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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