Tag: classroom

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Lots of information about glow and glow2 trickling through twitter recently. There seems to be a change in timescale for Glow2. This was discovered: View Notice – Public Contracts Scotland which is a strange way to find out about the change, especially after Mike Russell’s initial announcement how Glow will be developed in September 2012 on YouTube. That announcement and the following summit last October lead me to expect more regular and open engagement.

Glew

On monday Charlie Love sent me an interesting link and which I then discussed tonight on Radio EDUtalk, after which Charlie tweeted:

Glew Tweet

What is Glew

Glew is beta software of a single sign-on framework which can be used to integrate Google Apps for Education and other services such as WordPress Blogs, Media Wiki, Moodle and many more. This is a test site so please accept that authentication and users may be removed during testing.

So pretty much a glow 2 style site with a lot of tools I’d expect from Glow 2. Although a Beta you get a really good idea of how this would work. The most interesting feature, to me was the expandability of the site, I asked Charlie about the possibility of adding a wiki to the feature set, in 15 minutes he had added a MediaWiki (the software used in Wikipedia!)

Glew

I highly recommend you pop over to Glew and have a look around.

Hopefully the 15 months that the Government have to work on glow will let them build something like this, if I was the Cabinet Secretary I’d give Charlie a call.

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Flickr cc Picmonkey

Every so often something nice happens:

Which made me look again at the flickr CC search toy. A while back I posted about Picnik closing and then about PicMonkey which is a picnik replacement. The nice folk at PicMonkey let me know that the picmonky API is the same as the picnic one, so I thought I’d swap them out. As you can see from the screenshot, if the images found in the flickr CC search toy allow editing (ie NoDerivs is not in the License) there is a link to edit the picture in PicMonkey. I’ve changed the way this works so that PicMonkey will load the medium sized photo with the attribution stamped on it, rather than the original flickr image. Before I was expecting pupils to be able to add the attribution themselves if editing the picture.

I’ve also added a checkbox to the search form to only search for pictures you can edit.

The code behind this, php and javascript is a very messy affair. I intend to work thorough the whole thing sometime and make it more efficient etc.

If you have ideas of how this could be more useful to primary aged pupils please let me know.

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Last week I was in a class doing another setup a blog/eportfolio session using Glow blogs. The process is a bit long winded due to the way glow blogs are set up. Usually there is little time to do much more than set them up and get the pupils to do a quick test post. I usually just get pupils to use a bit of clipart to show tem how to add an image. O this occasion there was a fair mix of machines and operation systems in the room and not all had clip art. I decided to use A flickr CC search toy to let the pupil download photos with attribution stamped on. This worked fine, but there was a little confusion about naming saved files, the file name suggested is stamp.php.jpg as the images, with attribution, are generated on the fly.

This weekend I had a quick google to see if I could find out how this can be improved. I am now using:

header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename='. $title .'.jpg' );

To give the files a title derived from the flickr image title. I also found I could cause the image to be downloaded by using Content-Disposition: attachment but decided against that at the moment. Now when pupils right click on an image they should see something like this:

Flickrcc File Dialog

Another alternative would be to show the image on a page with instructions on right clicking to get the save dialog. Again I’ve not implemented that either.

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Last week at work (North Lanarkshire Educational ICT & Technical Services) we were being supported by Oggy East of Semantise, who is helping update the setup of our school websites. Oggy is an expert in FirstClass which NLC uses for emails, collaboration & school websites.

My colleague Ian suggested that Oggy entertain me with his interesting career path. This passed through doctoral study, pub management and educational technology.

At one point Oggy started telling me about an educational project he had worked on. This involved collaboration between pupils in the UK and France. They used text based chat to talk (alternating languages), translated each others horoscopes, passed audio and video files back and forth helped each other produce CVs and more. As I was becoming more and more excited about the project Ian suggested that Oggy tell me when this happened: 1998.

Edutalking

I got Oggy to record a quick podcast about this project for EDUtalk which you can listen to: Dialogue 2000 Electronic Village

Oggy is also involved in the wonderful Not School 1. I got a podcast out of Oggy about this too: Not School – EDUtalk.

Repeating

The fact that Oggy was successfully involved in the kind of project that is still seen as innovative 14 years later is telling. I remember in 2005 feeling very proud of jumping of the blog wagon with my class the previous year and meeting Peter Ford who had pupils blogging several years before that. We had a flowering of blogging in Scotland in 2006 and this year pupil blogging has been hitting the headlines again.

What is interesting is that quite often these bit of innovation don’t seem to be connected, wheels are reinvented.

I wonder when ideas of audience, purpose, collaboration and connection using technology will really become part of the mainstream. Perhaps Glow, with all is faults, is driving this in Scotland. I certainly hope so.

1.I became aware of not school when I went to Be Very Afraid and was very impressed by the Flash skills of the a Not School ‘student’. ↩

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I’ve been aware of the Primary Games Arena 1 for a while. I only noticed yesterday that it had an API The api lets you search for games and returns some xml. XML makes me think of Glow 2. Glow handle xml quite nicely, unfortunately for most teachers this needs a knowledge of XSL, which I do not think is common. I’ve managed in the past to figure out way of displaying RSS using XLS so though I’d try to do the same with the Primary Games search results. It turned out to be pretty straightforward as the xml returned by Primary Games is nice and simple.

Displaying a set of Primary Games in Glow

Glow xml Webpart Empty

You use the xml webpart. This part has 4 main fields: xml link, xml editor, xsl link and xsl editor, of these you only use 2, using either the link the direct editor field for both xml or xsl.

The way it work is that the xml is loaded and modified by the XSL. The XML webpart can be usefully used to display any html fragment without any XSL at all, but in the case of RSS or xml from the primary games arena it need to be formatted.

For example the url:
http://primarygamesarena.com/
searchapi.php?q=money
in the XML Link field produces an XML list of games tagged money. Clicking that link will show you what you would get in glow if you do not use XSL, not pupil friendly at the moment. We can use XSL to transform this. As a first test I used this xsl in the XSL Editor field.

This produces this: (click for flickr page):

primary games in glow

On the glow page the images launch the Primary games page with the game in an iFrame.

It then becomes simple to repeat this for other searches and give pupils sets of games, just replace money in the xml link with another word.

We can also pass around webparts already loaded with the xml address and the xsl and these can be imported onto a glow page. Here is a the money one. You could import that onto a glow page and just change the search string at the end of the url to get a different set of games to display.

Taking it a bit further

After doing the above brief test with glow I asked @johnmclear, one of the folk behind Primary Games, if there were any other parameters that could be used on the search, this is what I got back:

johnmclear
John McLear

@johnjohnston can add it. Email me an ideal request/response
Sat Jul 09 12:19:28 +0000 2011 from HootSuite captured: Mon, 11 Jul 11 16:11:04 +0100

A few hours, a couple of email and some tweets later John had updated the Primary Games API to include subject, year, keystage, topic, unit and gametype!

This man we can now use, for example: ?q=money&y=3&g=Strategy as a query and get all the money games suitable for year 3 (=primary 4 in Scotland) that are categorised as Strategy games.

Of course the API can also be used outside Glow on the web via php. Here is a page that lets you search and display games: Primary Games Arena API and here is the Source.

I’ve extended this a little to create a page that can search and display games in the same way but also supplies an embed code to embed the code on webpages, blogs or glow.

Primary Games API with Embed codes

To embed in a blog you just need to switch to the html view in the editor and paste in the code. In Glow you can use an XML webpart and past into the xml editor field.

Simulation

Can you organise the planets in our solar system?

The embed code here was edited to make the background yellow.

Of course you could simply create a screenshot of a game page, upload it and make it a link, but this is quicker and loads the games inside the Primary Games ecosystem this has a nice wee toolbar allowing pupils to gain achievements by playing games, rate games anonymously and get links to other games. You also get the advantage of the folk at Primary games having already categorised a huge range of games suitable for primary aged pupils. Many thanks to @johnmclear for the extremely quick additions ot the API.

Footnotes:

1. Primary Games Arena run by Primary Technology an company who run a fleet of commercial and free ICT services for primary schools. ↩

2.When Glow was introduced I was one of the many folk who were very disappointed that Glow did not have tools for handling RSS: At the Scottish Learning Festival, on RM developer was asked about RSS and answered, ‘What is RSS?’! It turns out glow did and does support RSS and XML in general. ↩

The footnotes are a wee experiment to make my posts a little less verbose, I used a technique describe on Daring Fireball: About the Footnotes.

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Ios movie thumbs

Over a month ago I started dumping screenshots of a few iPhone movie editors, iMovie, ReelDirector, Splice & Vimeo with the intention of writing a detailed comparison of the apps.

I’ve blogged before about taking and editing video in the classroom. I’ve found it a very valuable activity. Not big production stuff, more quick & dirty; gathering evidence, a change from writing a report etc. I think that iPod touches could be used to do this sort of work hopefully cutting out the computer from most of the work.

My notes and screenshots quickly got out of hand and I was heading for a lot more work than a blog post. I’ve decided just to post some of the main points here.

Part of the testing was to make with each of the apps a very short movie, combining a still, a couple of move clips, adding a background track and some titles (4 movies). I used the same media for all 4, a couple of very short clips and a photo of my colleague Ian’s birthday dalek.

This could by no means be described as a comprehensive review. I have tried to avoid reading any help and may have missed features completely. If I could not get a feature to work quickly an easily I gave up on it.

Project Screens

reeldirector
iMovie
SpliceVimeo movie list

All of the apps have a screen where you can see a list of your projects, iMove uses a series of thumbnails under a cinema canopy, the rest more conventional lists. Splice differs by only offering landscape, Vimeo only portrait. Vimeo also opens with a list of your published videos on Vimeo which you can watch (you can also see video from your inbox and likes). The video you are editing are in Recordings in thumbnail view.

All of these interfaces work iMovie is possibles slightly more awkward but not much.

Creating a new project.

iMovie takes you straight into the editing mode. The project can be named later on on the projects screen.

ReelDirector: clicking on the + on my projects opens a screen to tile your movie, add credits and set the default transition. Then you are taken to the edit screen. You can go back and edit the ‘properties’ at any time.

Splice: clicking on the + on the Projects screen adds a project to the top of the list and opens the keyboard to name the new project. Once named you are taken to the project settings screen.

Vimeo: you go to the Recordings screen and again hit the + a new icon for the project appears, clicking on this opens the Project Details screen, where you can title, open in video editor, add video clips, export or upload.

Again these all work well and are intuitive, I’ve a slight preference for iMovie which lets you get straight to work. iMovie is also the only one that opens the app at the last place you were working rather than the project list (ReelDirector & Vimeo do too unless you quit the app).

Adding media

Adding video and still images

  • iMovie: click on media button take you to a three tabbed screen; video, photos & audio. The video screen allows you to select a section of video from videos on your camera roll and add it to the project.

    Imovie import video

    The photo screen gives access to your photos and allows you to select one this is added to your project set at 4 seconds with a basic Ken Burns effect.

  • ReelDirector: clicking the + give you a dialog with a choice of media. Clicking Video/photo open up your camera roll. Clicking a video adds the whole clip to the timeline. Adding a photo adds it to the timeline as a 4 second still. You need to edit the image to add a Ken Burns effect.
  • Splice: when you create a new project the editor opens with buttons to add a choice of Video/Photo, Transition or Title. Clicking Video/Photo opens your photos and lets you add multiple photos and or video clips. You can move though different albums adding media by clicking and adding a tick. After you have selected a number you are asked if you want to add a transition to all of the selected media.

    Splice Import

  • Vimeo: in Vimeo you see the three tracks, video, titles & audio. Clicking at the + at the end of the video track allows you to choose a clip or still from your photo library. If you choose a still it comes in at 3 seconds. You can ‘Enable Basic Pan/Zoom Effect’ and easily adjust the length by dragging the handle at the end of the photo clip on the timeline.

The two standout import features are iMovie’s select a section og video and Splice’s multiple file import.

Adding audio

  • iMovie allows you to import audio from your iTune library, for the theme music in the app and sound affects. The sound affects go onto the time line where the playhead is but music track are placed along the whole movie. Adding another music track replaces the one that is there. You can have recorded sound orsound effects over background music.
  • ReelDirector allows you to import audio from the iPod library and the Imported Music library. What is really nice is that you upload music to this library via a web browser on the same wifi network. This is especially simple with Safari, you click bookmarks, then bonjour and then the name of your phone, a webpage allowing you to upload files is served from your phone. You have one audio track in addition to the video audio.
  • Vimeo allows you to pick music from its Audio Library, you can add music to this via USB & iTunes or vis Wifi unfortunately I could not get the Wifi to work, the webpage loaded but choosing and uploading a file produced a blank page in the browser and no MP3 on my phone, (With Firefox the upload button didn’t produce a file dialog). Luckily the USB/iTunes option worked very well.There is one Audio track in vimeo, I could not see a way to have voice, or sound effects and background music at the same time.
  • Splice allows you to two track with audio files and one recording track. Splice You can import audio from iTunes or from the Splice Library this comes with some sound effects and a couple of sound tracks, there is a button to buy more clicking this opens a screen were you can buy music, sound effects and borders. I’ve not bought any.

Splice Audio Edit

Titles

All the editors allow you to add titles

  • iMovie the titles style is linked to the theme you choose. A movie must have a theme.
  • ReelDirector allows you to have titles on any clip, to set text styles, placement and title styles.
  • Vimeo titles can be adjusted for placement, colour and size, not fonts choice.
  • Splice titles can only be on a block background not on a clip.

Reel Director Titles

Editing

The above briefly covers some of the main features of the apps but probably the most important part is the actual editing. An iPhone or ipod touch has very limited screen space and it is interesting to see how each app has handled this.

    • iMovie

      iMovie Edit

      most of the basic editing is done on the time line, the video is trimmed or the length of photo display is controlled using the yellow handles on the timeline screen, I found it much easier to do this in landscape orientation. Double tapping on a clip opens a screen to set titles volume control and delete the clip. As mentioned above the title stiles are limited by the theme set in the project properties. You can also delete the clip here. Changing the transition settings is done by double clicking on the transition. Transitions are limited to none, cross dissolve or a theme one, you can set the transition length too.

    • ReelDirector

      Reel Director Edit

      All of the editing is done on another clip apart from the audio volume which opens at the bottom of the screen. I found the trimming of clips to be rather tricky and am not sure if I really understand the interface. As noted above ReelDirector has more options than iMovie for titles and indeed transitions. You do not seem to be able to set transition lengths.

    • Vimeo

      Vimeo

      Clicking on a clip or still allows you to adjust the length with the handles, you can also set the in and out points manually in the pane at the top right of the screen, this swipes to other edits, volume, fit, pixel effect( filters) and a basic on off pan zoom effect. You can slide audio clips and title back and forth but I found in too difficult to get end credits at the end of my movie.

Splice

  • Splice Edit

 

clicking on a clip shows a set of small buttons to trim, adjust video speed, crop, duplicate or delete. clicking on most of these show another screen. The trim is at least as easy to manage as imovie and the Pan & Zoom (Ken Burns) very clear. The controls on splice are big enough not to miss a clip. Is, as far as I could see, is the only app to allow you to change the video speed. The Audio is reached from a different timeline view but offers similar trimming for the three audio tracks, fading in and out and volume control.

Export

  • iMovie you can export to your camera roll at Medium, 360p; large, 540p pr HG, 720p. You can also export to youtube, facebook, vimeo or send the project to iTunes. I’ve only sent to camera roll.
  • ReelDirector you need to Render a movie before exporting, the export give a choice of Camera roll, email or youtube.
  • Vimeo allows you to upload to your viemo account or export to camera roll. When you export it renders and then saves to the camera roll.
  • Splice, you first preview a movie then export the choice is medium 960 x 540 or High 1280 x 720.

Favourite things

  • iMovies basic ease of use, the app seems to jump screens less than any of the others. The ducking of background audio.
  • Splice the ability to add multiple photos and clips and the easy clip and still editing.3 audio tracks.
  • ReelDirector the way you can import audio over Wifi from a desktop. The titles are a strong point.

Dislikes

  • iMovie, the way the title tie in to themes
  • ReelDirector, felt like the most fidgety on the small screen although it probably has more features. (On the iPad it has a different interface and is great)
  • Splice titles, over black, not over clips
  • Vimeo just turned up in the iTunes store as I was reviewing the others, it feels a less mature product.

What I’d like the apps to do

I’d like more of them to support the favourite things above. Especially the multiple selection and audio import over Wifi.

Audio import, it is easy to grab images from the browser on an ipod (CC ones of course) but audio is more difficult. Im my dalek movies I used some CC music from soundcloud it would be great to be able to use an app to save audio for there or elsewhere to iTunes on an iPhone/iPod and use it. This would really cut down the need for a desktop.

What I’d use

For the most part I think I’d use iMovie on my iPhone. If splice had titles over video I’d pay for it and get rid of the ads. I am setting up some iPod touches for use in schools and an installing splice to save a few quid.

What I’d use it for

I’ve shot precious little video since owning an iPhone, thousands of photos and quite a lot of audio recordings I might start taking a few move videos now I’ve played with the apps.

If I was in class I’d use this all of the time, perfect for children to record all sorts of learning. I’d also use for making videos of still pictures with a recorded sound track, something I used to get my pupils to do on iMovie on the desktop. sonicPics woulds be easier for this sort of thing than the movie editors as you can easily adjust the length the stills play while recording audio. (I reviewed SonicPics)

Any of these apps would do a good job in the classroom, with the demise of the Flip camera it may be time to look at iPod touches as a video device for teaching & learning.

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Glow has added wikis to it list of features.

What is a wiki? (from wikipedia):

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.

Examples of wikis edited by pupils( not glow ones):

  1. australiatopic
  2. A Broken World
  3. Year 7 Mathex
  4. Sandaig Primary Wiki

Background on using wikis, blog posts by Neil Winton (Perth Acedemy):

  1. SLF08 – Wikis Part 1
  2. SLF08 – Wikis Part 2

Example of wikis used by teachers to share resources ( not glow ones):

Sample Glow Wiki with information on wikis which you are free to edit (glow logon required)

Wiki category of Glow Help blog

The Glow folk have started a Scotland Schools Wiki

“Over time we hope that this wiki will build into a ‘Domesday Book’ of schools in Scotland in the 21st century.”

Any glow user can add pages for their school and edit pages

Nice things about wikis:

  • collaboration
  • tracking of edits you can see you did what
  • easy to roll back to previous version is someone makes a mistake.

Best thing about glow wikis: Much easier than glow pages to edit, think a Text Editor that works.

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This post is the third in an attempted series about getting started blogging loosely linked to the launch of glow blogs.

Conversation by Rishi Menon
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

I’e always considered blogging to be 3 pronged activity, providing purpose, gaining an audience and starting a conversation. All of these factors can motivate pupils. Blogging can be seen as a ‘real’ activity, writing for a world outside the classroom. It has a real audience who may start a conversation through comments.

Back in the day when I first started blogging at Sandaig there was not a lot of other classroom blogging going on, none at all in Scotland. This gave my class a bit of an advantage in gaining comments and we picked up a few folk who my class felt they had a relationship to. ‘Andy from Aberdeen’ who regularly added a good number of comments to our new blog and after a while Carol Fuller who became our fairy blogmother!

Comments added a lot to our blogging and podcasting in those days. Now with blogs popping up all over the place, the landscape has changed a bit. One one hand there is a bigger potential audience than before but that audience has more choice.

For a teacher who is already active online gaining an audience is not to difficult, they can publish links and requests for comments on their own blog or through twitter. If you get picked up by the right folk you can gather a lot of comments, i recently and responded to a twitter request for comments on a pupil blog as did many others, in a couple of days the pupils 68 word post had 45 comments!

A lot of the new blogs that are popping up now are not necessarily being run by teachers who have spent a lot of time in creating an online network so how do they get comments for their class? I’d suggest a few basic ideas:

  • In the process of explaining blogs to the class visit other blogs and as a class make comments.
  • Once your class are blogging confidently have them individually comment on other blogs.
  • As a teacher visit a couple of class blogs every week, leave a comment or two. Think of this as a sort of cross marking exercise.
  • As a class visit a particular blog regularly, find one that ‘fits’ in with your class and perhaps some sort of regular commenting will build up.
  • If something on another blog stimulates your pupils curiosity , ask questions, try out the activity, blog about it( example).
  • Respond to comments on your own blog. Often this will provide a useful learning activity and some fun.
  • Get in touch with another blogging teacher, do some lightly joined up planning.

In all of this commenting activity leave the url to your blogs in the URL field of the comment form. Teach the children to copy and paste this rather than typing it in, it is easy to make a typo, or put a semi colon instead of a colon and break the link.

Don’t assume that because children find the technology simple that they will write good comments, in the same way as with blog posts, they need advice and modelling. Some teachers might like to provide rules or a check list:

  1. Is the comment relevant? is it worth saying? (just cool is probably not).
  2. Is it generally positive & friendly? I suggest 2 stars and a wish for classmates work.
  3. Would you like a comment like this?
  4. Is the spelling and punctuation a good reflection on the commenter?

Anne Davis provides some comment starters: EduBlog Insights » Blog Archive » Thinking about the teaching of writing which are well worth sharing with pupils, I think I used to have them displayed on the wall.

If you are looking for somewhere to find blogs ScotEduBlogs aggregates blogs from across Scotland.
Glow blog list can be found for each local authority, for example the url for North Lanarkshire is: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/nl/ each of the other LAs has its own initials at the end of the url (full list).
Further Afield Tom Barrett has be collecting primary class blogs on delicious which provides a great list.

If you know of other ways to encourage commenting you could leave me a comment;-)

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Last session I was lucky enough to be involved with a small ipod touch pilot; Glencairn iPod and blogged about it and various iPod Touch things several times.

10ipodtouch FtgroupImage Courtesy of Apple

A few things have made me think about iPod touches in class recently that I though might be worth a blog post.

I’ve been using some new, to me, bits of software on my iPhone which have either classroom potential or some concepts that could be transferred to the classroom.

Wifi Photo Transfer (App Store) is a simple application that turns your iPhone or ipod touch into a web server which displays the photos on the device on a web browser on any computer (or iPad) on the same WiFi network:

Wifi Photo Transfer

The photos can easily be downloaded to the computers. The application show a single screen on the phone with an IP address that can be typed into your browser to see the photos. Even better with Safari you just click Bookmarks and then Bonjour where you will see your phone listed:

Bonjour

A click opens the webpage with out any tricky typing.

I imagine photos taken with a new camera equipped iPod being distributed to a class full of children without resort to cables or pen drives.

I mentioned The UK SoundMap in the previous post this mashup which adds Audioboo audio to a google map could be replicated for all sorts of sound recording in class. A map full of music recorded in classrooms around the world or some language swapping springs to mind.

I’ve also been using mappiness, the happiness mapping app to record how I am feeling when the app on my phone prompts me twice a day. This sort of collaborative data logging could be done through a google form on a touch.

The other stimlus for this post is the new ipod touch, this adds the long awaited still and video camera and in my mind turns the iPod touch into one of the most useful bits of tech you could have in a classroom.

A few possibilities:

  • A replacement of your camera and easy photo distribution. The low res (960×720) is not any sort of problem for classroom use when huge digital camera images can slow things down.
  • A replacement Flip (you can use Wifi Photo Transfer to download videos).
  • A video editor, I’ve tested ReelDirector (App Store) briefly and it seems as good a video editor as you would get for £2.39.
  • Air mouse, pass a touch around the class to control the computer connected to a projector for a Whiteboard substitute.
  • With the right software and a class set you have a response kit.
  • Nintendos lots of brain training type apps.
  • Many tasks that are normally carried out on desktops or laptops.

Comparing the £159 before vat price of iPods with the cost of a smartboard or a couple of laptops makes these a real option for expanding technology in the classroom.

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Glow light came online today yesterday:

Glow Light is a new alternative Glow interface designed with a simpler ‘splash’ page. This ‘splash’ page will display a list of user specific links to allow easier navigation to other areas within the Glow portal.

LTS have a video to show how it works:Glow Light – Making Glow better clicking on the thumbnail above will show a full-sized screenshot.

Lighter

In my opinion this is a great improvement over the ‘Staff’ home page that loads when you log onto glow, much less cluttered and easier on the eye. The branding is subtile and the page has indeed a light feel and it is lighter:

this is the NLC Central Services home page (Staff page) load:

And this is the glow light load:

Showing glow light is just over half the load of the Staff page.

Glow Light also combines the functionality of more than one glow page so it should save quite a lot of time. As a default it comes with 6 ‘navigation’ buttons on the left side 4 ‘settings etc.’ buttons at the bottom and a search box. (see popup image at top.)

Features

Advanced Search

The search is much better than the old glow search. When you get to the results it gets even better linking to an advanced search with allows you to filter by type, and by various properties. The search is pretty fast (on the bases of a few Saturday tests). I never used the old search finding it nearly worthless, this new one looks like it will be valuable.

The six main buttons are as follows:

  • News: links to the old Glow Staff home page.
  • My Stuff: shows a further four buttons;
    • My Glow: opens the my glow page.
    • My Glow Learn opens the glow learn page.
    • My Forums: opens the forums in a new window.
    • My Blogs: opens your list of blogs in a new window.
  • Search: shows the search box as it is hidden when ‘My Stuff’ is clicked.
  • Favourites: opens your list of glow groups.
  • Create: shows buttons to Create Glow Groups and Glow Learn Courses. The Glow Groups button shows, or loads, a list of groups where you can create groups, clicking on the list opens the Create Glow group page for the group selected.
  • Timetable: opens your timetable page.

These are frequent tasks inside of glow and in the past would take quite a few click to get to.

You can customise the lists of buttons from the setting and add ‘link’ buttons of your own to the list. I ‘ll probably turn off the Timetable as I don’t have any classes and the Create button as I would normally work down to the site I am creating while I think about it.

There are 4 smaller buttons at the bottom of the main list: Settings, which opens the glow light settings. Profile, Help and Mail which are self explanatory.

My Suggestions

Although glow light is a vast improvement I think it could be made even better. Here is my 2 pence worth:

I like the way the create button loads the groups list on the page and although I don’t think I’ll use it I’d like the favourites button to load my favourites (and just my favourites) in the same way rather than take me to my ‘My Glow Groups’ page.

The other thing that I think could be improved is the buttons. As indicated by the bold & italic text in the description above the buttons have different tasks. Some hide or show elements on the page, some open links and some open links in a new window. I think this is potentially confusing and would prefer something a little more straightforward:

Glowlightidea

This is pretty quick and dirty but should illustrate the idea: Tabs hide an reveal elements and action buttons show if the link is in a new window or not.

The Future

The future of glow is looking a bit brighter, this is a long overdue facelift and perhaps indicative of the way glow is going. It now is starting to look like hub linking out to different services: glow, blogs (these were updated yesterday too, forums, glow learn and mail. The move to using open source, (phpBB, WordPress) familiar web tools is surely a move in the right direction. I hope too glow will move in the direction of constantly upgrading, or perpetual beta that is popular with open source and web technology (google, flickr) generally. Five years ago I had no idea what sort of web applications I’d be using now and I hope that the next 5 years will bring improvements and completely new ideas. If glow was a portal they services could be easily added when necessary we could have phpMotion ( a youtube clone) or laconi.ca (a twitter one) dropped into glows safe & secure environment at the drop of a hat.

Looking at the Glow futures tender notice:

  • Interoperatability of Web Services using Open Standards
  • Scalable with capacity to expand the scope to serve a wider population
  • Glow Futures will apply open standards aiming to achieve unhindered data flow and interoperability. This model will help Glow to constantly evolve and remain modern.
  • The current Glow portal and data centre infrastructure is provided by a single supplier. We envisage that the new service could be procured in a series of lots which may be provided by a single supplier or by a variety of suppliers to allow for a flexible and dynamic approach to respond to evolving requirements.

Gives me a fair bit of hope. I just hope we have, in Scotland, enough money to resource it and the hardware to use it.