Copenhagen Connections?

Categories: Geography General
Although I've had a Glow password for some time now, I haven't really used it much. Part of the reason for this lay in the fact that neither the kids nor the staff in my school or authority were using it, and the other reason, to be honest, was the difficulty I found in navigating the site. Since last week, however, I have been itching to try using it in class. The reason for this is due to an invite from Val Adam to participate in a Glow meet for some classes who were learning about the rainforest. I had several difficulties in setting my class machine up to allow participation, and there was also a bit of 'let's try it and see' from the technicians, if I'm honest. We eventually successfully managed to link to Val's school, but unfortunately, not to the zoolab event that we were hoping to, but we did manage to see a succession of trouser legs walking by the webcam!
Anyway, the opportunity to participate in some more Glow meets has come up, and I would love to be in the position to join in with the UN Climate Change conference one ,I know that most of my students accounts have not yet been activated, but I think the power of being able to bring live speakers into the class from organisations such as WWF and Oxfam to talk about real time, real life issues is a huge step forwards for our students in our schools, and lends immediate relevance to the subjects that they are learning about. For that reason, I think it's entirely reasonable that every class tomorrow has a portion of the lesson dedicated to talking about this and giving them the opportunity to prepare their own questions which I can hopefully forward.
I think there is huge scope with glow meet. I have watched with tremendous interest how Dan Roberts
has used twitcam to broadcast to a wide audience. There are lots of tools which I'll continue to use over and above Glow, but Glow meet gives teachers and students the ability to widen their reach, but to do it securely, and I look forward to exploring this in the months to come. If you are a Scottish teacher or are in a Scottish school, the link to the Copenhagen Glow meet can be found here.