GLOW

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/usingglowandict/

GLOW is the national intranet for education in Scotland. Introduced initially for schools, it is now used in colleges as well; it carries an increasing number of Higher courses fully online and is linked to, and used by both school and college VLEs.

GLOW has developed a Virtual Campus which will be available from August 2011. The intention for the VC is that students will be able to study courses even when there is very limited access to teachers in the students' school. Initially, the Virtual Campus will support two subjects - Advanced Higher History, and Advanced Higher French. Shortly after the initial launch, beginners Gaelic and Learning Skills will be added. There will be a fifth subject also offered from 2011 onwards: resources to support the Games Design NPA. There are online tutorials and video interviews to support this and work is continuing with the SQA [1] to finalise this. The resources to support the NPA were created by LTS's [www.ltscotland.org.uk] Consolarium team, and are in GLOW already.

The materials for Adavenced Higher French have been given to GLOW by North Ayrshire Council which has its own virtual campus. This is difficult to find on the Council website and not to be confused with Kilwinning, the North Ayrshire campus os James Watt College [see http://www.kilwinning.org/tour/section3.htm].

The Advanced History resources have been given to GLOW from Kirkwall Grammar School, and over and above course materials, they include example dissertations and essay answers too which will allow open debate amongst teachers to help ensure consistency in marking. GLOW has recently completed an online e-moderation course which would be undertaken by a member of staff who would be willing to support students through a course, with the students coming from various schools.

In September 2011, following lengthy consultation, the Scottish Government cancelled planned procurement updating the software and established a review of future development. The objectives have been restated as follows:

• Develop resources to support schools in teaching on-line learning skills. These skills are an important part of a broad general education particularly as some learning in the senior phase is likely only to be accessible to some schools via on-line arrangements.
• Government or Education Scotland should investigate alternative models of centralised on-line schooling to assist individual local authorities deal with aspects of inclusion (for example travelling families, children in hospital, excluded children, children in care, children with phobia, etc.). Stephen Heppell’s NotSchool.net model is also worth investigation.
• Scottish Government or Education Scotland along with local authority, industry and higher education partners should start to develop and capture examples of emerging pedagogical practice for learning, teaching and assessment. This should include 1:1, flipped classroom and mobile technologies in learning. Scotland may benefit from a centre of emerging practice.

It should be noted that many practising teachers have been very vocal in their criticisms of GLOW, with most identifying outdated software as their main bugbear.