How to start? This is a very personal addition to the conversations/debates that have taken place since Mr Russell’s announcement on 8 September. I have followed and occasionally contributed to conversations at school, in the national press and on twitter with varying degrees of optimism, pessimism and even with a little cynicism at times.  I now would like to share my reflections, maybe a little selfishly perhaps, on my journey of using ICT and glow in the classroom over the past few years and my hopes for future endeavours. As we move forward into this time of change in education in general and the use of ICT to support learning and teaching in particular two quotes from George Eliot seem quite apt: 

"It is never too late to become what you might have been."

“The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.”

Not bad for a maths teacher. OK I’ll come clean and admit to looking up a quote site on the internet. However as I ramble on in the next few paragraphs it is important to note that Glow was an ambitious and original programme of international note.  As with all such programmes things didn’t go as smoothly as was originally planned or envisaged but importantly Glow evolved into a tool that is being used well to support Scottish learners.  What you will see is evidence of what I would consider to be a success in my practice.

It is important you know a little about me. I teach maths at a secondary school in West Lothian and consider myself a fairly competent IT user in and out of the classroom. I was Glow Mentor for my school for several years. I have presented on the use of Glow in the classroom at the Scottish learning Festival 09 and at the ninth ICTMT conference in Metz, France in the same year.

Parts of Glow that I considered were successful  and hope will continue in some form in the future:

Glow Groups & Web Parts-  class glow groups promoted a sense on online class community that added to identity of the class in the classroom. The discussion forums are the heaviest visited area within a group as a homework/study aid outside of the classroom.  My recent higher class’ discussion forum had over 1400 views throughout the year. This from a class of 26 pupils. The beneficial use of the groups was very apparent when the pupils from an S4 maths class were asked to comment on their group

“Glow has been really fun to use and has been a useful and productive alternative to revising at home and homework help in class. The added sense of responsibility to help one another out has been a boost in my confidence in maths and at times i have understood explainations from my peers better than the teacher(you're still a great teacher Mr S!) Apart from the rare technical hitches Glow has been one of the best and most exciting resources I have used in the school and will hopefully give other pupils the same confidence and knowledge (and fun) I have gained.”

“i've really enjoyed using glow :D it's really helped with questions i usually wouldn't know what to do, and i think it's a great way to get the class to interact with each other. i also thought it was helpful as it let others help with problems and not just mr sexton. so thank you for letting us use it “

“i think glow really helped me to gain confidence in maths, and made me feel more confident to ask questions about things i didnt understand :-). it also helped with homework because i was able to answer all the questions and it got everybody helping and that made everyone build a good realationship with one an other (like megan said). Now i feel im going into my exams knowing all i know thanks to mr sexton and the help of glow :-O! because he can give us advise at any time now :-)! “

Glow Meet- A fantastic tool to aid transition from primary to secondary. I’ve used this over the past few years with P7 pupils throughout a whole school year. Again from pupils (click on link for video)

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Glow Web Spaces- Being able to host your own web sites within glow is a fantastic resource. I have made extensive use of this facility to host several PUBLIC sites. Click on the links below

Common strategies   Higher Maths Integration

Glow Blogs- A fantastic way to share learning. Glow Blogs are being used by many colleagues as pupil learning logs to aid pupil reflection on their learning.

As said above this is very much a personal record and others use many of the other applications available within Glow quite differently. I have made no use of Glow Learn as it doesn’t suit my style or approach to teaching; others make fantastic use of this application.  I think as we look to the future we must appreciate that any built infra-structure should include a full range of applications that allow choice of approach. Also we must consider user support. The structure of support available is just as important as the structure of application available. Probably a bit more so if we are, as suggested, going to be using a variety of different open source applications. 

As we move to the future can I again refer you to:

"It is never too late to become what you might have been."