{"id":115,"date":"2010-04-03T10:34:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-03T17:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=115"},"modified":"2010-04-03T10:44:21","modified_gmt":"2010-04-03T17:44:21","slug":"a-note-about-glow-the-scottish-education-intranet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"A Note about GLOW, the Scottish Education Intranet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Glow-heart-100_tcm4-587141.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-123\" title=\"Glow heart 100_tcm4-587141\" src=\"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Glow-heart-100_tcm4-587141.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a>I wrote a short piece in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/charles-kerchner\/scotland-invests-in-a-pow_b_524011.html\" target=\"_blank\">Huffington Post<\/a> today about Glow, the Scottish investment in an intranet system. \u00a0It&#8217;s worth a longer look, and I am overdue in finishing up a descriptive analysis of how it works and how it was created.<\/p>\n<p>There are three important things to realize about Glow:<\/p>\n<p>First, it is not about technology for its own sake. \u00a0Think of it as a teaching utility that makes collaboration possible. \u00a0Glow links teacher-created lessons with the national curriculum, allowing both standards and variation to exist at the same time. \u00a0In a sense, it manages the paradox of centralization and decentralization.<\/p>\n<p>Second, it is a testimony that politics and government can tackle a big project, bring it in under budget, and create lasting infrastructure in education. \u00a0It took a decade to move Glow from first thoughts to countrywide roll-out. \u00a0During that time literally thousands of people were involved in the design. \u00a0The Scottish government relied on a quasi-governmental agency called Learning and Teaching Scotland to coordinate its development and a private contractor, RM, to do the technology work. \u00a0Meanwhile, local school authorities gained the broadband capacity to connect to high-speed intranet, particularly important in a country with lots of isolated rural schools. \u00a0 All of this was possible only because the political system tolerated a long view of infrastructure development rather than short range achievement targets or &#8220;silver bullet&#8221; programs that promise dramatic results in months. \u00a0At root, Glow is about changing how a generation of teachers approaches their work.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Glow is a symbol of national pride. \u00a0It rose after the birth of Scottish legislative independence, and it marked a path toward education that was more broadly focused than that of England.<\/p>\n<p>More about Glow from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ltscotland.org.uk\/glowscotland\/index.asp\" target=\"_blank\">Learning and Teaching Scotland <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/deimos.apple.com\/WebObjects\/Core.woa\/Browse\/ltscotland.org.uk\" target=\"_blank\">iTunes U<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In future posts, I will be writing more about education technology in California and particularly in Los Angeles. \u00a0Suggestions welcome.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote a short piece in the Huffington Post today about Glow, the Scottish investment in an intranet system. \u00a0It&#8217;s worth a longer look, and I am overdue in finishing up a descriptive analysis of how it works and how it was created. There are three important things to realize about Glow: First, it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}