#EduScotICT - An island-based parent, and corporate ICT worker, writes ...

(Please skip the first 3 paragraphs if you believe that everyone should drive or take the train to Stirling, Edinburgh or Glasgow for national events, they will probably just annoy you - substantive comments on #EduScotICT begin in paragraph 4!)

I attended the summit "remotely", partly to test out that type of attendance at a fairly lengthy event. These "remote attendance" facilities are very important requirements for island young people, teachers and parents. Provision of such facilities intimately related (in chicken-and-egg fashion) with provision and take up of pervasive and affordable bandwidth (in schools and at home). This issue is not specific to education: these facilities (and adequate bandwidth) are also crucial for workers, learners and carers (in short, citizens) in all island-based public, private and third-sector enterprises, if they aspire to contribute to and benefit from national initiatives. (They may also have benefits for others, and I hope those others will make it clear if this is the case!)

While it was great to see @islayian and @carolinebreyley attend the summit in person (and islanders need to remember that in-person attendance SOMETIMES is essential!), the breadth of attendance and depth of engagement in events such as this by island communities (i.e. at least as broad and deep as that achieved by central belt authorities), can *only* be achieved by providing facilities along the lines of those provided to enable me to attend on Monday. I'd like to say that I thought the event (in that respect at least) sets the standard for other education (and all other) national initiatives to follow (which is not to say I don't have a list of potential improvements, should resources allow!)

So I attended the #EduScotICT summit partly to test the technology (summary: it worked, was mostly very good, but has some areas which could be improved; without it I would have been excluded from any engagement in this particular event), but I knew I would got drawn into the debate! I write primarily as a parent (my kids are now in S4, S2 and P6), all make use of Glow routinely - I find it fascinating how it is used so differently in primary school and the (much more complicated) secondary evironment. I am also a LA corporate ICT worker, in a a small authority where corporate ICT is responsible for supporting ICT in teaching and learning. I had some involvement in Glow preparations in Orkney years ago. (These opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employers - I think it says this somewhere everything on this blog, but it is important to stress this here, specifically!)

Cutting to the chase, Alan Hamilton's blog post is the best summary of a potentially successful approach to the future ICT in Scottish education that I have seen; it was also good to see Alan engaging with the comments in Jim Buchan's blog post. Alan's detailed comments on using Glow and Google docs are instructive, and his numbered points for action neatly cover all the issues that have been swirling around in my head for some time now; I believe Alan's blog demonstrates a truly professional, reflective, collaborative approach, which (with support from colleagues, support services and funders) has a realistic chance of resulting in improvments.

Dealing with the straighforward stuff first (and there is some discussion of this in the comments to Alan's blog): "the last mile" and provision of an adequate number and range of devices are important issues, and there should be stronger (possibly statutory) guidance from the Scottish Government (and a higher level of resource) to ensure that schools have access to the infrastructure required to deliver the curriculum, and enable our young people to become successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens. (This may or may not, in my experience, be achieved by straightforwardly providing what is demanded by the most ICT-enthusiastic teachers and advisers). In my opinion, this should be done through carefully scrutinised and inspected LA provision to schools. I work for a small authority which has done much work , involving those in ICT and in the LA education service (including headteachers and classroom teachers in schools) to ensure that teachers, headteachers, ICT professionals and LA education management have the structures and communication channels to avoid the worst of the problems others seem to struggle with. Key to this has been achieving transparency to all parties of the level of resource (and I don't just mean bandwidth!) that is provided to the LA for schools: this includes all parties recognising the value of Glow (including the absolutely crucial Glow meet) as a "free" asset, nationally provided to all schools, and everyone concentrating on realising maximum benefit from that asset, within the other resources available for the task. This approach has also involved schools (or headteachers, I suppose) determining whether or not sites such as Youtube are available in their school (I think all have chosen to allow it), and the use a local network architechture which has schools using the same physical infrastucture as the corporate network, but which has separated off each school in terms of firewalling and internet filtering. This has required the whole corporate ICT service to engage to some extent with schools: but as education is our biggest customer, and as schools in Orkney are mostly multi-purpose community resources, why would we not?

If there are examples where LAs are consistently failing to meet the needs of teaching and learning, or are "siphoning off" resources for use for other things, then this needs to be highlighted in inspections and audits, addressed if possible, and those with shortcomings "supported" by the Scottish government they are up to standard (including, where necessary, the Scottish Government putting in place an alternative service supplier if the LA finds it impossible to improve). Please note: we have loads of problems and, like all ICT support services, many areas we should improve, and lots of users who are frustrated at our perceived (and actual) failings!

The debate about providing wifi for pupils in schools, and allowing use of pupils' own devices (and even among otherwise excellent and forward-thinking teachers, there does seem to be a contrary view which needs to be taken seriously, in my view) is beyond my competence (as a non-teacher) to comment significantly on. What I am competent to comment on is that some level of resource would be required to provide wifi in schools, and to make it work in all the various buildings and campuses as effectively as it does in the inherently much simpler and more straightforward environment of the average Starbucks. It might also greatly complicate the supervision of ICT use in schools, it seems to me: barristas do not have the same level of care to their customers, as adults in schools have to young people required to be there 195 days a year! Please note, I am not saying that these issues are intractable - I just say they are real issues which schools, the teaching profession and their support services have to consider together, and resource as necessary if they decide to implement something. (As a parent, I would be just as keen that the young people of Scotland had the freedom to wear the clothes of their choice in school, as I would be that they be allowed to use the smartphones of their choice - but school uniform is another complex and intractable issue .....).

It is fairly easy to say that the parts of Glow that work should (or will) be seamlessly and effortlessly migrated to some new environment: it will be a massive task to actually do so for the thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of every-day Glow users; I hope that the teachers who have invested time and effort, and are using Glow daily in my own children's education, can rely on that acuatlly happening, and will not suffer significant disruption to their practice during the tranisition. I don't think this would encourage them to be enthusiastic about prioritising imaginative use of ICT,

Time is now incredibly short: the valuable wider-ranging debate (about direction and approach and internet filtering and wifi in schools) needs to come to a conclusion, and national leadership exercised to ensure that some concrete programmes of work are established. There are some obvious next steps which have little to do with "Glow futures", and some of them should just be done, if resources can be found. But alongside those, there is an urgent need for focus on developing a resourced, low-risk programme of work to ensure that a replacement for (or continuation of) Glow is put in place, and available in all classrooms in Scotland, by the autumn term next year, without requiring any significant level of distracting effort by teachers and young people who have invested in the current system.