Calling all teachers. It seems the Scottish Government is to commission Glow Mark 2 this year. Is that the best use of ever dwindling education cash? I can see new classroom materials are needed to supply the CfE but is clunky Glow2 or free Facebook Groups the best way forward?
Once we have a new Education Secretary I can check on his/her plans! But meantime I wonder if I can use social media to find out what ordinary web-savvy teachers think (not just on message e-learning coordinators!!) before I write something to coincide with LTS and HmiE merging on July 1st.
Has Glow improved since I wrote this critical Scotsman column last year http://news.scotsman.com/education/-Glow-reached-for-the.5970390.jp ? Are cloud systems better? Do you use Facebook to share stuff with other teachers because of copyright issues on Glow? What's the best way to share material and create great lessons in class? Can non-teaching readers pass this on to the right people please? Ive also used my first hashtag thingy on twitter #glow2 to let people find this debate and have put the same request on my Facebook page.
Fire away.
The answers is not facebook and copyright is not the massive challenge that some would make it.
The answer lies in policy at local authority level - there is not a single collaborative platform that schools and agencies have universal access to.
We need an active national movement to get Scotland to think about Open Educational Resources - to encouarge teachers to share their learning materials.
There are probably also a few network bottlenecks in schools that are hidden at moment by schools or local authorities blocking some services on the grounds of protecting learners when the issue actually may be network capacity or even quality of the machines available in their schools.
One of the things the new agency should be doing is looking at learner and teacher access to a range of on-line learning tools. Unblocking the system.
Even GLOW - while purchased nationally had bits switched off locally. Glowmeet really useful platform - but many schools cannot access it. Hard to justify.
Learners should be encouarged to bring in their own devices and connect to schools wi-fi.
Be it a national solution using a procured system or a system based on Google , Microsoft, Amazon or other cloud solution - the system needs fair access for all learners and teachers, one that reflects their needs.
The answer is probably some sort of mixed model.
And if you still have some content lying around and want to make it available to learners - give it an appropriate creative commons licence and get it on to Youtube.
Good to see media taking an interest. There is an active ongoing debate on this see hash tag #Glowfutures , etc on twitter . The Glow experience has taught us all a lot.
Posted by: Joe Wilson | May 19, 2011 at 01:09 PM
All good thoughts, but the challenge; why are we building anything? Glowmeet is great and I have seen great examples of use but Skype could do it better. Video sharing excellent...but youtube does it better...hand built wikis etc ...I could go on but what I would really like to see is a digital revolution...where homework groups and study groups start on Facebook, where exemplar essay plans are available on google docs or blogs and individual leaners stitch together the messy digital world like they do their analogue domains.
Posted by: Chris@feistyproductions.co.uk | May 19, 2011 at 03:02 PM
I'm pretty tech-savvy and always have been. I was 15 or 16 when I first had access to broadband internet and I used to do all my research as a senior high school pupil through the net. I'm now 24 and a teacher who uses tech all the time. But if I, a young teacher from the generation that started the internet revolution for learning, can't use Glow then who can? I use WikiSpaces to build password protected sites for my classes, and only ever access Glow to read my email and the school daily bulletin. I'd even go as far as to say I HATE Glow. It's complicated, clunky, dies all the time (Bad Network Oracle Point, anyone?) and apparently costs a blooming fortune to build and run. It looks like it's straight out of the 80s, the kids can't access it properly cos it's so difficult to set up usernames for those that don't have them and when they do they all say "Facebook is well better".
Posted by: Dreamfolorn Caroline | May 19, 2011 at 03:10 PM
Check out https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/technologiesforlearningstrategy/
It is a good time to get fresh views aired on this.
Posted by: Joe Wilson | May 19, 2011 at 04:00 PM
Joe,
I scanned the literature reviews and they largely agree ICT is linked into achievement. The missing element, which one paper refers to as being 'coy' is the nature of the interconnectedness of the raw stuff of educational material. It is fluid and ever changing. The analogy I have in my head is the provision of water. Glow is like a well; as long as we keep making people use it; fine. If we need to dig it deeper or widen it then all is good. However, we know in different circumstances, rain harvesting is more appropriate, or desalination or other other method rather than sticking with wells.
Posted by: chris@feistyproductions.co.uk | May 20, 2011 at 12:25 PM
Personally I long for a government that wants to ensure young people leave school with the basics in English and Numeracy. According to many employers a significant number arriving, even from universities, lack competence in both. That should worry us all.
Posted by: Jo | May 22, 2011 at 04:57 PM
I could go on but what I would really like to see is a digital revolution..where homework groups and study groups start on Facebook, where exemplar essay plans are available on google docs
Posted by: Sample Questionnaire | July 11, 2012 at 12:51 PM