Welcome back!
To help with accessing the latest Glow guidance and news, we have pulled together this Back to School with Glow news page for August 2025.
This page has been divided into key areas including, Microsoft, Google, Blogs, National Apps and Glow, to hopefully make it easier to find useful information.
You will be able to find news items regarding,
- Microsoft Teams meetings where there are a number of new features available in Glow to support accessibility and managing meetings more efficiently,
- Google NotebookLM that’s now been deployed as a new core service for all staff,
- Adobe Express for Education use cases from Banff Academy.
Please click on any of the links below to find out more.
Microsoft
New Features in Microsoft Teams Meetings
Microsoft Spotlight: Learning Accelerators
Microsoft Learning Accelerators are a set of tools baked into Microsoft 365 for Education, designed to help educators personalise learning for every student. We have pulled out three links below where you can find out about the opportunities these tools bring to the classroom.
Learning Accelerators
Main home landing page for Microsoft’s Learning Accelerators that seamlessly integrate into familiar tools like Teams, OneNote, and PowerPoint, making learning smoother for everyone.
Reading Progress
Designed to support reading development, but with a specific focus on reading fluency in students. It’s primarily aimed at educators and works within Microsoft Teams for Education.
Reflect (Learning Accelerator)
Focused on promoting wellbeing and emotional learning, educators can design quick, engaging prompts for students to reflect on their emotional state, learning experience, or any relevant topic.
Google Vids now available within Glow
Google Vids is a video creation and editing application that is part of the Google Workspace suite. It’s designed to help users create professional-looking informational videos without needing extensive video editing experience.
Use Gemini to create illustrated storybooks
You can now use Gemini to craft personalised, illustrated storybooks about any topic with read-aloud narration. You can create a story by simply describing the storybook you want in a prompt or by uploading a picture.
Gemini in Google Classroom
Gemini in Google Classroom is a suite of generative AI tools available to educators. Generative AI is an emerging type of artificial intelligence that can generate new and unique content, rather than simply analysing or acting on existing data.
Google Spotlight: NotebookLM
We are delighted to let you know that after receiving some user requests, and carrying out internal testing, we are now enabled NotebookLM as a core service for all staff within Glow Google tenancies. Find out more via the dedicated links below.
NotebookLM
Main home landing page for NotebookLM. Here you will find information about the key features within this tool that could be used to save time. The page also outlines potential benefits and has an overview video for getting started.
NotebookLM Video and Audio Overviews
Google have now introduced Video Overviews.
Google have also updated the Audio Overview experience with the ability to generate multiple Audio Overviews in a single notebook.
NotebookLM Quick Start Guide
To support with getting started with NotebookLM, we have created a Quick Start Guide that’s specifically aimed at colleagues accessing NotebookLM via Glow. Find out more about the wealth of content you can create.
Blogs
FINAL CALL – Glow Blogs Deletion Deadline Approaches
If your Glow Blog has been archived and marked for deletion, this is your final chance to keep it. The deadline for requests is 21 August 2025. Click below to read more.
Block Editor
Block Editor provides a modern, easy to use interface that allows you to simply click and drag blocks to build your pages. These blocks provide a wealth of options that includes various rich media layouts.
National Apps
Adobe Express at Banff Academy, Aberdeenshire
Colleagues from Education Scotland visited Banff Academy to find out how they were using Adobe Express for Education via Glow. Find out how they were using it in Computing Science, business Studies and their Learning Hub.
Scran is Retiring
Following the launch of trove.scot in February 2025, Historic Environment Scotland are retiring some of their web services.
Find out how the new platform is bringing together their diverse collections in one convenient place.
Adobe Express: Educator eBook with 35 lesson plans
Adobe Express for Education colleagues have been working on a fabulous interactive eBook that contains 35 lesson plans that are mapped to Curriculum for Excellence.
Glow
Back to School Glow Housekeeping
The start of a new Academic Year is a perfect time to carry out some digital housekeeping in your online environment. Deleting old files, manual accounts, teams and groups, supports with increasing productivity, improves security and gives you peace of mind that your digital content is up to date.
Sign up to our Glow newsletter
Stay up to date with latest news from the Glow Team by signing up to our popular newsletter. This means that our quarterly Back to School with Glow newsletter will be sent directly to the email address of your choice.
Glow Password Guidance
To help children and young people stay safe online we want to make sure they know what makes a strong password when using Glow. This post has useful links and a helpful video.
Professional Learning Community Spotlight
Check out our news post about the Numeracy and Mathematics Professional Learning Community within Glow. The site contains a wealth of resources and information all easy to access within this one dedicated site.
Numeracy and Mathematics Professional Learning Community
Numeracy and Mathematics Professional Learning Community Looking for ideas and support on Numeracy and Mathematics? Visit our Professional Learning Community site on Glow for news updates, anytime professional learning, ideas for developing mathematical reasoning and lots more. Our Developing Mathematical Reasoning page holds a collection of links to a range of websites offering puzzles, problems,…
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