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- September 9th, 2011
Cabinet Secretary Glow Futures Announcement
- alexduff
- Comments: 35 Comments »
Yesterday Michael Russell, MSP the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning made a significant announcement on the future of ICT in Schools including how Glow will be developed after September 2012.
You can watch the full announcement on YouTube.
The key points of the announcement are:
- From immediate affect the current Glow Futures procurement has been stopped.
- Over the next few weeks an open on-line discussion will take place to help share the current thinking and shape what Glow will become.
- On the 17th October the Scottish Government will hold an ICT summit in Stirling where we will consider were we have come from, the results of the on-line discussion and where we go next.
Within the Emerging Technologies Team at Education Scotland we are very excited about these announcements and look forward to having the opportunity to working with educators all over Scotland to help develop the next version of Glow. We would encourage all of you to get involved in the conversation too.
We also expect further information to be released by the Scottish Government next week on the Engage for Education website, including more details about the on-line discussion and Octobers ICT Summit.
Categories Curriculum for Excellence, Development, Glow, Technologies
Spend the money you’ve wasted on GLOW on classroom assistants and support in class. What goes on in the classroom is more important than silly ICT schemes, thought up by folk who never set foot in a classroom with real children.
Thanks for your comments, Anne.
What goes on in the classroom is of course absolutely fundamental in ensuring that our young people are given the very best opportunities to flourish and achieve their full potential. However, surely ICT must form a significant part of these opportunities in this day and age as and when appropriate?
It was reassuring to hear the Education Secretary state that the Scottish Government is going to continue to use and invest in Glow, describing it as a ‘phenomenal resource’, with the future Glow containing best of breed free tools and open source services, allowing investments to be made in binding these services together, freeing resource to further improve internet connections to schools.
Our most recent statistics underline just how much Glow is getting used and relied on in schools. Last week, 52,806 unique users logged in a total of 373,827 times. As Michael Russell stated, Glow has been empowering thousands of teachers to get access to shared tools for several years. He continued that Glow has never been about the tools – its about changing culture, practice and behaviour to help teachers develop learners that we need for the third millennium. This new approach is going to free up resources to do just that, supporting teachers in the classroom to experiment and share good practice in the use of technology to enhance learning.
Having read your comment that you are under the impression that the Glow team have never set foot in a classroom, I would like to point out that with the exception of our admin staff and our technical manager (who worked for a local authority immediately before joining us), every member of the Glow team has been a classroom practitioner.
Thank you once again for commenting on this blog post, and I would invite you to share your thoughts more widely through Engage for Education.
1. You can watch the full announcement on YouTube!
Do people not know YouTube is filtered in many schools?
2. Last week, 52,806 unique users logged in a total of 373,827 times.
50,000 teachers logging in once a day to pick up their daily news sheet or access their emails, does not equate to a system that is well used!
3. describing it as a ‘phenomenal resource’, with the future Glow containing best of breed free tools and open source services, allowing investments to be made in binding these services together, freeing resource to further improve internet connections to schools.
Saying so doesn’t make it so…
4. I’m with Anne, 50 Million Pounds could have been better spent!
Glow has been a phenomenal success. The sad thing is that some practitioners have not yet (for any number of reasons) had the opportunity to see and experience first hand how it can aid teaching and learning.
The announcement from the Cabinet secretary is encouraging and makes perfect sense. We also need our local authorities to play their part in helping establishments use the daily growing resources of technological advancement to help motivate, stimulate and above all prepare our learners for the challenges and opportunities which exist now in the world of work.
I certainly look forward to the next incarnation of Glow.
I have used Glow for about a year and a half now and find it very useful in the classroom and engaging pupils via home works. I see a huge potential in the program and agree that we need something like glow in place if we are to continue to enthuse pupils in the future. However I have a few concerns, so far Glow is still slightly too clunky and awkward to be completely user friendly. It is also not as easy as I thought to engage with teachers nationally. I am also worried about the future glow, if funding is getting cut in all areas of education perhaps Glow could also be for the chop. This coupled with the negativity of some professionals to engage with Glow causes me to worry it may not be as successful as it could be.
Need to be very careful that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Yes it is clunky and old looking but don’t under estimate the value of the the investment. Starting again will be very expensive.
This is not a consumer product, don’t confuse what facebook and co. do with providing a robust, highly available and very secure system.
A sensible level of refresh of investment is the answer. The cost of transitioning and starting again would be horrendous.
An average of seven logins per user per week is hardly a ringing endorsement of GLOW. Some people logon every day to read thier emails and if they do this every day it takes five of the seven logins out without it being used to enrich learning. The system could be good but it is very front end heavy on staff for little reward if the students decide not to engage. If the front end loading could be made less of a task it could become an even better resource.
I believe Glow to be a great resource, and have followed its development with interest. I used to be a classroom practitioner, but the excess of primary teachers led me to starting my own education related consultancy. Among other things, I create resources for teachers to use, helping them with my specialist knowledge of the built heritage, to deliver the cross curricular outcomes, and locally based learning centred on historic buildings and places. I am enormously frustrated that I cannot have a Glow login, use the option of sharing resources I have created for projects, or observe developments in education through this particular portal.
I agree wholeheartedly with Ann Dyrlaga’s comments. The crucial point in the response is that “every member of glow staff HAS BEEN a classroom practicioner”. It my experience people very soon forget or choose to forget what classroom life is actually like.
Teachers have voted with their feet. Rip it up and start again. It’s been nothing but 3rd rate, glitch and hassle-ridden since day one. I’m currently locked out for the umpteenth time and I’m the Glow co ordinator for a group of teachers!
Almost 50% of teachers across the length and breadth of the country are logging in to Glow on a very regular basis which shows that a significant number are using Glow.
Our partner, RM, has created a phenomenal resource as Mike Russell put it in getting us to where we are today, and now is the time to build on these successes and see just how far we can take Glow.
As I am sure you are aware, we are currently engaging with colleagues such as yourself to find out what you want from Glow when we start again in a years time. As a reminder, the online discussion can be found here.
I am sorry to hear you say that with you being a Glow co-ordinator you feel that it’s been 3rd rate with so many issues since day one. Immediately before I joined the national Glow team, I was a CfE development officer with responsibility for Glow for my own local authority and still liaise with them through their mentor meetings on a regular basis. As a group, we did agree with you that there were things in Glow which needed to be made better, but felt that the refresh went a significant way in improving both what could be achieved through Glow and the user experience.
If you are locked out of Glow and you have access to the ASM account for your school as Glow co-ordinator, you can use this to reset your password.
Please continue to add your voice to the discussion by contributing to the online discussion mentioned above.
A. Bacon, I am sorry to hear that you have had such a negative experience of colleagues who have left the classroom. I see that you are based in a University. I myself was an ITE lecturer at the University of Glasgow a few years back, after which time I returned to the classroom. In very recent times, six members of our team have gone back to school. I do not think that it is fair to insinuate that we’ve forgotten what classroom life is really like – we continually actively engage with schools through targeted support. Taking a quick look at the Glow Cookbooks also shines light on how classroom life is enhanced for many young learners across Scotland through innovative use of Glow.
Hello there, Emma. If the projects you are working with are housed within Glow for a particular school or local authority, it would be worth asking for a Guest Account. I can totally understand your frustration if you are working on resources to enhance Glow if you cannot get in to collaborate with this learning, so would strongly recommend you request guest access.
When GLOw is mentioned to a group of teachers, the response is along the lines of a rolling of the eyes, a groan, a joke, fake enthusiasm. Clearly, there is something very wrong with the whole set up if most teachers think it is a waste of time. It is not the CONCEPT that is the problem but the EXECUTION. Clunky, unnecessarily awkward, time-consuming, unsophisticated, frustrating. And nine times out of ten when I set out to do something the PASSWORD doesn’t work and frequently especially not at home. So why bother when there are so many obstacles?
Hey, Emma – thanks for the comment. With over 40% of all teachers across Scotland logging in to Glow regularly, and with around 50,000 people logging in about 400,000 times every week, I think you are a little unfair when you suggest that most teachers think it is a waste of time.
I also think that we really should appreciate what has been done with Glow – through which Scotland has successfully developed the worlds first national education intranet of which I think we should all feel very proud.
Bearing in mind that Glow is built on software dating from 2003, I would accept that there are operations within Glow that could be more straightforward – a good example of which would be making it more obvious how to enter password recovery questions, which would enable frustrated users such as yourself to have the ability to reset their passwords themselves rather than having to approach a user with greater permissions.
However, I am delighted to read that you agree that the concept of Glow is not the problem, and hope that you will join the online discussion at http://eduscotict.pbworks.com to share your thoughts on how the nect version of the concept should be executed.
“Over the next few weeks an open on-line discussion will take place to help share the current thinking and shape what Glow will become.”
Has this on line discussion only been targeted at teachers that currently use GLOW or has arrangements been made to get feedback from teachers who are non-GLOW users.
I see no evidence of GLOW being used in schools or embedded in day to day or weekly teaching.
I appreciate GLOW can be accesses by pupils. Many do not realise this and in my experience it the use of GLOW by pupils is not generally promoted or encouraged .
It is a pity GLOW was not widely opened up to be used by children in the first place. They would have made GLOW buzz with their sharing between school about what they have learnt and provided direct peer to peer support which would be much stronger than the somewhat school based approaches.
When GLOW was first suggested I was full of enthusiasm and could see the potential of such a resource. However, I have been sorely disillusioned with it’s progress. Many teachers have said it is clunky and difficult to find information in and I have to agree it is. One of the most unfortunate things is that those who are running GLOW seem to have become blinkered by the supposed success of the system. It is correct that there are quite a number of really good ideas and practices out there but looking behind these, the vast majority of teachers cannot see how it can improve the educational experience of the children in their care.
Whilst the Web has progressed to be a place of easy interactivity, GLOW has stubbornly remained as a second rate offering. One only has to look at what is freely available on the web to see how far behind the modern world it has become. I genuinely want GLOW to succeed and to offer what teachers need. To that end, can I suggest that the government involve real professionals such as those employed by Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. etc. to move this monolith forward before it becomes the laughing stock of the world.
I am a primary teacher with a Primary 1 class this year. From the first time I encountered GLOW, I have never found it user-friendly. It is too time consuming to use with very little result. Why do in several steps what I can do in a very few steps with another engine? Add to that, that it seems to repeatedly log you out, it is very frustrating to use. Hence the only time I actually log-in is when I have to at a school CAT session! Of those that I have talked to, who come from both primary and secondary stand points, I have yet to meet someone who actually tolerates, never mind likes or enjoys, using it.
Fiona – sorry you are not finding Glow useful. I’m not saying it’s perfect and I don’t use it all day everyday but I do use it for links to good resources , e.g. Glow sience. I’ve found Daily What useful and the children rally enjoy that slot in the week. They save their work in their portfolios and can access it from home if they want so show parents what they’ve been doing. We’ve had some great Glow meets with e.g. Glasgow Science Centre, National Museum of Scotland, maths specialists etc. We use it for school news and discussions too. I don’t use the Glow learn feature – as I find it too time consuming and really think it needs a major overhaul, but really I think you have to make Glow work for you in your own way, and gradually.
I would have to agree with you Fiona. I find that with so many other great online resources available (that are easier and quicker to access) that I rarely even think about using GLOW with my infant class.
Try reading this…doubt many of these responders would be included in the ’50,000′ regular users…
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/517227.aspx?PageIndex=1
This discussion is all too typical of the way education has gone in recent years: experienced teachers being asked to give their views about a development and when these views are given, they are undermined or minimised by those, often secondees who are no longer active in the classroom on a daily basis and who have an interest in defending that initiative.
Has £50 million really been spent on GLOW? If this figure is accurate then I would suggest that this money has not been wisely spent. I also wonder about the usage stats quoted above:
“Almost 50% of teachers across the length and breadth of the country are logging in to Glow on a very regular basis”. Could we have a more specific figure please? Are 25 000 teachers really accessing GLOW? What is meant by “on a regular basis”? Once a week? Once a month? Once a term? Once a session?
“around 50,000 people logging in about 400,000 times every week” 50 000 people is equivalent to every registered teacher in Scotland! Again, I cannot believe that this is the case.
I have to say that I have rarely used GLOW, I prefer to use my own school website to assist extra school learning. I am aware that other teachers use glow for homework tasks etc but I can honestly say that I have never heard a colleague say anything positive about using GLOW with pupils.
I welcome anything which makes learning more accessible for pupils and teachers outwith school. GLOW has not yet done that.
I came into primary school teaching about 7 years ago and as an ex-computer analyst was enthusiastic to hear about the secure intranet that was to be available for teachers, pupils and parents.
However, on getting my username and password, I was dismayed to find out how difficult it was to use. Simple things like clearing all or many threads on a discussion page are time consuming and laborious. I had looked forward to uploading videos of the class in action for them to share with their parents – but no, I haven’t yet found an easy way of sharing a video clip of a reasonable length (would love if someone could prove me wrong!!).
In general if I had provided something equally user unfriendly in my previous occupation I would have expected the sack – although that wouldn’t have happened as the quality assurance process at my firm would have ensured the product was fit for purpose.
I have also had problems with access – not sure why this is – but there are times when it is impossible to login.
At school we have problems with permissions when allowing children to take more control of particular pages. I haven’t investigated this very much as I am not the Glow Champion at my school but I believe that the children have to have certain privileges on a temp basis to update certain info (as it is not desirable for them to have this permission on an on-going basis) but the changing of permissions is not straightforward.
There are soo many tweaks that would make the system better from my perspective but I realise that I am only 1 of many. If there are that many logins then some people must be finding it more of a pleasure to use than I do.
Glow has its problems – not least the fact that the usernames and passwords are so complex the pupils struggle to remember them. Admittedly the clunky interface doesn’t help, nor the fact that it’s near impossible to find the nuggets of gold in amongst the thousands of Glow groups every user gets added to and when you do find them you can’t access the group anyway.
Despite that, I feel we’ve invested a great deal of time and money in Glow. If nothing else it has served as an online repository for documents and resources so that we’re not all clogging up the sparse space on the school server. It’s also good to have a forum where discussion with pupils is encouraged, rather than teachers setting up class pages on social networking sites or other alternatives which might leave them open to accusations of inappropriate contact.
Lastly, while some of you place faith in the numbers of teachers logging on to Glow, it has to be acknowledged that many do so only to access daily newsletters which schools ONLY provide on Glow and that aside from this obligatory use they don’t go near it at all.
pull the plug.Kill it stone dead. Put the servers in Beaufort’s Dyke. Get someone to graph the number of mentors against time, a real measure of GLOW’s usefulness.
Like Fiona, I’m a P1 teacher and find Glow so frustrating to use with my class. I use it for my own benefit (planning, resources and CPD) but cannot find anyone who can help me to make it more accessible to my class. I can only really use it to access resources for the IWB using my log in.
I have been told that each child needs to log in individually and that the pupils must memorise their passwords for security purposes. Now I understand that these sites need to have security but Glow passwords are quite obscure – even if you do get to choose your own. Also if every child is to have their turn in the lesson, I’ll have to help 12 children out so that their partners can log in.
I just wish that Glow was more user friendly for infants. If it was (or if someone could help me out) I think more infant and Nursery teachers would use it with their pupils. As it is I’ll continue to use our school website to share our learning with parents and continue to find ways to bring in more ICT into my teaching (when I get the chance!).
Kill it, put GLOW and the staff who are forced to use it out of our misery. No tweeks, no reforms, just death.
I think there is about one member of staff who thinks GLOW is good in my school. There are easier, faster and free ways to do what GLOW is supposed to do. Is “The Daily What” worth £100 000k per annum? Headline just now “Jessie J cleans up at the Mobos”
Kill it, and leave the way open for teachers to find better tools. The supporters of GLOW are in my experience a tiny minority.
Half the time we can’t get access in our school. Maybe some of the GLOW money could have been spent on decent IT infrastructure and decent software. We are stuck with very dodgy Openoffice because it is free! The “useful sites” links listed on GLOW are just some of the ones I have been using for years. I can access them directly with much more ease. GLOW is ridiculously complicated to use. It could be a great way of sharing resources. Unfortunately, some authorities do not want to share. The number of times I have read “you are not permitted……” is countless. What a total waste of time and money! Giving schools money to buy decent programs for website design would be a far better idea. I find it quite shocking that we are so far behind England in this respect. Children could be put in charge of maintaining them and everyone could access their work easily.
How depressing!
People working in the classroom: it’s garbage / useless / out-of date / a waste of money.
People running glow: 50,000 logins / 50,000 logins / 50,000 logins.
We log in because we are FORCED to: essential information is now only sent via GLOW. Saying that you have 50,000 people locked in a prison camp isn’t a ringing endorsement!
GLOW is a complete embarrassment. Harping on about having once taught in a classroom is utterly without merit: I worked in a bar once, if I was that keen on it I would still be there.
“the worlds first national education intranet” Well done. If I bring a sand-pit into my secondary school classroom will that be a good thing? It will be the world’s first!
Peter,
The most recent stats we have are for the week from 26/9 to 2/10, during which time 63,985 unique users logged in to Glow, and logged in 355,373 times between them.
It is very difficult to capture the exact number of teachers who login, as the number of teacher accounts created by local authorities is greater than the number of registered teachers. However, I can state that over 40% of all teachers in Scotland log in to Glow at least once a fortnight.
Many staff have to login to access newsletters and emails. This could have been done much more efficiently using a bespoke email client. I think that when compared to commercial intranets, GLOW is very user ‘unfriendly’ and the original aim of pupil and parental participation seems to have died a death. This is sad as I have seen intranets in action, where pupil reports are never written as they are continually updated as marks and comments are entered. As ever – the only answer is a secret survey….but that won’t happen.
On another matter, is there anything more disengaging than the Engage for Education site? Glaciers leave their mark more quickly and another great idea is slowly asphyxiating!
Alex, the statistics you quote are meaningless. The statistics do not indicate anything other than “how many people have logged in”. They do not even imply how long they stayed logged in, how many posts they made, how many files they uploaded, how many discussions they contributed to, how many chat rooms they visited, etc etc.
Can you provide any statistics which would show evidence that teachers (or pupils) were actually making good, productive use of the time they were logged in. That, to many, would be a better indicator of the value of Glow.
The reason I’d like to see this data is because most people I have communicated with to (and i was involved in the rollout in one authority) say the same thing – the only reasons they log in are to get the news bulletin or to check e-mail. Is £50 million a good price for a glorified notice board and e-mail?
So Alex, what you’re saying is 60% of teachers don’t log-in and of those who do…once a fortnight! Hardly a “GLOWING” (excuse the pun) endorsment! Do you have any idea what they log-in for? Is it to access essential information as suggested by Simon because the information is not available otherwise or is it to use GLOW for the reasons it was intended?
Compare the usage of GLOW to that of Google, Facebook or You Tube…bet they dont!
Either make it work in an intuitive way (see the most popular of social networking pages) or (better) just let it die!
Information to be shared within the establishment can be saved to the home server and links emailed, within the authority to the intranet and within the country to LTScotland’s website. Set up a better system for teachers to opt in to mailing lists/updates and resurrect the SSDN/GLOW/whatever when you can actually offer the virtual learning environment we were promised, email access from the front page and with Outlook functionality (and appearance) and message boards equivalent to those currently on TES. I already have an array of sites/functionality to do all that I could in GLOW more easily, the groups are unworkable (too many groups, clunky and hard to navigate), the email is not as good as what we already have in-house and I am yet to find any reason (other than email) for the kids to go onto it in my subject.
Once a fortnight is not regular accessing of something that cost what this did – time to euthanise it.