The Future of Glow
Cabinet Secretary for Education Michael Russell discusses the future of Glow – the schools website.
Read a transcript of the video
Over the next few weeks an online discussion will take place to help share the current thinking on ICT in education – starting on 12 September with a series of blog posts on this website. You can also contribute to the discussion on Twitter by using the hashtag #EduScotICT.
On 17 October the Scottish Government plan to hold an ICT summit at Stirling Management Centre to consider where we have come from, the results of the online discussion, and where we go next. Further details on the ICT summit can be found by accessing http://glo.li/eduscotict.
See also
Blog by Ewan McIntosh, education consultant – Leading the way through Glow
About the author
Michael Russell was appointed to the post of Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in 2009, having previously held the posts of Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution and Minister for the Environment. Full biography
Have your say
Join in the discussion and help us make Scottish Education even better.
Will Further Education ever get access to Glow. Is there anything in Glow that would be of any used for maths/numeracy in FE?
Technology for Education is the way forward and makes a huge impact. But think about the impact on kids who don't have home internet access. Already they are seriously disadvantaged for homework. Where the reason is poverty, digital exclusion for kids adds one more big barrier. Where money is to be spent, prioritise free home internet access for all children. It's as fundamental as the right to free education. Estonia can do it so why not Scotland.
Would Further Education ever WANT access to GLOW? As websites go it is an international example of clunky, user-unfriendly tosh. Feedback from students at Secondary level indicates they believe it is archaic (they used less polite words!), confusing, difficult to access, slow, and that finding material on the site was so frustrating they usually gave up.
Caveat emptor crlgibbons – you would regret it!
I think there is terrific potential for Glow particularly using e-portfolios. A group of primary 5 children whom I worked with had no problems accessing and using Glow to create groups and their e-portfolios. Anything which makes kids engaged ,enthusiastic and motivated to share their learning is a great thing and Glow is a step in the right direction.
Maybe I should change my handle to AnActualEmployer – Anyway well said Actual – In my kids school GLOW is completely ignored. In part I think its so rubbish that its no loss however – its better than the frankly appalling materials they do work with in many subjects. And as a local employer i find the standard of ability with IT is soooooooooo bad. It is totally beyond me how an organisation of the size and complexity of the Scottish education system can function without going digital – and yet they still choose to communicate thru bits of paper stuffed in satchels – you couldn't make it up.
While I'm not apologising for Glow it often gets blamed, wrongly, for the inadequacy of the network to which it is attached and the age and capacity of the computers running it. Presuambly any other system might be similarly afflicted.
I also wonder how many Scottish teachers will have been unable to watch Mr Russel's broadcast in school due to the fact that their local authority cannot afford a suitably flexible filtering system and simply blocks youtube completely.
Key Questions are as follows:
1. Collaboration tools – should pupils / teachers be able to collaborate across all Scottish schools/ and Internationally – or should this be limited by LEA or should we allow LEA to choose who can collaborate with whom?
2. Should we automatically create a GLOW account for all users – auto fulfillment – or require LEA to enable their users at their discretion?
3. How important is security – both from a perspective of access to resources and inappropriate materials and potential abuse?
4. Should access to GLOW be Universal – i.e. everything that is accessible inside school should also be available out with school/ what should be visible outside school premises and to whom?
5. Pupil / teacher owned equipment, the use of personal computers at school– is this a key area for the future?
6. Desktop replacement – should GLOW embrace the concept of replacing the need for local software solutions?
7. Should teachers and pupils be rewarded for contributing to GLOW
8. What 3rd parties are key to GLOW’s future – SQA?
9. Content – who/organisations/resources should be included?
10. Let's identify any barriers to the success of GLOW Futures?
12. Should GLOW be unique to Scotland, or can it be accessible to International School abroad, if so the issue of access and secure personal user accounts needs to be a Globally user friendly solution.
13. What further suggestions would current GLOW users have in making GlOW a tool which they would actively use?
Teachers not saddled with:
*tonnes of vague gobbledegook from the Government, SQA (all parents really should have a look on the SQA website at what is impending for pupils in current S2), LTS et al
*a poorly structured (and scarily over-priced) time-consuming GLOW system
*bullying tactics from the financially feather-bedded members of COSLA
*a government putting political dogma at the forefront of every decision
THESE circumstances would allow students (not kids, those are baby goats!) to be "engaged ,enthusiastic and motivated to share their learning"
Perhaps the existing Glow infrastructure should focus on primary schools and target Glow Futures on providing improved services for secondary schools and FE?
I agree with RichardT: as a secondary teacher, the lack of home access to ICT renders GLOW an accessory to the learning of some, and no more. As for access to ICT in school, computer rooms are unavailable and our local authority is spending £0 on ICT provision in schools for the next 3 years. I am totally convinced of the benefits of effective use of ICT in education, but until someone realises how much it costs to install AND maintain hardware and relevant software, it will remain, for most in secondary education, the white elephant in the room.
As an ICT teacher I want to be able to contribute to this initiative. The conference needs to be much more than a talking shop. Glow still has enormous potential – so far completely missed due to poor planning, implementation and rollout. There is no joined-up thinking as far as Glow is concerned, and it has been used as a 'sound-byte' by far too many politicians. Scotland is still ahead of the rest of the world with this technology – but only just. We MUST consider the future of our children in the 'digital age', stop using education as a political football, and start to listen to industry leaders who tell us that we are not getting it right. IT needs a higher profile in schools, and we have to reverse the sidelining of ICT as a discrete subject throughout Scotland. Of course, I don't expect that anyone will actually DO anything – not until it is too late – but there is still a chance that we can avoid the idiocy of the British missing the IT boat in the early 80s – when we had a world lead in IT in education and threw it away.
The executive needs to stop pushing GLOW! Listen to the teachers that are telling you it does not deliver for schools.
The problems (well some of them) are these :
It is not a "Scottish Schools Digital Network" – that might be worth the investment – it is a very badly designed website!
It is not an effective or low cost email alternative to MS Exchange -it is a clumsy, unreliable, time consuming webmail experience which does nothing to educate youngsters of the electronic communications they will experience in the 'real world' and just adds to the workload of teaching and admin staff.
The copyright free resources are pretty pointless as there are so few of them and they are so poor.
The front end security might be appropriate for a bank site but asking young children (primary and lower secondary) to create and remember "long and strong" passwords is ridiculous. All it leads to is the constant farce of kids locked out of the system, teachers who can't help as the system is managed centrally and admin staff ran ragged resetting passwords.
BUT the single biggest problem with GLOW is that no one has ever really known what it was for or why the government keeps pumping money in to it. I, like most ICT literate teachers, can find many great completely free resources online that engage pupils and which they enjoy. I really don't have the inclination to force kids to use GLOW when there's nothing worthwhile there and they despise it.
If the government really has found money to spend on ICT in education (at a time when they can't effectively staff schools) then there are certainly better ways to spend it than GLOW. Sadly, I doubt Mr Russell will listen. Sometimes first in the world does NOT equate to world leading!
Glad to hear the Cabinet Secretary for Education being so positive about a new, exciting initiative which has some considerable ambition. It is disappointing to hear some of the genuine concerns expressed about Glow which have been expressed such as local authorities being unprepared to support its roll out.
I became a Glow Co-ordinator in my school because I realised the potential Glow has to be another resource to improve the learning of our young people. Michael Russell is right to say that teachers should be using the types of technology our pupils use to engage them in education.
In my secondary school, our department have been highly impressed with pupil responses to our Glow blog. It has led me to blog answers to pupils' questions and queries, especially at a time when pupils are out of school for exam leave etc. It even led to a discussion on the effectiveness of the 1908 Old Age Pensions Act!
All our staff have been encouraged at how well the pupils have responded – It does indeed 'speak their language'.
@MrK… I think this announcement from the cabinet secretary is absolute proof that he does listen to the education community. Through engagement with this community, he has been able to put forward proposals and implement consultation fully informed by consultation with a whole plethora of groups and individuals. I have to say that though not a natural SNP supporter, this engagement has left me highly impressed with Mr Russell, and for the first time ever as an educator, I feel that I and many others have played a part in directly influencing government policy. To me, this demonstrates democracy at it's finest…whilst I might not agree on everything with Mr Russell, I applaud his approach and pragmatism in a challenging time of uncertainty and change.
Glow Replacement – ministerial announcement
It is too soon is to form a firm opinion as there is no clear path to glow 2 as existed with the previous tender. Instead a series of questions need to be debated in order to provide a greater understanding of the way glow will evolve in the next year.
Rather than dwell on the minutiae and the different stances taken by people on the respective merits of different open source solutions and how easy or sophisticated they may be, a higher level discussion must consider the fundamental tenet of glow and its reincarnation in whatever guise by September 2012.
The questions I pose are made from the perspective of a glow coordinator for a large Education service and are based on the experiences gained from delivering cpd across Fife, overseeing the administration of almost 60,000 glow accounts and seeing very good evidence of glow bringing added value to the learner.
There are a number of top level questions that need answering:
1 Migration of existing content and maintenance of the structure (groups) within which the content resides?
If this isn't seamless in operation then we could lose the support of the workforce who has invested heavily in developing their own dedicated glow groups and resources at school and council level.
2 Ensuring a safe and secure environment as exists currently.
What happens to accounts? How will they be managed? Will access to Open Source or whatever is on offer be by Shibboleth direct from each council's own MIS system -in effect e1 or SEEMIS?
If a solution such as Google Docs or Microsoft 365 is chosen where will our files be stored? On external providers servers or will we use the open source apps but store on Scottish education servers? Is this sensible?
Who decides on the VLE replacement for the much underused and cumbersome Glow Learn? Many councils in England and universities in Scotland use Moodle but they employ either dedicated staff to maintain their version or contract out this work to companies in this field? Will control be retained by Education Scotland?
Will the Open Source route expose our education users to unsolicited advertising as exists on the open web?
3 Will there be a national Help Desk along the lines of the current system?
How will calls be answered and will there be accountability if account or applications fail or go offline for a considerable time period.
4 At crucial times in the academic year will our learners be guaranteed access to their learning resources?
This is the case with glow currently but will the move to Open Source and the possibility that a ‘pick and mix’ solution will evolve enable this guarantee to be achieved?
5 How open will Open Source be as this has both child safety issues and council network security concerns?
Will all councils be obliged to open access to the same degree or if they don't how can we say we have a Scotland-wide intranet? Should we introduce a national filter system integral to the new glow with everyone passing through the same gateway rather than the 32 varieties we have at present?
Individual glow accounts must continue to be used albeit the administration of such accounts needs a drastic overhaul to simplify the process at the same time guaranteeing a safe, secure intranet.
6 How will we align the applications made available to the distinctive Scottish curriculum?
For example customising WordPress to integrate e-portfolio themes that is going on across Scotland as we speak. Education Scotland has worked closely with councils and RM to make this work.
In Fife, we have started to introduce e-portfolios and intend this to extend to all S1 pupils in the 2011/12 academic year? Can we be certain the new incarnation will allow their use to continue as this is a massive time investment?
Glow has significant cross referencing to the Curriculum for Excellence, for example in Aardvark’s Cupboard, the Science resources and the Daily What. Can we be guaranteed a continuation of this curriculum tagging and, that these resources will move to the new version?
I hope that the best parts of glow will migrate to the new version as ‘change for change sake’ should not be the main driver. The examples cited above are only a few of those that glow can be proud of and must be conserved.
Of course the portal is chunky (not just caused by the interface but by a disparity of bandwidth across sectors and councils) and suffers from a plethora of editors depending on the web part selected (text editor, XML, forum, blog, wiki) but will Open Source provide one interface in its place? If we just replace one set of mismatched editors for a new set will we be any further forward?
7 Who monitors what is on offer?
Will there be legal contracts signed and what will be the procedures if 'suppliers' do not fix reported bugs or disappear from the marketplace.
Open Source is evolving constantly with developers across the world tinkering with the applications and releasing regular updates. Councils with thousands of pcs find upgrading difficult to sustain and tend to lag behind the developers. How can this be supported both nationally and locally?
8 How will cpd on the new tools (applications and administration of accounts) be delivered?
Will there be a central team in place to offer such cpd and to write materials as at present?
In the past 10 years we had major cpd programmes from NOF to Masterclass to the glow mentor sessions at Stirling and within each council. These programmes introduced the ICT of the day to a wide audience so will a similar programme be offered from September 2012 or can we be confident that an alternative online delivery model is available from launch?
Jim Birney
Education Adviser ICT
Fife Education
jim.birney@fife.gov.uk
I have been using Glow successfully for 2 years now, I agree with some of these bloggers, it is not perfect but I am rolling with it because I see it's value and more importantly so do my P7 pupils. I use it mainly to share resources and communicate with my pupils but I think that's only the tip of the ice berg
.I think the GLOW MEET web part can be used effectively for Transition purposes. We had freqent Glow meets with Maths and Modern Language teachers at our local High school. Pupils responded really well to being taught by a teacher via GLOW. It was also priceless CPD opportunity for me to brush up on my French and Maths. We have also used Glow Meets in our school to ask pupils how we can improve our school, they used a discussion board to share their opinions openly which they could not have done in a whole school assembly.
I have found amazing resources on Glow like Glow Science and Purple Mash. I have also been able to share ideas and communicate with people from other councils about assessment and moderation. Our staff Glow Group is full of useful information we can access at home and in school.
I do think we need more face to face CPD opportunities to teach us how to enhance our use of Glow, for instance I would be interested in using the E portfolios but I have the fear doing this on my own. I know our ICT team have limited time and resources but they are a very valuable source of knowledge and expertise.
I think people need more time and support in schools to learn how to best use GLOW in there schools. The cookbooks are great but I know from experience unless people like GLOW they will not even be aware they exist. People are very negative about GLOW because they cannot see its purpose. I can see a purpose but I know I am not using it to its full potential. I think we need more CPD opportunities to help us enhance our use of GLOW.
Just when the system matures and people are getting used to how it can be used, its dropped. There is a lot of time wasted in education reinventing the wheel. Why not try to perfect systems instead of tearing it up and starting again.
Why not improve the issues that we know about instead of inventing new issues.
Making glow as easy to use as possible is the path to getting everybody adopting it.
Thanks to Jim Birney for giving detail of how some people in some local authorities have been able to use GLOW successfully. This is not an even pattern across Scotland however. The user interface problems some comments refer to have acted as a barrier to access for many. I took the CS's statement to mean 'GLOW hasn't really done what we wanted but there's a lot of good people worked hard on it, so to save face I'll say how important/world leading it has been, while consulting on a better way forward."
One effective use of ICT in education demonstrated by the Scottish Government has been the 'awaiting moderation' process to ensure that comments can be held waiting for days / indefinitely and then 'buried' under more recent comment.
Such actions would suggest that Engage for Education's remit as 'a platform for Scotland’s education community to engage directly with the Scottish Government about the issues important to them' is not always being met.
On a brighter note, it now makes a useful teaching aid to discuss issues of censorship and the power of ICT with students.
@jbr49 Thank you for your detailed response and also your acknowledgement of the positive benefits that Glow is bringing to learners across Fife. All of your questions are very valid and I’m sure there will also be other critical questions that will also need to be addressed. As you know we are trying to capture opinion and discussion on the #EduScotICT Wiki http://glo.li/eduscotict – your comment here would make a good start to a page on ‘Key considerations that need to be addressed’.
Michael Russell
Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning
Thank you to the Cabinet Secretary for his positive response to my earlier post. I will be following up my input with colleagues across Scotland in the next week or two.
Danny Murphy is correct that glow uptake varies across Scotland but, unlike many of the PBWords posts, I believe the positive benefits far outweigh the negative comments posted there.
I know a considerable number of teachers like Katy Sowden who have made glow work for them. You don't need to use all its features just the ones that benefit your pupils' learning experience. More cpd would help but the Glow Cookbooks offer an alternative model and benefit from being derived from good practice being delivered in schools across Scotland. With so many examples already recorded there is already proof that glow benefits our learners.
Open Source in the form of blogs (extended to e-portfolios) and wikis are now embedded in glow and their inclusion must be preserved in the future model; likewise the ease of access to high quality content like SCRAN, Science Museum, The Daily What etc through one login makes it easier for teachers to direct their pupils, confident in the knowledge that they can visit them anywhere without the need for additional passwords other than their glow account.
Let's stress the positive benefits this offers and strive to include them in the post September 2012 incarnation.
There are some great comments on this post, and I'd applaud the process, and willingness to consider Glow in the round before committing to more spending on it.
As a principle, my feeling is that government should avoid taking on the burden of developing and maintaining complex systems, if satisfactory alternatives can be found elsewhere.
Of course it makes sense to have a central resource for teachers (and other educators), even if it's just linking to other sites in some case, and to make this resource a collaborative one to ensure that teachers can add other resources that they've encountered on their travels around the web. These features within Glow are great, but there may be other platforms for delivery which have a less expensive overhead in terms of development and maintenance.
Driving students to the site seems less easy to justify. As other folk here have pointed out, there are many free, real world tools for collaboration online, and students will be better served by engaging with those, than spending their time within the safe, but slightly unreal world of Glow.
It would be interesting to pull apart all of the key features which Glow has sought to address. My theory is that it's attempting to do too much, whereas actually some discreet projects that address a subset of this functionality, but within a common taxonomic framework, and using a mechanism like OpenID for simplifying user authentication across the different apps would be easier to understand and cheaper to maintain.
Would love to contribute more to this and will be heading over to the Wiki.
Hi. I have been a teacher of ICT, a Staff Tutor and have worked in supplying and advising on ICT in schools for over 20 years all across the UK.
I also have experience of the Grids in England and some knowledge of their current use.
Glow always was an ambitious project, that from the outset, perhaps through no-one's fault, gave the impression of a Connected, Safe and Fast system, using modern tools and accessing the best resources and content. The last parts are, in my biased opinion, where Glow fails.
I liken Glow to the resource cupboard in a school. If a teacher opens the cupboard and does not find resources he/she needs for their classes, the cupboard gets closed and the dust builds. Occasionally she may open it looking for some help and if not there, closes it again. I believe Glow needs to contain Copyright free Validated Content, Lesson Plans, Curricular Support, Assessment Materials as well as the extremely useful Blogging, eFolio and exchanged information already provided.
It is not difficult to fill some of the shelves with materials useful to classroom teachers and students. SCRAN is an excellent resource – and there are many others that can be called upon. There are also benefits in Nationally Procured materials to add to the 'free' ones. Some authorities have driven approaches with licence schemes for Scholar and other materials.
Without doubt, great materials exist to support Teaching and Learning. The best of these will all be priced accordingly. At a time when frugal resourcing is the norm, National schemes are needed more than ever!
Jim
Glow, like many resources is what you make of it as a teacher.
If you have the will, Glow can be an unbelievable resource with which to enhance IT literacy within your classroom. I don’t agree with those who call it “clunky”. You can personalise and streamline your own page to suit your own purposes. So can the children. This is not clunky.
My children have been blogging, uploading a variety of document types from simple word documents to videos. It is a safe and secure environment in which our parent body can and do become involved in their children’s education on a regular basis.
Yes, we can find resources on other sites than Glow but Glow is far more than a reource bank – it is a tool to use with the children.
GLOW – great idea, inaccessible in practice. I support it and spent a few years populating it with resources. My school amalgamates and we are told that there is no facility for migrating all our years of work across and we will have to start from scratch again! Result? We are all using Staff Shared and not GLOW as it will take a lot of months or years to get back to where we were.
The staff who did not use it are laughing as they go about photocopying their old masters!
Also – the functionality of uploading One….doc…u…ment…at….a….time…is….really….rippin' ma knittin!
Come on! Get the act together! Get some parents and pupils on board to suggest what they want…eg. Instant access to assessment and behavioural notes to build community and ethos.
A very, frustrated believer.
Some very, very interesting comments above on the future of Glow and ICT in education generally. It's certainly clear from the above that there is a strong need for high-quality student and teacher-friendly ICT provision in Scottish schools. It's also clear that the Glow platform in its current guise needs reviewing (ease of use and the provision of better qualiy resources to name but two recurring issues). However, with the right resources, there is no reason why the ICT needs of teachers and students cannot be met within an updated version of the platform.
The primary issue which needs to be addressed is the ease of use. As the comments above demonstrate, education departments can invest as much emotional and financial capital into a system as they see fit, but if it doesn't resonate or inspire the end user, it will not be used. From our work with different government ministries in the Republic of Ireland and South Africa, we have found that if the right system is implemented (Scoilnet in Ireland & the Cape Gateway in SA), both students and teachers will use the resources available and educational standards will improve. It's a difficult system to get right, but once achieved, the results speak for themselves.
One crucial element which also has not been mentioned thus far is parental engagement in ICT. As we move towards a more mobile world where smartphones and tablets are increasingly used in education, securing the support of the parent community is crucial. As part of our work in educational publishing we have conducted significant research into this area and suprisingly found that on the whole parents are hugely supportive of mobile learning and welcome technological advancements in education.
Whatever the future of the Glow platform, we musn't underestimate the importance of ICT in education. As one poster above mentioned "anything which makes kids engaged, enthusiastic and motivated to share their learning is a great thing" – our research into technology in the classroom certainly supports this viewpoint and we agree that Glow is "an important step in the right direction".
I was wondering as you are aware i have written a report on glow and the future planning by Mr Salmond was in writeing that an announcement would be comeing up. I was wondering if i could have it in writeing that there is going to be a new Glow and when this should occur as i am trying to meet with Members of the Glow Team National.
@Glow.Kem
The ICT in Education Team at the Scottish Government have received your report on Glow and as previously agreed will be in touch to discuss in more detail. In the meantime I can confirm that the Scottish Government is currently working on the next generation of Glow. More information, including the latest progress and any future updates will be posted to the ICT in Education section of Engage http://www.engageforeducation.org/ict .
ICT in Education Team, Scottish Government
The Future of Glow | Engage for Education cool post