Glow is the Scottish Schools National Intranet. This is a major national ICT and telecommunications programme managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland. The funding for Glow comes from the Scottish Government and the project is a collaboration between local authorities, Learning and Teaching Scotland and RM. Glow was designed to offer three key components to Scottish education:
The Interconnect: A broadband network connecting up education in Scotland. This includes all 32 education authorities and other key stakeholders such as Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Content Delivery Infrastructure (CDI): A country-wide intelligent content delivery network to facilitate the flow of media-rich learning resources across the country - when and where you want them. Cisco described it as "the biggest content delivery network of its kind in the world."
National Intranet: Tools for teaching and learning, sharing and collaborating all within a safe, secure, online environment.
Initial Rollout
Preparation for Glow began with an investigatory phase known as Phase Zero, which involved checking that Glow could interface with the management information systems of the 32 Education Authorities in Scotland in order to provision the anticipated 800,000 accounts. Glow was then piloted over a number of stages, and at each stage further functionality was introduced and tested.
Feedback was then given by 13 local authorities and 3000 users (teachers, pupils and local authority staff) who had been involved in piloting. This feedback led to further refinements and the launch of the full Glow system at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2007.
Since the rollout of the live service began in 2007, 31 out of the 32 Scottish local authorities are live with Glow.
According to Learning and Teaching Scotland "The main purpose of Glow is to enhance the quality of learning and teaching in the classroom by fully supporting the delivery of Curriculum for Excellence."
Features
The full Glow service is entirely web-delivered and browser-based, enabling access from school, home or anywhere that internet access is possible.
The Glow system provides access to a variety of collaboration tools within a secure, password authenticated environment. These include:
- Glow Meet - A webconferencing service which runs on Marratech software.
- Glow Chat- A text based chat client which allows for no, full or partial moderation.
- Glow Messenger - An instant messaging system accessible by every teacher with a Glow account.
- Glow Mail - A web based email service available to all Glow users.
- Glow Learn - An integrated Virtual learning environment (VLE) allowing Nationwide sharing of resources and creation of teaching courses.
- Glow Groups - Sub-sites which can be created by teachers in each establishment for a variety of purposes, such as a class group, a curricular subject group, or a group for staff collaboration. Groups also exist at a National Level for each curricular area to encourage collaboration across the country.
- Discussion Boards
- Document Stores
External Links...
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