Lots of discussion about the sharing of resources through Glow learn going on at the moment. I raised this during a twitter conversation a couple of weeks ago and I have real concerns about the possibility of a top-down LA-imposed QA process in many parts of the country on the work and resources a teacher might wish to share nationally through the tagging mechanism in Learn. To me and many others I’ve spoken to, one of the big attractions of using GLOW has been the potential to share resources and ending the cycle of continually reinventing the wheel in each different LA throughout the country. A lot of money could be saved here in development time and on commercial resources, the quality and relevance of which can be dubious.

Personally, I think this issue should have been spotted long before now. The application of some basic project management technique would have flagged up this matter of LA’s being a potential barrier to sharing. A simple SWOT analysis could have indicated that QA was a weakness of the use envisaged for Glow Learn and also a threat to it’s widespread take-up by teachers and schools. Perhaps if this had been carried out, the issue could have been dealt with by prior negotiation with the LA’s signed up to and using Glow, rather than becoming apparent after introduction and training

Bob Hill has started a wiki to host discussion and debate on the whole issue of IPR and the QA of resources created by teachers for use in Glow Learn for sharing nationally. I’d encourage participation in this debate as it’s bound to affect all of us working in Scottish schools at some point.

http://glow-qaandipr.wikispaces.com/

I will be posting my own thoughts over on the wiki soon. Somebody has really taken their eye off the ball on this one and it’s of real importance to the eventual success of Learn that the whole ethos of sharing is protected and encouraged.