Glow really does have the potential to be a very useful tool for teaching and learning in Scotland. I am a huge fan of any effort to make use of the web to enhance teaching and learning and develop the skills necessary for our children in the 21st Century.

However…the way Glow is being introduced to Scotland’s teachers and learners concerns me. It is being hyped as being the most fantastic tool you could ever imagine and will be a hugely integral tool in the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence. I’m not sure why this approach has been taken, but whatever the reason I think it is very dangerous. Although you’re not supposed to ever say this, but when you login in to Glow, it is a huge disappointment. It’s difficult to navigate, it is not very intuitive and it doesn’t do everything many of us would like or in the way we’d like to do it.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is not surprising. This is a massive national IT initiative, the chances of it arriving perfect were always very unlikely. The problem lies not with Glow, but with the way it is being sold to us. It’s fairly common practice now for websites to be launched in Beta form. These websites make it very clear that their site is a long way from completion, will not work perfectly and would love feedback to improve. Once all the bugs have been ironed out, the beta status has been removed. In fact, I think it was flickr (before being consumed by Yahoo!) that invented the Gamma status pointing out that their site was permanently in development. Had Glow taken this approach, we wouldn’t have been surprised and disappointed when we logged in and would have been keen to give feedback.

Take the recent function added to the Curriculum for Excellence website for example. You can now use your Glow login to save and group Experiences and Outcomes. Once again, this is being sold as the most fantastic tool ever and teachers are being encouraged to get their Glow login and make use of it. When I tried it out, I was once again underwhelmed. You can’t share your saved Experiences and Outcomes with colleagues without printing them out!! In fact, I tried to download my saved E&O’s twice and both times it crashed my browser. I wouldn’t bother using this feature again. I’d rather continue with my current system – make a planning document in word/excel – copy and paste the relevant E&O’s into it – save it in the shared area at school. Far easier.

Imagine instead of trumpeting this as a fantastic tool, they’d launched in Beta and asked for feedback. I wouldn’t have been disappointed when I saw it as I’d know it was under development. I would’ve sent in my feedback and would’ve kept checking it to see if it had been improved.

By overhyping these tools, all you’ll do is disappoint and alienate teachers and learners and risk a generation of children who’ve not learned to use the web effectively to aid their learning.

P.S. – I know that this is unlikely to be a popular post, however, I really believe strongly in the importance of the Web, including Glow, in our pupils’ learning and so I feel I need to say my piece…