Laurie O’Donnell

There is an article by Melanie Reid in this morning’s Times Online covering George Lucas’ testimony to the US Congress.

Under the headline ‘The Force is with Scotland’s School’s intranet, says George Lucas’ the articles goes on to say:

‘In what must rank as one of the most heady compliments ever given to an education system, the film maker announced to members of the US House of Representatives that America should adopt Scotland’s pioneering school websites as a way to improve pupil access to technology.’

(:

Our press officer Lee-Ann has just sent me a pdf of a small news article in today’s  Herald with the above headline.

This is really the Glow section of the LTS website (or what we call the LTS Online Service). It looks pretty good and the new sections ‘Glow in Your Area’, ‘Glow in Action’ and ‘Learning about Glow’ will continue to develop as the programme develops.

 This one really made me smile

George Lucas mentioned Glow in his testimony before  the US Congressional committee on telecomm and the Internet a couple of weeks ago.

His testimony (6 pages) makes really good reading but the mention of Glow is on page 5 for those of you who are impatient.

On 24 June The Scottish Government public expenditure watchdog Audit Scotland published a review of 20 major capital projects including  Glow.

Overview
Audit Scotland noted that Glow had already been the subject of a number of external reviews including several using the OGC Gateway Process and that the programme was characterised by the close working relationship between the Scottish Government, LTS and RM Education.

Cost
In this category Glow received the highest rating – Good:
‘Still working within the £37.5m overall budget for the contract, currently £105k ahead of this figure. Milestone payments have been challenged where appropriate and delayed until deliverables have been achieved’.

Time
Glow received the middle rating  – Adequate – in this category:
‘Go-live has slipped by several months but costs have not increased due to fixed price contract agreed. Delay due in part to time taken for local authorities to sign up to the customer agreement.’

Quality
The Glow programme was again given the highest rating – Good:
‘The project has undergone several Gateway Reviews, with an initial review in June 2003.  Gateway 3 Investment Decision review in April 2005 and interim health-check prior to contract signoff in August 2005.’

Audit Scotland noted that lessons learned from each pilot phase have been acted upon and tested again in subsequent phases. The practice of tracking issues, progress and changes on weekly basis was also noted.

Project Management and Governance
Glow was also evaluated for project management and governance with three assessment levels available: Basic Practices; Adequate – Improving Practices; and Advanced practices.

Glow has been assessed as demonstrating  Advanced Practices for ‘Planning’, ‘Execution’ and ‘Business Acceptance’.

Glow is the only one of the 20 projects rated as demonstrating Advanced Practices for ‘Planning’, and is one of only two projects in the other areas to be deemed to demonstrate Advanced Practices for anything at all.

Glow was given the middle rating, Adequate – Improving Practices, for ‘Vision and Direction’ and for ‘Measuring and Monitoring’.

Conclusion
Great to see the hard work and excellent project and programme disciplines that underpin Glow being given due recognition by Audit Scotland. However, there is certainly no complacency within LTS and The Glow Team LTS will investigate the detail of Audit Scotland’s findings to ensure the continuous improvement of Glow and to inform the future development of Glow v2.

The second book in my pile of books to read over the Summer was Charles Leadbeater’s ‘We-Think’.

Charles is signed-up to be one of the keynote speakers at the LTS organised Scottish Learning Festival in September. The inside cover of the book describes Leadbeater as ‘one if the world’s leading authorities on innovation and creativity’ so just what we need to inspire the 7,000 teachers and others who will be at SLF2008.

I have enjoyed reading Leadbeater over many years and admire the way that he carefully constructs and illustrates an argument rather than just asserting an opinion.

To my mind this is one of the best books on the wider implications of the web. Most of the books I have read overplay what is different about the web, i.e. they have no sense of history. They also tend to see the web as either entirely positive or completely negative rather than a complex set of tools that will be used by people with conflicting motives to meet contrasting ends.

Leadbeater rightly points out that ‘many thoughtful and sensible people … have grave reservations about the impact and implications of the web’.  He argues, however, that whilst being mindful of the dangers the web is on balance a positive force for democracy, equality and freedom. I think this is right as tyranny thrives on controlling information, denying access to  knowledge and constraining communication.

The We-Think website  claims that the book  ‘explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.’ Leadbeater put this into practice when he published a draft of the We-Think online for comment and inviting further collaboration on the text via the website.

At the heart of ‘We Think’ is the concept that ‘ideas take life when they are shared’ and the web makes that process both instantaneous and global.

The book and website are well worth a read/visit. It made me think a lot about how much further we have got to go to embrace mass collaboration in Scottish education and our wider society.  I am looking forward to briefing Charles prior to SLF2008 and to hearing what I am sure will be a brilliant keynote on Thursday 25 September in Glasgow.

PS The next book on my Summer reading pile is lovely new translation of ‘War and Peace’ that I got as birthday present. I loved reading Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ last year and if ‘War and Peace’ is half as good then I’ll be delighted. However at over 1300 pages it might be some time before I get around to blogging about it

I took  most of this week off to catch-up with stuff around the house and the garden. It was the first week of the school holidays in Dundee so a great time to be on leave.  I still haven’t got over the feeling, from my time as a teacher, that the first week in July is the start of the summer.

I associate the school summer holidays with reading and have just finished Oliver James’ ‘Affluenza’. It is a good read and makes a lot of sense but left me thinking that there was not much that he had to say that I didn’t already know.

His basic premise is that we have become infected to a greater or lesser extent with what he calls a ‘virus’ that makes us confuse needs with wants. As a psychologist he goes on to claim that the values of what he calls ’selfish capitalism’ are closely associated with growing levels of ‘emotional distress’: ‘the extent to which a developed nation is Selfish Capitalist and infected by Influenza is crucial to the well-being of its inhabitants’.  He makes a lot of the importance of early learning, parental bonding  (drawing on attachment theory)  and the importance of ‘being’ over ‘having’ as vaccines against the virus.

Other vaccines on Oliver’s prescription include:

• Be beautiful (not attractive)
• Consume What You Need (Not What Advertisers Want You to Want)
• Educate Your Children (Don’t Brainwash Them)
• Be Authentic (Not Sincere), Vivacious (Not Hyperactive) and Playful (Not Game-playing)

All sounds like pretty good sense to me. Next step, use the rest of the Summer to educate my children (not brainwash them) so that they only consume what they need (not what the advertisers want them to want)! What do you think my chances are?