Glow is listening to you and improving, said Ross Watson of Learning and Teaching Scotland, as he talked about the latest changes to the much- berated education intranet at the Scottish Learning Festival.
Glow Light offers a new landing page to make it easier for teachers to navigate the site, he said. A list of tabs for News, My Stuff, Search, Favourites, Create can now be customised and changed according to taste, and teachers can log in wherever they are and use it like a remote desktop.
Teachers reported that they wanted online discussions, whether national, local, or for their own classes. These can be found now in the Glow forums, Mr Watson said.
Teachers have expressed interest in GlowTube, saying pupils would be really comfortable using it. In the meantime, GlowBlogs allows teachers to publish their own materials - WordPress, one of the most popular means, has now been built in, he said. Blogs can be private “for just teachers at your school”, for any Glow users - or public.
There is also now a blog created by Mr Watson on how to build a school website. This is publicly available. “You don’t need to be able to build a website,” he said; “you just blog”.
And there are ePorfolios, where pupils can blog, provide evidence of wider achievement, and add videos, texts and any media.
Other improvements that Mr Watson pointed out were increased log-out time; GlowMail allowing users to drag and drop folders; images can be resized and GlowSearch has been improved. Coming soon will be GlowWikis. If anyone is developing materials in Glow, this will make it easier for them to publicise them.
Finally, if there is anything you don’t like about Glow, you can now click on “Change requests” and send your message.
