The online debate will close on Monday and I would encourage you to register with the Cabinet Minister’s wiki to share any views and experiences you might have:

http://eduscotict.pbworks.com

Recently Michael Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning made an announcement on the future direction of ICT in Scottish schools. The full announcement is broadcast on Engage for Education (http://engageforeducation.org) but in summary the key points were:

· With immediate effect the current Glow Futures procurement has been stopped
· An open online discussion will take place to help shape the current thinking and shape of what Glow will become.
· On 17 October the Scottish Government will hold an ICT summit in Stirling where the results of the online discussion and way forward will be considered

Glow is an incredibly powerful resource that has a significant impact on teaching practices and has benefitted practitioners, young people and others involved in education across Scotland. This announcement is a real opportunity as it recognises that Scotland has been acknowledged as a leader in ICT in education in recent times, and that we are equally determined to ensure that we remain at the cutting edge in this area in the years ahead.

The key message for you is that Glow is being given even stronger backing than ever from Scottish Government and Glow will continue with business as usual until the current contract continues ends in September 2012. At this point all content will be migrated across to the new tools being used – meaning your work so far and over the next year within Glow will not be lost or lose its value. The likely benefits of the new approach are that the tools we offer will be far more familiar to you, and the skills needed to use them will be far more transferable (just as Glow Blogs make use of the popular WordPress technology).