launched in 2007 it looked like this,growth in number of users making use of the servicesGrowth in amount of content created and shared to help the learners in classrooms throughout the land.
2009 facelift that we’re called ‘Glow Refresh’
But the big question for us now is where do we go next? How do we develop a partnership with you in industry to cater for the digital needs for our learners in the future? How will users Interact with Glow Futures and with each other?
Talk through 3 stagesHistory – important to know past, present b4 futureIn 2005, Scottish Ministers signed a contract with RM education plc to deliver Glow, the Scottish Schools Digital Network. It’s aim was to ‘light up learning’, and provide a common platform of services for those involved in Scottish education.
It took two years to develop, and in September 2007 it was launched at the Scottish Learning Festival.
People have said this is ambitious at time & since
Examples: chat being used to help compose a scriptLess confident pupils that don’t like to raise their hand/shout out in class
Teaching, not tech
John Sexton – maths @ James Young High schoolDiscussion board for h/w
Supporting projects across the curriculumNorthmuir Primary AngusP5 planning & organising health week
Bridging the gap between school and homeWindyknowe Primary, WLC P1&2 Fairyland activity
Parents commenting on the work of pupils – dialogue between home and schoolKey government priority to engage with parents.
Time has moved on since 2007
We’ve looked at the current solution, but I’d like to explain to you how we’ve been changing it since 2009
Feedback
EasierEasierEasier!
We’ve listened – Craig Newmark “Get out of the way”
Cleaner,simpler & personal
But don’t just take my word for it!
Many schools thinking about a blog as a website
In different parts of the countryFalkirk being the 2nd last to sign up for Glow
Already has classes of pupils with their own learning logs – every S1 pupil in Scottish Borders uses a Glow blog as a kind of e-portfolio.
Existing contract – 2010Extended x2 until 2012
I’d like to give you an update on usage.All the stakeholder groups have signed up to make use of the services, which is a massive achievement in and of itself. Glow Futures therefore begins with 100% market reach for those involved in state education 3-18.
Of our approximate 800,000 pupils and teachers, we’ve created 790,000 accounts. That’s the easy part!
Of those 790,000, 353,399 have logged in and made use of the system.
Last week, 64,856 of them made use of Glow
Were I to look across the last month, 119,121 of them made use of Glow.
How does that compare to other networks? If I look at the National Education networks, most of them struggle to get into double figures.
Last month however, 33.7% of those people that can use Glow, did.
Let me compare that to a well known phenomenon – 18.9% of those people that could use twitter each month, do so.
To date, there have been 16.6 million logins to Glow.
Since August 2010, there have been more than 7,500 blogs created. That’s the fastest growing blogging platform that’s ever been used in Scottish education.
You can see here the trend in growth of active accounts in Glow since it launched. It’s relatively recently that the largest local authorities have come online, and even these latecomers so to speak have already impressive statistics to show for their usage.
We’re seeing interesting data emerge. This graph shows the use of Glow out of school hours by pupils. You can see the massive growth in the last quarter of last year – due to the bad weather, but what interests me the most is that this continued to grow even once the weather got better.
People are creating a vast wealth of resource in Glow – this graph shows the increase in user generated content since Glow began, with more than 80,000 Glow groups and over 1.5 million education resources stored in Glow. Many of these are now being shared across the country.
The vast majority of content created and shared in Glow is at school level – real pupils and teachers, using Glow to help them deliver Curriculum for Excellence. Obviously this shows you schools, but for Glow in the future this will be wherever learning is taking place
The existence of a resource in Glow doesn’t tell me that its being used however. Were I to look at the top 500 most visited Glow groups, I know in the last month they have been visited more than 1 million times. That’s not people just logging in and reading their email – that’s people using Glow for a curricular purpose.
Recently, we’ve started to see local authorities choosing to bring their parents into Glow. Early days for this at the moment, but what a brilliant way for parents to keep in touch and be actively involved in their children’s learning, instead of the usual response of ‘nothing’ from kids when asked by their parents ‘what did you do in school today?’
So we’ve come quite a distance in five years.
From how it looked and what it did in the early days
And quite a change for our users.
But where do we go next?
Glow pre-dated Curriculum for Excellence, so Glow Futures will bring these two initiatives together seamlessly in order to deliver national outcome four.
The Scottish Government is looking to establish the next generation of services for those involved in learning in Scotland. This is not a replacement for Glow - rather it’s a new paradigm that will build upon the achievements of Glow and transcend it. It will need to be an agile and organic environment that caters for the current and future needs of Scotland’s learners in the context of the dynamic changes taking place in the worlds of education and technology.
Glow Futures. Why ‘Glow Futures’ and not Glow 2.0? In 2004, Tim O’Reilly announced the dawn of web 2.0 as a shift away from how the web had previously functioned. In 2012, we won’t be announcing the next version of Glow, or Glow 2.0. Instead, we want to encapsulate a vision that will allow learning to go in a number of different directions, and to provide the parameters to grow and develop organically over time. The future of Glow isn’t one thing - it’s a realm of possibilities for the future of learners in our nation.
With Glow 1.0 we built a strong foundation of changing practice in Scottish classrooms to include greater use of technology to help deliver Curriculum for Excellence - now it's time to develop that foundation to support a future set of learning services for the Nation we are calling Glow Futures.
Glow Futures drives the development of teaching, the sharing of learning opportunities, and helps our young people be successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens. It allows all involved in learning to take ownership of their own learning journey, and to showcase their achievements to the world.
Glow Futures will be built on seven principles:Trusted, Personalised, Organic, Motivating, Engaging, Social and Easy. Our seven core Learner Activities using Glow Futures are:Explore, Learn, Create, Share, Organise, Collaborate and Showcase.
Glow Futures opens access to learning for the nation.
What will life be like for our learners with Glow Futures? “As a life-long learner, Glow Futuresis the place I go first each day to help me make sense of my place in the world. It provides me with a contextual hub for the learning that I am involved in, and keeps me in touch with those that assist me in my learning journey – be they parents, primary caregivers, teachers, lecturers or subject matter experts from far and wide. Glow Futures enables me to responsibly express myself digitally, and empowers me to contribute to the knowledge economy of Scotland, supporting sustained productivity, growth, competitiveness and prosperity, as well as Scotland’s place in the wider world. Glow Futures has transformed my understanding of a community of learning, as I am no longer bound by my geography, but liberated by it as I am able to access learning opportunities with people from all over the country in my own unique learning journey. I use Glow Futures to explore, learn, create, share, organise, collaborate and showcase my work and achievements,all the while developing my own unique brand and pathway as a learner and citizen.”
The seven principles for Glow Futures;Trusted, Personalised, Organic, Motivating, Engaging, Social and Easy.
Trusted |truhst| verb [ trans. ] to have confidence in; rely on or depend on; to believe.
Dealing with people online and giving them the space to become responsible digital citizens requires trust. Glow Futures is a trusted brand. People need to be able to trust Glow Futures to keep sensitive information private, and trust Glow Futures to look after their data. Our users need to trust that we have provided the safest and most secure set of Glow Futures services available based on Open standards. We also need to ensure a fast flowing user experience for our large populations of users and consequently we require highly scalable systems to deal with the latency effect commonly experienced in National scale implementations.
Personalised |pur-suh-nl-ahyz| verb [ trans. ] to make personal; to ascribe personal qualities to; personify.
Glow Futures will allow users to personalise how they learn in a system where services and content can be configured for and by each one. The system will safely store and grow a rich profile of the user, developing over time to give highly personalised services. Facilitators may personalise the learning space and profile to deliver differentiated content for the appropriate age and stage of the individual. A dynamic system could apply formative and diagnostic assessment of user performance and change the level to suit. This could lead to automatic presentation or recommendation to sit the appropriate level of summative assessment of knowledge, understanding and skills. Users will own a digital space that allows them to explore, learn and create in their preferred learning style in a personally accessible environment.
Organic |awr-gan-ik| adjective [ trans. ] developing in a manner analogous to the natural growth and evolution characteristic of living organisms; arising as a natural outgrowth.
The development of mass social media platforms and e-commerce has taught us that the most successful services develop in small stages, over time and are driven by the needs of the user. These micro services within a larger platform are often encouraged to compete with each other and evolve in order to survive. We call this sustainable organic growth and Glow Futures users will be part of this ecosystem. Glow Futures should always be in a beta development stage. From the start we cannot pretend that the next version of Glow is a finished product. It will grow with the user, changing over time as more services and functionality are added. This organic growth will not only make Glow Futures more sustainable but also provide it with a commercial opportunity to generate revenue for user developers and supplier developers perhaps via an applications store.
Motivate |ˈmōtəˌvāt| verb [ trans. ] provide (someone) with a motive for doing something • stimulate (someone's) interest in or enthusiasm for doing something : I'm going to motivate kids to learn.
Young people find technology motivating. Glow Futures should create an environment which is conducive to learning by tapping into the user’s motivation. Glow Futures will support ‘good’ learning giving clear synergy with the key principles of Curriculum for Excellence. Users will be motivated if they see a value and benefit from using Glow Futures. It helps them to perform better, and gives them access to real-time and relevant learning opportunities at an appropriate level for their needs. Single sign on gives access to rich content from a variety of sources that will motivate people to learning and to share their achievements.
Engaging[ intrans. ] ( engage in) participate or become involved in : organizations engage in a variety of activities | ( be engaged in) some are actively engaged in learning. • ( engage with) establish a meaningful contact or connection with: the groups needed to engage with learning communities.
Glow Futures users will be engaged in a technology enabled learning process. Their attention can then be directed to a meaningful learning experience which will involve some or all of the Learning Activities that we’ll expand on shortly… to explore, learn, create, share, organise, collaborate and showcase. The potential to have learning opportunities, anytime, anyplace on any device will allow more natural engagement for formal and informal learning. Users will engage with their personal learning requirements and will be able to use the technology to engage with other users, learning communities or remote experts.
Social |ˈsōshəl| adjective [ attrib. ] of or relating to society or its organization: we are social beings as well as individuals. Relating to or designed for activities in which people learn with each other.
Learning is a social experience. As soon as we learn something new, our primeval instinct is to share it. Glow Futures needs to facilitate that sharing, and provide the mechanism to find, create, build and nurture learning communities with a common interest, experience or goal with a variety of audiences. Social software supports group interaction. Great change is needed for policy, practice and development before the benefits of social software become widespread and effective in Scottish education: From a policy perspective, tools to support Scotland’s curriculum must take account of new social relationships with knowledge. Emerging assessment practices must support these new approaches to learning and the new social competencies we expect Scottish users to develop. In some Scottish schools, we are already witnessing changes to practice through the use of social software. By connecting users these tools support schools to take risks and develop pedagogical practice. They also facilitate and encourage dialogue between institutions, education professionals, parents and children. New approaches to learning involves the global social collaboration between all users across different times and different spaces.
Easy |’ēzē| adjective (easier , easiest) [ trans. ] achieved without great effort; presenting few difficulties : an easy way of retrieving information.
Glow Futures needs to be easy to use with little or no user training. The technology industry is providing a constantly improving user experience for consumers and Glow Futures should always be at the leading edge of the human computer interface. Support will be available in the appropriate context, age and stage of the user. It should be predominantly in a self-service format with links to further support and advice as and when required.
We have defined seven Learner Activities for Glow Futures. We believe they define some core activities that deliver an engaging learning process within a learning technology environment. The activities are;Explore, Learn, Create, Organise, Share, Collaborate and Showcase.
Explore |ikˈsplôr| verb [ trans. ] travel in or through in order to learn about or familiarize oneself with it
Glow Futures will motivate users to start out on their own highly personalized learning journey. They will want to explore and discover a wide range of learning opportunities along the way. The boundaries of their learning universe will give them the freedom to learn naturally within an appropriate environment.We foresee a future where well defined learning objects empower the system to become aware of the objects value to the user and automatically surface themselves on the appropriate device, learning stage and time.
Learn |lərn| verb (past learned |lərnd|) [ trans. ] gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught
Glow Futures will support learning at anytime and in any place, both within the traditional learning institutions and outwith. It will include formal learning defined by Scottish Government as well as informal learning. Glow Futures supports the principles of curriculum design by delivering learning opportunities that are both challenging but enjoyable. The suite of tools available within Glow Futures will allow the user to have a personalised, coherent, broad, deep and relevant learning experience. Glow Futures should support as wide a range of learning styles and methodologies appropriate to the needs and preferences of the user. A rich profile will offer the user personalised options but the user will remain in control to choose content and presentation of that content. Teachers and mentors will facilitate, support and nurture the user on their lifelong learning journey.
Create |krēˈāt| verb [ trans. ] bring (something) into existence
Creativity can be broken down into four characteristics: Firstly, creativity always involves thinking or behaving imaginatively. Second, overall this imaginative activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achieving an objective. Third, these processes must generate something original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value.Glow Futures will allow learners to create, using a variety of easy to use tools.
Share |sh e(ə)r| verb [ trans. ] … a part or portion of a larger amount that is divided among a number of people, or to which a number of people contribute
Whatever the creation or idea, Glow Futures users will be able to share them. Users will choose to share that with one person, other people, selected groups, all Glow Futures users or the whole world. People will keep up to date with ‘what’s new from you’ and search your portfolio if the user allows.
Organise |ˈôrgəˌnīz| verb [ trans. ] ... arrange into a structured whole; order : organize lessons in a planned way
By organising, we make sense of the huge mass of data in our world. Glow Futures helps us organise our data and organise our processes and ourselves. Glow Futures allows us to share our data so other people can help us organise it as well. Glow Futurescan also help us organise each other whether it is suggesting learning activities or coordinating peer learning. Glow Futures has a range of tools to allow us to do all these things.
Collaborate |kəˈlabəˌrāt| verb [ trans. ] ... work jointly on an activity, esp. to produce or create something
Sometimes you will be working alone. Sometimes you will have your teacher or mentor to assist you. At other times, you’ll be working with others within your immediate environment or with others from across the country or around the world.Glow Futures needs to offer you the synchronous and a-synchronous tools to collaborate with, and the opportunity to find and recommend people to collaborate with as easily as possible.
Showcase |ˈshōˌkās| noun [ trans. ] a place or occasion for presenting something favourably to general attention
Technology makes it possible to share digitised materials with ease. Showcasing user successes in this way increases the value of such achievements, and increases user pride in their own work and abilities, helping them achieve the aspirations of a Curriculum for Excellence, and growing our international reputation and renown on their achievements, their research, their creativity and their innovation as part of our nation. The concept of the connected family is strengthened with the ability to showcase and present their learning.Therefore, it is essential that Glow Futures provides the ability for users to publish their work and achievements with ease, with the result that these achievements can be viewed by a select audience, all Glow Futuresusers, or the rest of the world.
