Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Quick start guide:
Glow Groups
PC version
Author: Glow Team
Doc Ref: GC065
Page 1 of 31
Ref: GC065
Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................ 3
Prerequisites for this Guide ........................................................ 3
What is a Glow group? .............................................................. 4
Why use Glow groups? .............................................................. 4
Tutorial 1 – Getting Started ....................................................... 5
Log on to Glow......................................................................... 5
Exploring Glow Groups .............................................................. 6
Tutorial 2 – Creating a Glow group ............................................. 9
Adding a news item to your Glow group Noticeboard page ........... 13
Adding a What’s on event to your Glow group Noticeboard ........... 14
Adding a Web link to your Glow group Noticeboard page.............. 16
Adding an image to your Glow group Noticeboard page ............... 17
Adding a discussion to your Glow group Discussions page ............ 17
Contributing to a discussion ..................................................... 19
Uploading documents to your Glow group Documents page .......... 20
Sorting your documents and folders.......................................... 22
Searching For Documents Using Filters ...................................... 23
Editing and deleting documents................................................ 24
Creating Glow Group Sub-Groups ............................................. 25
How to add members to a Glow group....................................... 26
How to delete a Glow group ..................................................... 28
Author: Glow Team
Page 2 of 31
Ref: GC065
Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Introduction
This booklet provides an overview of Glow groups. You will be guided
through the navigation of Glow groups that you are a member of and
through the process of creating and setting up a Glow group.
Glow is web-based and can be used wherever users have access to an
internet connection. During the pilot you will be able to access Glow
from both school and home. 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.
Prerequisites for this Guide
Prior to using this booklet users should have completed Quick start
guide: Glow Portal.
To complete any of the tasks in this guide the user must be logged on
as a user with rights to create Glow groups. These rights are set by the
school Accounts and Services Administrator prior to the tasks in this
booklet being undertaken. All the screen shots in this booklet are
based on Internet Explorer 6 on the PC and glow theme 1. For more
information on setting themes users should refer to Quick start guide:
Glow Portal.
Author: Glow Team
Page 3 of 31
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
What is a Glow group?
Glow Groups can fulfil many different functions within Glow and have
variously been described as:
a meeting place; online communities of people with shared interests; a
virtual classroom; a shared area for learning and collaboration!
Glow groups can be set-up to represent a range of common interests
e.g. standard grade maths classes, all Primary 4 pupils in a school, a
staff literature appreciation group and anything else in-between.
Why use Glow groups?
Creating a Glow group sets up a virtual space in Glow. The Group
space can be used to:
•
house discussions
•
target information to Group members
•
store documents
•
record important events
•
make use of other Glow functionality such as web conferencing and
chat rooms
Only Glow users that are members of a particular Glow group can have
access to that group. Glow Group membership, however, is not
restricted to Glow users from the owning school/establishment. This
allows for the possibility of setting up groups containing pupils and/or
staff from different schools, sectors or even authorities.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Tutorial 1 – Getting Started
In this tutorial you will:
•
log on to Glow
•
navigate to your Glow groups
•
explore a Glow group
Log 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 logon screen will appear.
2.
Enter your username and password into the appropriate boxes.
3.
Click on the arrow icon
4.
If this is the first time that you have logged into Glow, an
or press the Enter key to log in.
acceptable use policy will appear. Please read the policy and then
click on Accept to continue. Your Staff home page will open.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
5.
This is the default theme, or look, for Glow staff users. All screen
shot images used in this quick start guide will use this theme. If
you wish, you can change theme by:
•
scrolling to the bottom of the screen,
•
clicking on Change Theme,
•
choosing a new theme from the drop-down menu,
•
clicking on Apply.
Exploring Glow Groups
1.
In the left-hand navigation bar click on the My Glow groups link.
My Glow groups
link
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
You will see all of the Glow groups of which you are a member. It
is possible to be a member of groups at school level, authority or
even national level e.g. ACfE Glow group.
2.
Select a Glow group from the list by clicking on its name.
3.
When a Glow group is first created, it has four page tabs by
default: Noticeboard, Discussions, Documents and Glow Groups.
page tabs
Note: It is possible for the administrator of a Glow group to add
more page tabs as required. For information on additional Glow
functionality such as adding extra pages, please refer to Glow help
(accessible via the link at the foot of most Glow screens).
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
4.
The Noticeboard page by default contains four web parts. A web
part is an area of the page that has been set up to display
particular information or carry out a Glow function such as Glow
Chat.
•
News web part. This lists recent news items for the Glow
Group.
•
What's on web part. This shows details of coming events for
the Glow Group.
•
Web Links web part. This contains useful links to Web sites
and other resources.
•
Image web part. A web part that enables the display a of
picture file such as a school logo.
Note: It is possible for the administrator of a Glow group to add
additional web parts to a page. For information on additional Glow
functionality such as adding web parts, please refer to Glow help
(accessible via the link at the foot of most Glow screens).
5.
The Discussions page stores any online discussions in progress
within the Glow Group.
6.
The Documents page may contain a library of useful documents
that users with contributor or administrator rights for the Glow
Group have chosen to upload: text files, image files, spreadsheets
and so on.
7.
The Glow groups page displays a list of any Glow groups that have
been set up within this Glow group. For example, an All pupils
Glow group could have Glow group sub-sets of Primary1 to
Primary7 created within it.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Tutorial 2 – Creating a Glow group
In this tutorial you will:
•
create a Glow group
•
learn how to populate your Glow group with content
1.
Log on to Glow.
2.
In the left-hand navigation bar click on your school name.
Forthview school
3.
Select the Glow groups tab.
On this page you will see a list of school Glow groups of which you are
a member. You will also see a list of Glow groups belonging to your
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
school of which you are not a member. Local authority and national
Glow groups that you are member of are not listed here.
4.
Click on New Glow Group.
5.
Fill out the Create Glow Group form as follows:
•
Name: This field is required. Give your Glow Group an
informative name.
•
Description: This field is not required but useful information
about the group would benefit other Glow users browsing Glow
groups attached to the school.
•
Template: There are three templates to choose from. Most
Glow groups that you will set up will use the Full Glow Group
template, which will create the standard page tabs and web
parts described earlier. The Glow Group Document Library
template
contains
only
a
Noticeboard
page
with
the
Documents Web Part on it. The Learning Space template will
not be available for the Phase 2 pilot. Make sure that the Full
Glow Group template is selected.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
•
Filter Policy: Content filtering prevents publication of unacceptable content, such as bad language. By default, all
words on the list agreed by Learning and Teaching Scotland
are banned, but a site administrator can choose to apply a
different policy appropriate to a particular site.
The available policies include:
i.
Default - All words on the list agreed by Learning and
Teaching Scotland are banned.
ii.
Racial Equality Education class - Words appropriate for
racial equality education lessons are allowed.
iii.
PSHE class - Words appropriate for PSHE lessons are
allowed.
iv.
Biology class - Words appropriate for biology lessons are
allowed.
v.
No restrictions - No words are banned. Use this option
with caution if you do not want any content filtering on
the site.
•
Use the same members as this site: Be careful about ticking
this box! Doing so at this level gives all Glow users in your
school
access
to
your
group
and
if
you
are
not
an
administrator of the school site, you will end up not being an
administrator of the group you have just created!
For this exercise, do not tick the box!
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
6.
Click on Create Glow Group.
7.
Your Glow group is now created and ready for use. You will add
members to your Glow group later on in the tutorial.
The following sections will give a quick start to populating your Glow
group Noticeboard page. More detailed information on using the
various web parts and pages in Glow can be found in Glow help
(accessible via the link at the foot of most Glow screens).
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Adding a news item to your Glow group Noticeboard page
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Noticeboard page.
2.
To add a new item of News, click on New Item on the News web
part:
Fill out the form as follows:
•
Title: This is a required field. Enter a suitable title for your
news item.
•
Body Text: This is a required field. This will be the main body
of your news item. Enter some text for your news item.
•
Expires: the news item will be removed from the news items
list on that date, otherwise the item will sit in the news list
until it is pushed off by newer items. Enter an expiry date of
one week from today using DD/MM/YYYY format or click on the
date icon
•
to select a date from the calendar.
Target to Members: ticking the box will ensure that the news
item will appear under News in your Glow group and under
Latest News for all members of the group in the first page they
see when they log into Glow i.e. their Home page. For this
exercise, do not tick the box.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
3.
Click on Save and Close.
Adding a What’s on event to your Glow group Noticeboard
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Noticeboard page.
2.
Click on New Item in the What’s on web part.
This will open up into a form. Fill out the form as follows:
•
Title: This is a required field. Enter a suitable title for your
What’s On event.
•
Begin: This is required. Enter a date one week from today
using DD/MM/YYYY format or click on the calendar icon
select a date.
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to
Quick start guide: Glow Groups
•
End: This is optional.
•
Time: enter a Begin and End time for the event.
•
Description: add a suitable description for the event (not
required but could be used to add useful information about the
event).
•
Location: enter a suitable location for the event.
•
Recurrence: If the event recurs at regular intervals, for
example a monthly staff meeting, click the relevant option
under Recurrence. Depending which option you choose you
will be prompted for additional detail.
•
Workspace tick box: For the purposes of the pilot, please leave
this un-ticked.
•
Attach File: this could be used to attach useful documents e.g.
a meeting agenda.
3.
Click on Save and Close.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Adding a Web link to your Glow group Noticeboard page
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Noticeboard page.
2.
Click on New Item on the Web links web part:
This will open up into a form. Fill out the form as follows:
•
URL (web address): enter the web address of the link or
alternatively copy and paste it into the field from your browser
(Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc).
•
Click here to test: You can test to make sure you have entered
the url correctly by clicking here.
•
Type the description: Enter a suitable description for the link.
If entered, this will appear in the list of links to identify it,
instead of the URL.
•
3.
Notes: Enter explanatory notes about the link (optional).
Click on Save and Close.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Adding an image to your Glow group Noticeboard page
Glow does not have the tools to re-size images. Please ensure that any
image you want to upload is of a suitable size.
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Noticeboard page.
2.
To add an image, click on To select an image click here:
3.
Click on Browse to search for the image.
4.
Locate the image you are looking for on your computer, memory
stick, CD/DVD or network drive. Glow supports most image
formats, however, if you cannot see the image you are looking for
it may be saved in a format Glow does not recognise.
5.
Select the image.
6.
Click on Upload.
7.
To change image, simply repeat the process.
Adding a discussion to your Glow group Discussions page
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Discussions page by
clicking on the Discussions tab.
Author: Glow Team
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2.
Click on New Discussion:
•
Subject: Enter a suitable subject title for your discussion. This
is a required field.
•
Text: Enter the purpose of the discussion or your stance in a
debate into this field.
•
Attach File: If required, you can attach a file which could be
used to add information or illustrate a point.
3.
Click on Save and Close.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Contributing to a discussion
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Discussions page.
2.
Click on the title of the discussion you previously created.
3.
Click on Post Reply. This will open up into a form allowing you to
reply to the message with suitable Subject and Text as above.
Enter a reply to your own message and click on Save and Close.
4.
Clicking on the + next to a Subject title opens up the text that
was posted. The number of replies will be listed under Replies.
Clicking on the + will expand the discussion allowing you to see
the replies.
5.
You can continue a discussion by clicking on a reply title and posting a reply to it.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
6.
All discussions can be expanded/collapsed by clicking on
Expand/Collapse.
Uploading documents to your Glow group Documents page
If you upload many documents without considering organisation –
storing related documents in folders – then your Documents web part
could get hard to manage.
It is important to create folders for storing related files first.
Documents cannot be moved into folders after the fact.
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Documents page by
selecting the ‘Documents’ tab.
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2.
Click on New Folder.
3.
Give the folder a name. e.g. CPD files.
4.
Click on Save and Close.
5.
Click on the folder name to open it.
6.
Click on Upload Document.
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
7.
Leave the tick in the Overwrite existing file(s)? box.
If you attempt to load a file with the same name as an existing
file, you will get a warning.
8.
Click on Browse to search for the document. Locate the
document you are looking for on your computer, memory stick,
CD/DVD or network drive.
9.
Select the document.
10. Click on Save and Close.
11. Click on the up arrow
to return to the top level of your
documents store.
Sorting your documents and folders
Clicking on the column headings of Type, Name, File Size and Checked
Out To*, will sort your documents and folders into order determined by
the column heading.
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
*
the Check Out functionality enables you (or another user who you
have given access to your documents) the ability to ‘lock’ the
document while you are editing it so that others cannot edit it at the
same time.
Searching For Documents Using Filters
If you have uploaded many documents and/or created lots of folders,
the Filter option can help you find particular documents/folders.
1.
Click on Filter.
2.
Click one of the filter options, Type, File Size or Checked Out
To
This will reduce the documents and folders you can see to the
ones that meet the criteria set. For example, to show all of the
Word documents, set the filter on ‘Type’ to doc.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
Editing and deleting documents
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Documents page.
2.
Click the Edit button
3.
On the documents properties page, you have a number of
next to the document you want to edit.
options:
•
Name: Change the document name here.
•
Title: click here to enter a description of the document.
•
Delete (restorable): Choose this option if you think there is a
chance you might want to use the document at a later stage.
•
Delete (permanent): Choose this option only if you are happy
that you no longer require the document.
•
Check Out: the use this option to lock the document so that no
one else can edit it simultaneously. Useful if you have granted
other Glow users access to your documents area.
•
Version History: use this option to track when modifications
are made to the document; such as when a change was made,
who made the change and so on.
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
4.
Return to your Documents page by clicking on Go Back to
Document Library.
Creating Glow Group sub-groups
If you have the permission to create a Glow group then you will be
able to create Glow groups within your Glow group. This allows you to
set up a logical structure for your Glow groups, for example An All
pupils Glow group at the top level, then S1…S6 or P1…P7 Glow groups
sitting inside.
It is important to consider the hierarchy of Glow groups in a school
from the outset, as it is not possible to set up a hierarchy after the
fact. For example, if you were to create S1…S6 groups first, then
create an All pupils group, you would not be able to place the S1…S6
groups inside the All pupils group. Having a logical structure for Glow
groups will aid the flow of information within your school.
For example, in a secondary school, a top level All Staff Glow Group
could have a sub-division: Arts Faculty with further subdivisions of Art,
Music, Drama and PE. News could then be targeted to the Arts Faculty
without having to target the news to the individual departments.
1.
Make sure that you are on your Glow group Glow groups page.
2.
Click on New Glow Group.
Author: Glow Team
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
3.
Fill out the Create Glow Group form as shown on page 10 of this
guide.
To see all Glow groups that you are a member of, including subgroups, select the My Glow groups link from the left-hand navigation
bar.
My Glow groups
link
Viewing Glow groups from the Glow groups page tab in your school
site, will display top level Glow groups only. Sub groups will not be
listed here.
How to add members to a Glow group
1.
Make sure that you are on one of your Glow group pages.
2.
Click on the Members link.
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3.
The Members form has two tabs, Groups and Users. You can
toggle between searching for groups of users or individuals.
The groups and users that you can see will reflect what has been
set up for your school. You can set permissions for groups or
individual users.
•
The Reader permission is the basic permission allowing the
group/user to only read news items, discussion posts, view
uploaded documents and so on.
•
The Contributor permission is quite advanced, allowing the
group/user assigned this permission the right to add news
items, what’s on events, upload documents.
•
The Reader with Discussions permission is similar to the
Reader permission but allows the group/user to post messages
to discussions.
•
The Administrator permission gives full control of the Glow
group to the group/user assigned the permission.
•
The Web Designer permission allows the user to alter the
layout of the group pages by moving, adding or removing web
parts.
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4.
Select the permissions you want to allocate to members of the
group.
5.
Click on Save.
How to delete a Glow group
You cannot delete a Glow group that has a Glow group sub-site within
it. If you want to delete a Glow group that has sub-groups, you will
have to delete each of the sub-groups first.
1.
Make sure that you are in the Glow group you want to delete.
2.
Click on the Advanced Settings link. A drop-down menu will
appear.
3.
Click on Site Settings.
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4.
Click on Go to Site Administration.
5.
Click on Delete this Site.
6.
You will receive a warning message. Confirm that you want to
delete the group by clicking on Delete. The following message will
appear:
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Quick start guide: Glow Groups
This pilot version of Glow does not have a link, or route, back to
Glow from this screen. This is a known fault and will be resolved
for future releases of Glow.
To get back to Glow:
1.
Click on the Back down arrow.
2.
Your recent browsing history will appear.
3.
Select your school name from the browsing history.
4.
Alternatively, click on the Back button repeatedly until the school
site appears.
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There will be a short delay before the name of the deleted Glow group
disappears from the list of Glow groups.
For information on additional Glow functionality in Glow groups, such
as adding extra pages and web parts, please refer to Glow help
(accessible via the link at the foot of most Glow screens).
Author: Glow Team
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Ref: GC065