I’ve heard a fair number of criticisms from people that Glow is too complicated to use, and that people find it difficult to navigate. Since I saw Glow in 2007, I’ve been thinking about how the interface could be pared down, so that people could focus on what they need it to do. I’ve spoken with hundreds of people that are using Glow, and their insight has helped shape my thoughts. I’ve been having a good think about it, and a fair amount of head scratching has gone on to come up with a way to make it easier to use, more personal and easier to navigate. A lot of people have therefore contributed to the idea you’ll see here.

What you’ll see below is a concept – little more than a collection of ideas at the moment. Can I emphasise that this isn’t a firm plan for development, but rather something that I’d like to hear people’s thoughts on? We’ve been kicking around the term ‘Glow Light’ for a while with RM but even that is up for debate. What I’d love to have is people’s thoughts on this? Would this make it easier to use? Would it cut down on the need for training and on the ground support? Thoughts, ideas, suggestions are of course most welcome. I’ll post this on the GlowScotland blog too, so that readers of it have the chance to comment too.

I’ve said for some time that I like using my own site as a place to think out loud, so this is little more than that at the moment, but is this a step in the right direction?

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The rumour mill is running rife, but this week should see Apple launch a new device somewhere between the size of the iPhone and the MacBook.

I’ve long been a fan of using smaller devices, so I await with interest what Apple actually announce, and hope that I’m not too disappointed due to all the stories linked to  ‘with certainty’ on twitter or the wider blogosphere. I particularly liked Don McAllisters open letter about what to say online before Wednesday. Forgive me if I leave twitter alone for the next few days then until Steve Jobs announces things for himself?

imagecredit: blakespot.

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Yesterday I picked up the TES to be confronted by the headline ‘Is Glow losing its lustre?’, and to find my name right at the end of the front page.

Before giving a quick response, can I reiterate that I welcome the development of the conversation about what Glow is, and how it’s being used. As I said online in November, I hope that now is the time we all start being honest – it’s only through meaningful conversation that we can all improve both what we have as a technological platform, and more importantly how we are using it for the good of our pupils.

It’s great to see Glow getting so much coverage in the paper too – pages 1, 3, 5, 16 and 23 all contained stories relating to Glow, with the work of Co-Create being mentioned and the virtual world development of Canvas getting in there too – good times to be involved in the development of educational opportunities online for those in Scottish education.

So is ‘Glow losing its lustre?’ I hope so. Lustre suggests to me its ‘sheen’ or ‘patina’. Anything that’s well used should over time lose this, as it gets more worn. I would hope that over time Glow gets more and more embedded into practice, so that if anything it ends up more of a day to day reality for people involved in Scottish education. As the statistics of people regularly logging into the system continues to increase, I’m more and more convinced that it is being embedded into practice, and making a difference to education in Scotland. Week on week, more people are logging into the system. More than 1,700 of Scotland’s schools have access to Glow. Many are using it for low level but vital activities – the sharing of information, news, links and documents at school level or local authority level that without Glow they wouldn’t have done electronically. That doesn’t make for a good headline though.

Do ‘vast swathes of the country’ have no plans to use Glow? No. Each Local Authority has a rollout plan that they are managing for their users. Glow is also modular – it’s for each Local Authority to decide which components of Glow it adopts or rolls out. I take my hat off to the sterling work of the Local Authority staff as they bring people online, but this will take time. Can this be helped nationally? I hope so. I hope that changes made to both how Glow works in 2010 and how users can help themselves more will make a big difference. I hope that discussions in 2010 with each Local Authority about how the national team can help their rollout will make a difference too.

Are there things about Glow that I’d like to change? Of course there are – that’s why I took on the Head of Glow post at LTS. I wouldn’t have left my job as an Education Officer in a Local Authority to go and work on the national Glow team if I didn’t think that Glow could make a massive difference to how we communicate and share in Scottish education, but there are elements of Glow that need to change to make this easier. Some of those things will be addressed this year, by introducing new tools and services that improve Glow. This year, there will also be a national consultation on what should come after the existing contract with RM is over – LTS presently has an advert open for a large scale consultation which will begin in the spring once the successful applicant has been appointed.

Now is the time to be rolling up our sleeves – getting stuck into the conversation to make Glow better, and help it realize it’s potential as the collaborative online environment to help Scottish education share. This isn’t something that ought to be decided by any one body or group, but rather the collective users of the system – the discussions on the national site at the end of last year point the way forward here. This is a massive shift in culture, and one that won’t happen overnight. We’ve had centuries of being told through hierarchical structures what to do, so a shift to a collaborative culture is arguably poles apart from our previous mindset.

This year is also the time to really look into how Glow is being used in the classroom. Not just sharing the good news stories, or looking at the number of logins or the time spent using Glow, but what difference it’s making to the engagement, motivation and learning of our pupils. That’s what will make a difference to how and why we use technology in education. Rigorous consultation is needed, but this has to happen at the same time as the development of the technology platform – technology continues to get better, and easier to use – Glow needs to do this too, which is why in 2010 we’ll all begin to see change.

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The National Site in Glow has been in need of a makeover for some time. If you have visited it, you’ll be familiar with the ‘Noticeboard’, ‘National Events’, ‘National Groups’ and ‘Resources in Focus’ page tabs. When I joined the National Glow team a couple of years ago, we at Learning & Teaching Scotland added some different content to the noticeboard page, changed the way the events were displayed and presented the procured content in a different way, but little has been done with the National Site since then (aside from an ever growing list of national groups! – I’ll come back to this issue in another post)

I made one massive error in the work we did on the National Site – we didn’t ask all of you what you want to do there, or what you want to find there.

It’s time to rectify that mistake.

If you go to the National Site from tomorrow onwards in Glow, you’ll find the noticeboard changed – it’ll simply ask one question – “if we were to redesign the National Site in Glow, what would you want to find here?” There will be a discussion board there for you to tell us all what you want the National Site to be.

The important word in the sentence on the noticeboard is ‘we’. Glow isn’t the product of selected individuals, or the product of one central organisation (although it could be argued that’s how it’s been perceived so far) – the National Site in Glow needs to belong to all the users of Glow, and more importantly be shaped by us all collectively.

We’ve a great opportunity here – we can all chip in with our thoughts and talents, and turn the National Site in Glow into somewhere not that we ‘must visit’ (after all, how many things do you have on your ‘must do’ list?), but somewhere that we ‘need’ to visit.

I don’t often ask for favours. But if you’re reading this, and you’ve got access to Glow, please go and join the conversation. If you don’t have access to Glow but you’ve got ideas about what it should offer all its users then leave your comments here.

Together we’re greater than the sum of our parts.

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In April 2007 I took part in the phase two pilot of what Glow would become. I  attended a presentation by the Glow team in the ‘classroom’ in LTS and sat on my hands, biting my tongue – wanting to ask ‘what about…’, ‘does it…’, ‘can we…’ That week, I was given a login and allowed to play with the portal. I wrote a blog post about it, and recorded a screencast of my thoughts about the initial process of changing a theme. That week, a number of us got together online to look at Glow Meet, and had quite a frank discussion about what we’d seen in the portal, and shared our thoughts about how people might use it. As you can see and hear, I wasn’t that impressed with what I saw, and regarded what was being offered as a step back for the ‘edutechnorati’ but at the same time a step forward for those that weren’t using collaborative technology in their work. I was worried that it was only a step forward for the majority, when what I was really hoping for was a stride.

At that time, I found myself faced with a choice. I was working as an Education Support Officer in Argyll & Bute Council (all be it on secondment to LTS) and at that moment I saw the future of ICT in Scottish Education for at least the next 3 years. When I was to return from my secondment, my role in the LA was to roll out Glow. So my choice was laid out for me – stay in the LA and roll out something that I thought needed some changes, or try and get into the centre and change it for the better. History shows my decision, but it would be fair to say that beyond a number of discussions and decisions, I don’t feel I’ve had the impact I wanted to have on the direction of Glow as a whole.

Last month I interrupted my paternity leave to attend an interview for the post of ‘Head of Glow’ at Learning and Teaching Scotland. I was lucky enough to be successful, and since taking up my post on the 2nd of November, have set about a number of challenges, which I intend to write blog posts about. To help my focus, we set up a ‘first 100 day’ challenge to ensure we’re not wasting time and energy with my appointment – I’ll share the intentions of that 100 day challenge with you all in a blog post soon too.

Why am I writing this here, now? I feel it’s important that I have a place to share my thoughts, and that doesn’t detract from the great work being shared on the GlowScotland blog. I’ve always used my blog as a place to think out loud, and I don’t think I’ve ever needed a space like it as much as I do now. If you read my online bio on social networking sites, it says my aim is ‘to convince teachers that sharing is a good idea’. Over the coming weeks and months, I want to see how we can collectively achieve this through Glow.

A week ago, there was a great discussion on twitter and a number of blogs about making #glowbetter. I came away enthused that a number of people cared enough to pass comment, and were committed enough to make a difference. This isn’t something that the team at LTS or even the Local Authority staff will change on their own though – it’s all of us, collectively, that will make a difference. Glow gives us a great opportunity to have people sharing in Scottish education – and not just the small percentage represented by the ‘edutechnorati’, but a much larger number of people who regularly are logging into Glow at the moment and saving their documents and weblinks online in Glow groups.

So I’ve stopped sitting on my hands, and am stuck into the challenge of making #glowbetter – what about you?

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‘When the winds of change come, some build walls, others build windmills” - Ancient Chinese proverb.

Today I had the privilege of attending the ‘Building Windmills: Ayr’ event taking place in the new building of Kyle Academy in South Ayrshire. There, I joined with all the Head Teachers of South Ayrshire for day one of a two day CPD event looking at what they collectively can do in this time of great change. (If you want to see what was tweeted about it, follow the hashtag #bwayr)

I was lucky enough to be presenting this morning – you can find my slides embedded here:

This isn’t the first Building Windmills event I’ve attended. I was fortunate to be in attendance in Feburary of this year when Con Morris brought his astonishing idea to life in Stirling for all the CPD Coordinators for the 32 local authorities, and indeed, fortunate enough to be speaking then too. (If you’ve got a Glow account, why not check out the Glow group for the first Building Windmills event?)

My thanks to Fiona Taylor and Alastair Smith for inviting me to speak to their Head Teachers in the Local Authority. I know time is precious, so I really appreciate the attention they gave me for my session, and for the amount of time they as the senior managers in schools are devoting to this activity. They meet 5 times per year, but this two day event was an addition.

What did I make of day 1?

The day started with a thought piece from John McCarney of RM. I’ve never actually hear John speak before, so it was good to hear the thoughts of the man behind education at RM speak on a subject close to his heart. Of the thinkers John chose to illustrate, I was reminded once more of the work of Prof. Wim Veen on what he chooses to call ‘Homo Zappiens‘, and how radically different the information rich, connected world is of our young people today compared with that in which I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. Times really are a changing.

I followed John, covering what I like to call the three ‘elephants in the room’ – the things we know we need to talk about, but don’t feel comfortable doing. The three things I think leaders need to address in their establishment to make more effective use of technology are 1. access to technology, 2. teacher competence, and 3. collaboration. This promoted a lively debate about what kit schools are allowed to purchase, and how much time we devote to CPD.

After I had spoken, we had lunch, closely followed by Ollie Bray covering a whole host of new technologies that he feels Head Teachers need to know about. I could listen to Ollie for hours on this subject, as he has so much to share and puts things in such simple terms that people can easily identify with and understand. He covered a great variety of tools including Google Alerts, Google Reader, Delicious and Twitter amongst others, each with a grounded story of why they have made a difference to his competence and ability as an educator. The furious scribbling I could see from the participants proved to me that he had given a great many ideas for them to follow up.

After Ollie, Mr. CPD himself Con Morris took to the floor. He led the group in a specially prepared version of the Random Activity Generator to help us all think creatively. The topics ranged from ‘professional competences as product packaging’ to ’support for NQTs as a weather forcast’. Initally, this activity was met with what would be fair to say were looks of shock (you want ‘me’ to do ‘what’?), but very soon, folks seemed to get into the swing of it.

That ended our day. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be there for day two, so I hope they get the chance to build on what was covered today. Tomorrow, there’s another thought piece from Ollie, and then a look around the great use of Glow around the country from my colleague Katie Barrowman, and then a further task session led by Con.

What did I make of the event?

I always seem to be impressed by what I hear South Ayrshire do at the moment. It’s no surprise to me that they have the vision to try out this event in their own locale, and I hope that other Local Authorities follow suit. Any local authority that has the conviction to spend such an amount of Head Teacher time on a development challenge is going to reap what it sows. If we want to see change in our education system, then it needs to be led by example. The discussions I was involved in today, lead me to believe that South Ayrshire are facing this challenge head on.

The south-western coast of Scotland is notorious for it’s windy conditions. I don’t expect the educators of South Ayrshire to be building walls to deal with this in the future.

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I’ve often found the terminology used to describe portable computers as quite funny – laptops are more often used on desks (but the name ‘desktop’ has already been taken by hulking great devices that frequently sit underneath desks – go figure), notebooks don’t resemble ‘notes’ or ‘books’ at all, and netbooks similarly lack any ‘bookish’ quality.

For many people, the greatest hurdle to get over when using technology is that it just isn’t intuitive – turn on any device and many absolute beginners still don’t know where to start – no doubt why Microsoft in 1995 chose to label a button ’start’ to give people an idea of what to do next.

With multi-touch technologies, things have got slightly easier – if you’re not sure what to do, give something on the screen or surface a prod, and something invariably happens.

For most people, the transition to using technology happens because they are looking to do something they already do, but in a more productive way. For this reason, the post throughout the week on Gizmodo caught my eye, as I’m always interested in new devices/interfaces to help people get the most out of technology. It turns out Microsoft have been working in secret on a ‘booklet’, and for almost the first time ever, I’m looking at a device that actually warrants that term. It looks just like a book, but with all the advantages of digital connectivity.

What do you think? Is this something that learners or those fearful of embracing technology could easily make use of? I’ll await pricing/specifications with interest.

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‘Rescind’ is a strong word – if I could, I’d probably take that one back.

Today I re-tweeted a message from Alan Stewart concerning Chartered Teachers. Very quickly, Fearghal Kelly and Andrea Reid commented that they disagreed with the comment Alan had made, and therefore by association with me for re-tweeting it.

It’s too much to explain in 140 characters, hence a blog post to explain why I re-tweeted what Alan had to say.

From the off, can I say that I think the concept of Chartered Teacher is a great one.

Years ago, I watched with interest as people went for promotion as Senior Teachers. A large number of them had no interest in management positions, but rather wished to be recompensed at a higher rate than a classroom teacher for their experience and ability. Until the role of Senior Teacher was introduced, for many people in education the only way they could gain a higher salary than a classroom teacher was to go for a management role.

When the Chartered Teacher programme was introduced, I immediately agreed with it. I though it was great that teachers could be rewarded for their experience and ability, and receive a higher rate of pay for it. I also thought it was great that in order to become a Chartered Teacher, one could either be rewarded for work already done in their field of expertise, or could study a number of modules or units to gain an increasing higher qualification and pay in relation to their work.

I’ve watched with interest how this role has developed, and with some concern that CT would go the way of ST in many schools, as being another rung on the promotion ladder.

Over time, I’ve met a number of people in education that were probably brilliant teachers, but didn’t display the same level of ability as managers. Many of these people found themselves ‘forced’ (by society and the beautiful term that Oliver James uses to describe a particular condition he feels we in the ‘West’ suffer from – ‘Afluenza’) to go for promoted posts in a bid to gain a higher salary, yet would probably have served education far better had they stayed at what they were good at – classroom teaching.

I really like the notion that a teacher can be rewarded and achieve recognition for staying in the classroom, by following the chartered teacher programme. I think it’s important that ability and experience can be rewarded.

At the moment, I am not registered as a teacher with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (although a couple of months ago I did send away for the pack to re-register). When I took up a secondment with LTS a couple of years ago, it seems my registration fell between two stools – my then employer stopped deducting the fee from my salary, and my new employer didn’t pay it either. Five years out of the classroom as an Education Support Officer, and two years down the line with LTS I would argue that I don’t have recent classroom experience. Should I just be able to re-register as a teacher because I have been continually working in the field of education? If I hadn’t driven a car for 7 years, would you feel comfortable being a passenger with me at the wheel?

Alan suggested that if someone has been out of the classroom for more than 5 years, they should have their CT status rescinded. I re-tweeted that statement. Why? To me, the entire point of CT was to reward and recognise someone’s dedication to classroom teaching. I have no objection to people taking up secondments and spending some time out of the classroom – in fact, I think many educators would benefit from doing so. But if someone is out for more that 5 years, are they dedicated to classroom practice? Should they go back in at the same level? I think that rescind is too strong a word, but I would call into question someone’s commitment to classroom teaching if they haven’t been doing it for more than five years.

What do others think? How recent does experience have to be to still hold validity?

(On a vaguely related note, does everyone else RT only when they completely agree with a statement, or when they find it interesting/controvertial?)

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A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of accompanying my colleagues Lesley Dickson and Katie Barrowman to the Cisco offices in Eurocentral. John Connell and Jim Buchan had arranged for us to take part in a conferencing session with their colleagues in Bangalore and New Delhi, who are in the process of establishing a digital network for education there.

There was a slight twist though. Instead of more traditional conferencing solutions such as video conferencing or web conferencing, we were introduced to ‘Telepresence‘ and I have to say, it was quite an astonishing experience. We entered what looked like a regular conference room with an oval table with big puffy chairs to sit in. In between each pair of chairs was a desk microphone with a simple on/off switch. One half of the conference table seemed to be cut short, and behind it instead of chairs were three large 60″ LCD/Plasma (I’m not sure which) panels. In the middle of the oval table, the vanity panel looked like some kind of white fabric. It seemed odd to have a vanity panel when no one would be ’seated’ at the other side of the table, but I was told by John Connell that this panel is used to project your computer screen onto, which he promptly demonstrated whilst we waited for the conference to begin. Aside from a telephone on the desk and a corporate ‘Cisco – Scotland’ plaque on the wall, the room was empty of anything else. We sat and waited.

The screens came to life, and I heard the collective intake of breath from my colleagues and I. We were facing John and Jim’s colleagues from Bangalore in full HD – which, through ingenious use of half desks and camera angles, to all intents and purposes looked as though they were seated at the other side of the desk from us. Most video conferencing has some issues around frame rates or slight delays in the transmission, but this was absolutely remarkable – no noticable delay at all. We were then joined by colleagues in New Dehli and the conversation kicked off.

For around an hour, we talked about our experiences with Glow, what our issues to uptake have been, and what interesting things we have seen in the use of Glow in Scottish classrooms. What interested me most was the variety of user experience we were giving from around the country. Whilst it’s easy to turn attention to big events where the previously impossible was made possible, the greatest use of Glow is not the big events but the regular, day in day out storage of documents and sharing of information. It never ceases to amaze me that the best feature for most people isn’t something like web conferencing, but the simple ability to share documents or news – simplicity can’t be underestimated.

Many of the technicalities go over the top of my head, but suffice to say that Telepresence is High Definition conferencing with no latency – something that regular users of traditional video or web conferencing would kill for. Previously, people have had to figure out how to work around issues of latency, but with TelePresence this just isn’t an issue – it felt like the most natural kind of conversation. All too often, we end up working around the problems of technology, or the inherent shortcomings in it’s use. With Telepresence, the results are quite astounding. I’m told it requires a network capable of delivering 5MB up and down stream in order to cope with the bandwidth required for a Telepresence session, so it probably isn’t coming to most locations in the immediate future – but it’s not that far off. It’s web conferencing Jim, but not as we know it.

Could this be used in education? I could see brilliant application of it in situations of one to one tuition where either distance or specialism is an issue, and brilliant home school links for those far from home attending school. Also, I could see great use of it in bringing specialists into the classroom. Much as I like web conferencing, there has always been the issue of quality of sound and video – it looks like pretty soon that’s going to be a thing of the past.

My thanks to John and Jim for giving us this experience of new technology.

imagecredit: JohnConnell.

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I must have have tried dozens of netbooks in some form or another over the past few years (I’m typing this on an HP 2140 now), but it looks like mobile phone giant Nokia is about to enter this space.

My one criticism about netbooks or small form laptops in general is the battery life – boasting a battery life of 12 hours and built in 3G, it’ll be fascinating to see how well this little wonder performs. Most people using 3G and a netbook have to cope with a USB stick hanging out the side of their laptop, as very few machines have a built in slot for the SIM card. At the beginning of September, we’ll find out pricing and availability.

Check out the promotional video below:

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