Thursday, March 29th, 2007...7:24 pm
And Lady Mentors …Glow
When working hard, Horses sweat, men perspire and lady (mentors)….
It has been a long day (my apologies if this post doesn’t read too well).
Aside to collating pupil SQA folios and teaching today, I was really pleased to meet with Elizabeth Cowan (EL Council) and our LTS Educationalist Dawn Adams at Knox. As I had a full teaching day, I was only able to join them at lunch time. This was a really constructive meeting that helped Dave and I focus on how we can move the ‘Phase 2’ pilot forward.
Bearing in mind that I am reporting on the ‘Phase 2’ trial prior to its official launch, I am hoping that the discrepancies I have experienced will disappear during the Easter break.
After a number of trial and errors, the following below became apparent.
The current Manager/Admin is very hierarchical. Though I could create a glow group with various tools, I needed prior consent from admin at the LA level for Glow members to access it. It is all a bit confusing and hard to explain, but as of 6.30pm today, I think I have begun to master the system?
Our council machines will have to be up graded with the most recent ‘Java’ etc. This was also apparent for my PC at home.
I am finding it difficult to know whether the errors I am incurring are due to the intermittent availability of the portal via remote access, minor internal bugs?, my own machine (PC) or my own mistakes/perceptions?
Elizabeth and I had a short Skype conversation this evening (apologies on behalf of my machine Elizabeth, for some reason it can be a little temperamental when communicating with Macs) We have managed to create and access the glow chat tool, but have still failed to actually use it. I will try later on tonight, even if I have to ‘chat’ to myself:(
Let us recognise that ‘Rome was not built in a day’ and neither was Glow. The Web 2.0, as we know it, has taken over a decade to evolve. Glow, has appeared, working and ready within the last 6 Months (trial portals that is)! Glow is not perfect yet, but I see it as the pilots school’s/mentor’s role to support and aid the development of this unique initiative.
I would like to thank both Eliazbeth and Dawn for there time today.
Fingers crossed the next online communication, with you Elizabeth, will be via Glow!!!
Right, I am off to check out the portal again! 
3 Comments
March 29th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Yo Homie (Are you sure it’s not rude?)
I too would like to thank both DA and EC for responding so quickly to my request for a F2F meeting. Especially DA for braving the M8 in that weather.
Might still have a bit more tweeking to do to get Chat and VC installed and going. I downloaded Marratech on my iBook and ran it but don’t know how to set it up within the Portal?
The Chat part installed since the iBook has the correct version of Java installed but like you I might end up chatting to myself if I don’t link up with you in a minute.
Byee
March 30th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Great post Tess. Very informative. Robin and I have been struggling to get to grips with chat for days now. Its all proving very frustrating at the moment but I am sure all the hard work by the mentors will pay off. Hopefully things will be sorted out by Monday morning so that I can get stuck in next week.
March 30th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Good to hear how it’s going. This is all well worth recording, because it’s helping to highlight those things where we can expect staff to need most support initially. No doubt before long it’ll all seem obvious to you, and you’ll wonder what the problem was…
Do you know if there’s any on-line documentation we can access yet? I think I’d find it helpful to help get my head round how it all hangs together, and what we should be able to make it do.
And congratulations on your article in the new issue of Connected. That should get some more people interested!
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