Fizzics

The 3rd pilot phase of Glow is has just completed its first week. The pilot period will run until Thursday 28th June. As Glow mentor for my school, I am taking part in the testing of two new components - Glow Mail and Glow Messenger. There is also a third new component, Glow Learn, which is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). I’ve not seen Glow Learn yet as the pilot for this component is being conducted in a small group of local authorities rather than opening it up to national testing.

Glow Mail is a web-based service not unlike the webmail facility your home internet service provider might provide for you. A few teething problems have been publicised on the Glow feedback forum, page errors and the like, and there are a couple of changes necessary in the terminology to make the interface more intuitive. On the whole, it seems like a winner though. I am unclear whether the plan is for this service to supercede each school’s own First Class mail server once Glow is switched on nationally. Our own server provides a generous mail storage limit and already allows for a basic chat/messaging function, although I accept that this might not be the case in all schools right now.

This talk of messaging brings me on to the second component being piloted right now, Glow Messenger. This is essentially a clone of Windows Live Messenger, designed to operate within your browser window, removing the need for a standalone application and all the internet security issues this would entail. I have one big gripe about this component - it only works if you turn off your pop-up blocking software.

I’m finding the testing of the Messenger component quite difficult. Around the country, there are approximately 600 mentors participating in the pilot right now. I can only chat to one of them on messenger if I know their newly-assigned Glow Mail address and we happen to be online at the same time. I have asked the people running the pilot if they would adjust the functionality to allow me to search for people who are online at the same time as me - how else am I going to find someone to chat with? My request was refused, “you can only see a person’s online status once they are in your contact list” - not the best of starts. Add to that the fact that the 30 people I have added to my contact list are listed as “status unknown”, rather than “offline” and you might see why I am beginning to feel that the messenger pilot is a waste of time.

New components apart, how does the rest of Glow shape up? Well, it’s currently structured with a clear heirarchy of

• my Glow - your own personally customisable Glow page(s)
• School area - news feeds, events & other information about your school
• Local Authority - information at local authority level
• National - does what it says on the tin

The default entry is to a staff page. I am unsure who populates the staff page with information but I would dearly like to change the way it is presented, this is simply from a cosmetic perspective though.

You may customise your own page, although I think that the complexity of selecting the desired functions is well beyond the IT skills of a classroom teacher right now. This is what worries me. As a Glow mentor, I feel I am expected to assist my colleagues in the transition period when Glow is introduced. With such complex navigation around the Glow network, I am either going to drown in requests for help during my non-teaching periods or I will have to take a step back and hope that the local authority can provide sufficient inset sessions to close the knowledge gap.

Perhaps I am being a bit mean. There are almost another 2 weeks of the pilot remaining and it is possible that the programmers at RM will fix the bugs before time is up. Let’s see how they get on.