Cabinet Secretary for Education Michael Russell discusses the future of Glow – the schools website.

Transcript of YouTube Video – The Future of Glow

“Scotland’s got a strong history of using technology imaginatively in schools. We had early strategies to get computers into classroom; we had some of the first online communities in the world for school leaders; we’ve invested in CPD online; we’ve developed an international reputation for Games Based Learning, and of course we have Glow – the world’s first national education intranet.

For over ten years, our thinking about this has been at the cutting edge of ICT in education. I think we’re all proud of what we’ve achieved, but times change and circumstances change, and we’ve got to change too. It’s important that we don’t do what we have done – we look at what’s happening in the wider world, and decide to move forward.

We’re going to continue to invest in Glow. Glow is a phenomenal resource. It’s given thousands of teachers access to tools and shared learning resources, for a number of years, but we’ve got to do it in a way that keeps up with other things that are happening online.

I’ve listened to advice – I’ve had conversations; I’ve talked to teachers; I’ve talked to IT experts – we all agree that Glow’s got to remain world leading, but it’s got to evolve. It’s got to become more dynamic. It’s got to gain more credibility with young people. And that means at it’s heart it’s got to consist of a variety of different things – the free tools and the open source services that already exist on the web. If we invest in those things, that ‘glue’ that bind all the good parts of Glow together. And if we further invest in access – that is, the interconnect which we’ve got to make better and faster, then what the next generation of Glow would do would be to allow schools to harness the power of technology for learning; to keep pace with rapidly evolving developments; but to actually speak the language that young people speak online, and allow them to access it in the same way.

So our new approach is going to free up resources to do just that, and to support teachers in the classroom to experiment and to share good practice in the use of technology to enhance learning.

We need to best possible solutions in the 21st Century for Scotland’s learners. We need to capitalise on the expertise of the Scottish and International education community. We need to listen to those who are at the cutting edge in ICT.

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So how are we going to take this forward? Well, initially we’re going to do three things –

Firstly, we’re not going to procure Glow as we’ve been talking. We’re not going to have big companies investing in a big project. What we’re going to do is to invest in technologies for learning, and how those are accessed. Of course, involving companies, and involving all sorts of ideas, including the lots of things that are available online which we don’t join up enough.

Secondly, to do that, we’re going to hold discussions with everybody that we can find that shares our thinking about what Glow could become. For me and for most people, Glow has never been about the ‘big’ – it’s never been about tools; it’s about changing culture, practice and behaviour to help teachers develop learners that we need for the third millennium.

One part of that is on the 17th October we’re going to hold an ICT summit in Stirling where we’ll consider where we’ve come from, we’ll consider the online discussion, and we’ll shape where we go next. There will be opportunities to attend and contribute in person or online to that event.

This is a new and different approach. What it says is technology in schools is absolutely central – that we care about them. That this government wants to see how they go forward, but it also means we’ve listen to those that know best; we’ve listened to teachers; and we’ve listened to children, and moreover, we’ve looked at the world as it is and say imagined how it could be for education online, and we want to get there.

I think this is really exciting. It’s a new way of doing things. This news is being distributed in a new way. We’ve set up a webpage where people can contribute to the debate already. If you Twitter, then there’s a hashtag that you can take part in this debate. I’ll be posting more information on my thoughts both through Twitter and online about how we do this, and through ‘Engage for Education’ which is of course the national education website that we run.

We’ve got lots of opportunities to do this properly. We’re going to reshape how we use ICT in schools, and we’re going to reshape that great resource of Glow. Glow was the first national education intranet. We’re going to be world-beaters again. We’re going to shape an entirely new experience for our young people using Glow as a means, and the end is ICT literacy and better education.”

Michael Russell
Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning

 

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