Blog feedWhy are we building stairs when we could build escalators?
March 2nd, 2010There has been some recent discussion about the usability of Glow. You may have noticed the recent changes in Glow’s interface at national level (see the National Site) or may have been following Andrew Brown’s initiated ‘Glowbetter’ work. While navigation through Glow might be a bit daunting, one of its saving graces for me has always been its ‘hyperlinkability’. It means if you put a resource on Glow, you can copy the shortcut and publish that shortcut anywhere you like, ie add a bit of Glow, or +glow it!
What does this mean? For CPD, +glow usually means ‘now with added collegiality!’. For example, I might recommend a CPD thought-piece (eg Temple Grandin’s TED TV talk – The World needs all kinds of minds). The problem with this approach is it’s an open loop – there is no feedback. I have no idea who follows the link, or what they think about it, or what one thing might they change in their practice as a result of watching and reflecting on the video. But more importantly, numerous colleagues from all over Scotland may be accessing the same video and not realising they have something in common, or know of better examples, or have CPD resources to support teachers of autistic students and so on.
I like the analogy of building escalators not just stairs. By putting that same video onto Glow and asking colleagues to ‘sign up’ you turn a stair into an escalator. Participants get to see the video and also get an instant snapshot of interested colleagues from around Scotland. They can start (or contribute to) a discussion and share practice collegiately.
Try the Temple Grandin +glow version by following the link from CPDFind. Of course, you will need a Glow password for this version.
We have been developing these +glow CPDShort thought-pieces since the turn of the year. A thought-piece doesn’t need to be a video. It could be a discussion paper, an example of student work, a vox pop, results of a survey, etc.
Furthermore, +glow doesn’t just stop at thought-pieces. In future posts I will look at how colleagues +glow lots of different types of CPD; newsletters, face to face events, skills training and more.
Go on, if you are on Glow, start building escalators instead of stairs. You rarely see an escalator marked ‘Out of Order’. The worst that can happen when you build an escalator is that folk use it as a stair.
So, +glow those thought-pieces and send me a link!
http://www.notosh.com/2010/02/the-revolution-will-be-television-vod-iptv-canvas.html
It means that when you watch any television content, live or on demand, you can meet and interact live with other interested fans of the same content.
It comes to your telly box at the end of the year, but with things like TestTubeTelly that we made at 4iP, where you could see what your Facebook friends were watching, it’s already happening to some degree online.
In return for some £s my team and I could build the tech that let this happen within Glow.
Love the escalator analogy, although you could do with letting Edinburgh Waverley know that – when the escalator stops working they block it off. Sound familiar?