12. Click the arrow. An Acceptable Use Policy will appear. Read the policy and
then click Accept.
You will only be prompted to change your password and accept the Terms
and Conditions the first time you log on.
For information on changing pupil passwords after they have logged on for
the first time please refer to page 21.
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Navigating the Glow portal
When you first log on to the Glow portal you will arrive at what is referred to as
your ‘role based site’. A pupil will have their own Pupil home and members of
staff at a school will have their own Staff home. Every Glow user will be able to
access specific information and have different permissions according to their role.
Role: every user of the portal is allocated one or more roles to control which
parts of the portal they can access and which tasks they can carry out.
Every establishment incorporates separate sites for each of these roles, and each
role has access to the relevant role site (for example, teachers have access to the
teacher site. Pupils have access to the pupil site and so on). A person can have
different roles at different establishments. For example, a teacher might have the
teacher role at the school where they work and the parent role at the school their
children attend.
Permissions: when you use the portal, you only see the sites you have access to
and are only permitted to carry out the functions for which you have the
necessary rights. On some sites, you may only be able to view information, whilst
on others you can upload and contribute information. For some sites, you may
have administrator responsibilities.
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When you first log on you will arrive at your ‘Staff home’ page (a pupil will arrive
at ‘Pupil home’ when they log on).
Example of Staff home
Left-hand
navigation
bar
The left-hand navigation bar will help you access different areas of the Glow
portal. There are various ‘themes’ for the portal that a user can choose, therefore
the navigation bar may vary in colour or layout, but it can always be found on the
left-hand side of the screen and functions in the same way. The left-hand
navigation bar contains links to the pages available to you.
Left-hand navigation bar:
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To let you know which area you are currently using, the navigation bar indicates
this by underlining or highlighting words or icons.
When you are using Staff home it may resemble the images below:
To navigate to another area of the portal, click on the name or icon. For example,
to go to the School site, click on Forthview (your school should appear here).
The default theme for Glow staff users is shown below. There is a choice of six
themes. For the purposes of working through this booklet you may wish to
change your theme to Theme 6.
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Changing Theme
To change the theme (colour and layout) of the Glow portal:
1.
Scroll to the bottom of your screen.
2.
Click Change theme. The Change theme menu will appear.
Drop-down
arrow
3.
Click the drop-down arrow and click to select your theme. Choose Theme 6 if
you would like your view of the Glow portal to match the rest of the screen
shots in this booklet.
4.
Click Apply. The new theme will appear.
Left-hand
navigation
bar
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The left-hand navigation can give you access to the following areas:
This area provides you with access to information that is
relevant to you in your role. It can contain news, a summary of recently made
teaching plans and pupil assignments, an area to change your Glow settings and
your Inbox with notification of any new emails.
Glow learn provides you with access to the Glow Virtual
Learning Environment. Glow Learn provides teachers and pupils with anytime,
anywhere access to digital teaching and learning resources. It enables teachers to
find resources, build courses and lessons, and then use them with pupils.
Teachers can track pupil progress on completing work.
Timetables can display a teacher’s timetable or Cover Rota.
There is a utility to publish who will be covering lessons when teachers are
unavailable and to create a Duty Rota, to keep members of staff up to date on
their current duties. This link will only be available, as default, for secondary staff
and pupils.
This can provide you with a range of information about
individual pupils that you have permission to access, such as their personal
details, parent/guardian details and their timetables.
A site for your establishment (normally the name of your
school).
A site for your local authority.
A site managed at a national level accessible to users from
across Scotland.
A page to show all the Glow groups of which you are a
member.
A personal area to store, manage and organise information
(documents, images, web links and so on).
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These learning materials will support Glow as well as motivate,
inform and inspire staff and pupils to make best use of it. ‘Learning in context’
provides Flash based learning activities that walk a user through Glow tools and
functions. ‘Developing your Skills’ are interactive PDF resources that provide
context and ideas for applying Glow tools.
A link to Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Online Service.
Author: Glow Team
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Tutorial 2 – Navigating Glow
The purpose of this tutorial is to provide information on how to navigate to
different areas of the Glow portal and an overview of each of these areas. In this
tutorial you will find out about:
•
Navigating to Staff home, School site, Local Authority site and National site
•
Using different web parts available on Staff home
•
Using different web parts and default pages available on the School site
•
Using the Local Authority site and National site
Staff Home
When you log on to Glow your Staff home is the first page you come to. This is an
area with information relevant to you in your role (a pupil will have a Pupil home,
a member of staff will have a Staff home).
To access Staff home at any time, click on Staff home on the left-hand
navigation bar.
Latest news
web part
Your Staff home is made up from a number of
web parts. Web parts contain chunks of related
information, usually displayed in a box on a
web page with a title. An example of a web part
is
‘Latest
news’,
which
contains
summary
information on a number of news items. Items
within web parts often link to other areas within
Glow.
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Latest news web part: news
relevant to you in your role
LTS Education
News web part
Within the ‘Latest news’ section you will be able to view news which has been
targeted to you from school level, authority level or national level enabling you to
always keep up-to-date from your Staff site. (Targeted news is information that is
selectively aimed at particular audiences, for example, social studies teachers,
eco school group).
Typically the Staff home will contain the following web parts:
•
Latest news: This contains summary information of news items that have
been targeted at you from your school site, your local authority site, the
national site and any number of Glow Groups of which you are a member of at
these different levels
•
LTS Education News Service: This displays links to education news provided
by Learning and Teaching Scotland
•
Inbox: This web part will only be present if you have Glow mail. When it is
present, it shows the number of new messages in your inbox and gives you
quick access to your Glow mail account
•
Glow settings: In this web part you can change your view of Glow, change
your password, amend your own profile and change other users’ passwords (if
you have the correct permissions)
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•
Courses to teach: The Glow Learn ‘Courses to teach’ web part lists courses
that a teacher is teaching. It is a summary of some of the activity that is
happening in Glow Learn. Glow Learn provides teachers and pupils with
anytime, anywhere access to digital teaching and learning resources. It
enables teachers to find resources, build courses and lessons, and then use
them with pupils. Teachers can track pupil progress on completing work
•
Assignments to review: this web part shows a summary of some of the
activity in Glow Learn. It lists assignments that a teacher has given to classes
and individual pupils, and enables the teacher to monitor pupil progress. Click
'Show all' to open a Glow Learn window and display all assignments that are
waiting for you to review
Glow Messenger: this can be launched from a link at the top of any screen when
using the Glow portal. It is an electronic messaging service that allows you to
exchange text messages with connected parties in real time. You can send and
receive instant messages and view presence information which shows whether
people whom you want to contact are online and available for instant messaging.
School site
To access your School site click on the name of your establishment on the lefthand navigation bar.
The School site will usually be referred to with the name of your school or
establishment e.g. Forthview. It provides general information for everyone at
your establishment: news, what's on, useful links to web sites, contacts, shared
documents and so on. Your Glow administrator will determine much of the
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content of your establishment site, which should be appropriate to all members of
your establishments (no sensitive information should be published here).
Your school site has a default set of web parts and web pages too. However, your
own establishment’s site may look slightly different to this because the layout you
see is determined, in part, by local administrators at local authority and
establishment level.
Web
parts
The pages in the site appear as tabs across the top of the page. Click on these
tabs to switch between pages.
Default web pages on the school site
•
Noticeboard: This can display web parts such as News, Image, Useful links
and What’s on. All of this information should be relevant to members of that
school
•
Calendar: A calendar can be available on an establishment site. This contains
information on events that are relevant to the whole school or establishment.
If you have Administrator or Contributor permissions for the relevant site, you
can add, edit and delete calendar entries
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•
Documents: This is an area where useful documents can be stored and shared
across an establishment. You can store any type of document: text files,
image files, spreadsheets and so on
•
Glow groups: They are online communities of people with shared interests.
Glow groups can provide opportunities for users to communicate and share
information using a variety of tools available to them. Members can share
news, documents and so on, just as on other sites. Using the Discussions tab,
they can also hold online discussions. These groups could be academic or
social and be available across Scotland at school, local authority and national
level
Local Authority site
This is a site for your local authority. It is normally controlled by a Glow
administrator and can provide information relevant to all members of your
authority. Glow groups at this level can be useful for an audience from multiple
establishments in the authority allowing them to share information e.g.
Active Schools Co-ordinators Glow Group: This could be used by Active Schools
co-ordinators from across the authority to share files and information relating to
their roles. They could collaborate using the communication tools such as
Discussion boards and Glow Meet (Glow’s web conferencing tool).
Probationer Teachers Glow Group: This could be used to provide probationers
with relevant news and update them on events specific to them. Discussion
boards or Glow Chat (Glow’s chat tool) could be used to encourage sharing of
best practice.
National site
This is a site managed at a national level and is accessible to users from across
Scotland. It is an area that can be used to provide information relevant to a wide
range of users. Glow groups at this level could be used to enhance collaboration
between authorities, schools, learners and teachers from across Scotland e.g.
Glow Group for A Curriculum for Excellence: This could be used as an area to
promote discussions on how A Curriculum for Excellence is being implemented
across various authorities and schools. Up to date information on progress can be
provided to the relevant audience and related resources can be shared using the
Document Store.
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Glow Groups
You can access Glow groups from various places on the Glow portal.
1.
Click on My Glow groups on the left-hand navigation bar.
This shows a list of Glow groups that you are a member of across the portal.
The list includes Glow groups and sub-sites that you are a member of at
school, local authority and national level.
or
2.
Click on Glow groups at the top of the page on the School site, Local
authority site or National site.
Glow groups tab
This shows a list of all Glow groups that you are a member of and those that
you are not a member of at that level.
To find out more information about using and creating Glow groups please refer
to Glow Groups Training Guide.
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My Glow
To access your personal space click on My Glow on the left-hand navigation bar.
My Glow: You can use this personal area to store whatever information you
require: documents, images, links to useful web sites, contacts and so on. You
have administrator rights for your own personal site, so have full control over it.
Nobody else can see your personal site unless you grant them access. You can
change the look of your personal site by removing or adding different parts and
pages.
To find out more about using My Glow please refer to My Glow Training Guide.
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Changing pupil passwords
Teachers and other staff may be able to change the profiles and passwords of
pupils in their school (this is only available for some users). To do this:
1.
Click on Staff home on the left-hand navigation bar.
2.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
3.
In the Glow settings web part click on Change other user’s profile. Note:
This link is only visible to users if they have the necessary rights.
4.
The ‘manage people’ screen will open in a new window.
You can now search the national directory to find the details of the pupil
whose password you would like to change.
As default you will be searching using the ‘Display Name’ of the pupil and it
should return any records that contain that name.
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Click on the drop-down arrows if you would like to change the search criteria
from ‘Display Name’ or to search for records that ‘exactly match’ or ‘begins
with’ the data you have entered in the search box.
5.
Type in the name of the pupil you would like to search for then click on the
green arrow.
The user details found in the search will be displayed.
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6.
Click on the name of the pupil whose details you would like to change. Their
details will be displayed.
7.
Click on edit at the top or bottom of the screen to change their details.
8.
Scroll down to the password area. Type in a new password then retype this
password.
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9.
Click on save at the top or bottom of the screen.
10. Click OK. The new password will now be saved.
11. If you have finished using the ‘manage people’ screen you can now close this
browser window. Confirm the close if necessary. Your Glow ‘Staff home’ page
should still be active in another browser window if you wish to continue using
the Glow portal.
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Changing your profile
When you are using the Glow portal you may wish to change your own profile
using ‘Glow settings’.
1.
Click on Staff home on the left-hand navigation bar.
2.
Scroll down to the ‘Glow settings’ web part and click on Change profile.
3.
Your profile will be displayed. Click on edit to change it.
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4.
You can change your password and other details in this area.
5.
After making any changes to your profile click on save at the bottom or top
of the screen.
6.
If you are prompted with a message to tell you the changes will be saved,
click on OK.
7.
If you have finished using the ‘manage people’ screen you can now close this
browser window. Your Glow ‘Staff home’ page should still be active in another
browser window if you wish to continue using the Glow portal.
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Logging off
1.
Click on the Log off button at the top right hand corner of the screen.
2.
Close all browser windows.
It is very important to do this, particularly if you are using Glow from a
computer in a public location, as this will prevent anyone else from accessing
potentially sensitive information.
It is not enough to simply navigate away from Glow to another website since
your logon details will still be active and someone else could access Glow
without needing to log on.
For security reasons you will be automatically logged off Glow in the following
situations:
•
If you are logged on to Glow but leave it unused for 20 minutes
•
If you are logged on for four hours (the maximum session time)
In both cases you will be prompted to enter your username and password in
order to continue.
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