This is a summary of my presentation for PressED – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter. I’ve pasted the text from the tweets, without the conference hash tags below.
I am @johnjohnston a primary school teacher in Scotland. I acted as ‘Product Owner’ for Glow Blogs from 2014 to 2016 & continue the role on a part time basis.
Glow is a service for to all schools & education establishments across Scotland.
Glow gives access to a number of different web services.
One of these services is Glow Blogs which runs on WordPress.
- Glow Blogs consist of 33 multisites
- Total number of blogs 219,834
- Total number of views in February 2018 1,600,074
- Number of blog users logging on in Feb 2018 243,199
All teachers and pupils in Scotland can have access to #GlowBlogs via a Single signon via RMUNIFY (shibboleth)
Development
#GlowBlogs developed & maintained by Scottish Government considerable amount of work going into dev, testing, security and data protection. This differs from many edu #WordPress set ups as changes developed relatively slowly.
Major customisations include shibboleth signon, user roles & privacy. Teachers/Pupils have slightly different permissions.
Blogs can be public, private or “Glow Only”
There is also an e-Portfolio facility added via a plugin.
How the Blogs are used
Glow Blogs are currently used for School Websites, Class Blogs, Project Blogs, Trips, Libraries, eportfolios. Blogs By Learners, Blogs for Learners (Resources, revision ect), collaborations, aggregations.
e-Portfolios
ePortfolios supported by plugin, custom taxonomy. ‘Profiles’ print or export to PDF. Pupil portfolio blogs can have sparkly unicorns or black vampire styles but the profiles that come out look clean and neat.
Pupils
Pupils can learn to be on the web but with <13 we have duty of care.
Pupils can create blogs. Cannot make blogs public.
A member of staff can make pupil’s blogs public. Pupils can be members of public blog and post publicly.
Examples
- Buzzing About Bees! | Woodlands Primary School Bee Project
- Daniel Dargue – Scottish Blacksmith in Training | A focus on the traditional style of Blacksmithing
- https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/uodedushare/
- Endeavour | Independent Project Based Learning on the Isle of Islay
- Glowing Posts | Collecting interesting #GlowBlogs Posts
Possibilities
Only scratched the surface of the potential of #WordPress the tools are in place, Scottish teachers and learners are exploring the possibilities but it is early days. We are tooled up for the future.
@johnjohnston That looks pretty awesome!
@colinwalker Thanks Colin #GlowBlogs are the love of my life outside family:-)
It’s fair to say that what @johnjohnston has done with #glowblogs is one of the setups that I most admire and what I aspire to. #pressedconf18
And what a life skill too.
Agreed #pressedconf18
A super contribution to the fantastic #PressEdconf18 Really showcases the progress that Scotland has made. Those statistics just blow me away!!
This whole #pressedconf18 has made me even more excited and determined to kick the pants out of our Blogging project.
As product owner, I don’t do anything except make unreasonable demands:-) It is a lovely job, I miss doing it full time:-)
Got my stomps boots on all ready for pant kicking.
@johnjohnston This presentation makes my itch for a public multisite #WordPress install with an #IndieWeb stack even worse… I may have to pick your brain a bit more on it.#pressedconf18
Also on:
This presentation makes my itch for a public multisite #WordPress install with an #IndieWeb stack even worse… I may have to pick your brain a bit more on it.#pressedconf18
That was a huge shout out for the Glow team and all that has been accomplished in a difficult climate for the platform. Those numbers are amazing!
x2! #pressedconf18
Stick around for @jimgroom later if you want that itch to turn into a rash.
Amazing statistics; still my favourite tool in @GlowScot
Mine too:-)
Just catching up with yours. Nice to hear a little more about ‘the other stuff you do’ outside #edutalk and #ds106Radio 🙂
Pretty crazy trying to keep up with all #pressedconf18 lots of amazing value, TMTM!!!
Nice work, John!