Online Collaboration Tools in Glow

Online collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce something like a document, presentation, spreadsheet or data or a rich media project using videos and photographs. Collaboration can happen in person or online. Collaboration is a sought after skill for learning, life and work.

Glow gives users access to Microsoft Office 365 and G Suite tools that can be used for collaborating anytime and anywhere learners have an internet connection.

Benefits of online collaboration

Pupil Voice: Every learner can have a voice to express themselves, can contribute to online discussions, ask questions and offer peer support.

Real time multi user editing: Learners can collaborate on documents at the same time and see each other’s changes happening in real time. These changes are also saved automatically as the user types. This allows users the ability to quickly create, share and edit documents with all changes saving in real time. Therefore, no requirement for email documents, saving changes and then emailing back.

Feedback: when a document is uploaded or shared in a collaborative space online there are opportunities for teacher and peer feedback. This can happen live via chat if the users have the document open at the same time. Alternatively, comments can be inserted and responded to.

Reaching all Learners: All learners can collaborate online with access to built in accessibility tools where learners can customise the content for their own needs and requirements – for example, increasing the line spacing to prevent visual crowding, having the text read out loud, highlighting nouns, verbs and adjectives, changing the background page colour and accessing the picture dictionary by clicking on a word they don’t understand.

Social Media: Newsfeeds and conversation areas look like a Blog or Facebook interface which is an ideal secure environment to learn about Social Media, have discussions around online responsible use and online etiquette.

Beyond the Classroom Walls: Learning and collaboration can happen across Scotland, with all learners and educators having access to a Glow account. This opens up opportunities for joint projects between schools, including transition projects.

Find out more about using Glow to collaborate