The GTCS have now published the report from my research study into using ICT and GLOW to raise attainment. Anyone who is interested can download and read the report by going to this link…

http://www.gtcs.org.uk/News/The_future_of_teaching_in_Scottish_schools.aspx

My thanks to the GTCS for their support in funding and publishing this study.

I’m pretty pleased with his piece of work as I think it shows how effective use of ICT can be used to deliver improvements in attainment although there is still much to discover. The approach I used was very much modelled on formative assessment practice with a particular focus on peer-assisted learning. GLOW is a fantastic tool for facilitating this, in my opinion anyway. I think it enables me to really get pupils thinking about applying the theories they learn in my biology classes to the real world. It gets them linking concepts with real situations, encouraging deep rather than just shallow learning. Most of all, the students are starting to take a significant measure of responsibility for their own learning. This is freeing me up to be able to spend more time on one-to-one teaching where individual pupils need some help.

This research will carry on over the next year, tracking these pupils to standard grade. I’m also about to start work on a collaboration which will hopefully result in a series of published journal papers using the material contained in this report as well as any subsequent findings over the next couple of years or so. Ultimately, it would be good to be able to produce a cost/benefit analysis for the use of GLOW in a school…

I’d welcome comments/discussion/critical analysis of this work so please feel free to get in touch.

And for anyone else thinking about doing something similar, or maybe something completely different, I’d recommend the GTCS teacher researcher programme. The details are on the main website.