Glow (Scottish Schools National Intranet)
Glow is the Scottish Schools National Intranet. This is a major national ICT and telecommunications programme managed by Education Scotland. The funding for Glow came from the Scottish Government and the project is a collaboration between local authorities, Education Scotland and RM Education.
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.
Up and running by 2009, it became the world's first national education intranet.[1]
According to Education 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 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 Adobe Connect software.
- Glow Blogs - Blogs provide a powerful and flexible tool for collaborative learning
- Glow Forums - Allow you to interact in a user-friendly environment.
- Glow Wikis - Collaborative online spaces and allow individuals and classes to work together on one ‘canvas’.
- 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 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
References
- ↑ "The force is with Glow as virtual help links up schools". The Scotsman. 10 February 2009. Retrieved 2 January 2017.