Scotland's new social network for learning is taking hold,
but what will make it tick over time?

The first part of 2008 has seen schools in East Dunbartonshire become the first to connect all its schools, as one Local Authority united, to Glow, the national schools intranet. It would seem that the project's tagline, "lighting up learning", might actually be coming true.

Students and teachers are already tapping into the tools on offer - video conferencing, chat, file sharing, news feeds from their school diaries and, the teachers' favourite, a timetable the students can never lose. But more importantly, teachers and students feel it's making a difference to the way they can work together. So far, so rosy. It's a picture that will be replicated throughout Scotland as 2008, and web technology developments, wear relentlessly on. But what exactly will pull the rest of Scotland's 750,000 young people and teachers towards yet another online group, in a world that seems filled with them? What do we all get out of the most over-used and misunderstood word of the net: community?

There have recently been a few withering stories about whether making virtual connections is something that will continue to be as popular as is it seemed in 2007. The social networks like Facebook and Ning, inhabited by an older generation of university students, aging academics and, it would seem, Daily Mail journalists, are in decline, we are told. It would seem connected punters get fed up having sheep thrown at them and yet another virtual mojito gifted to them by a dustman in Manitoba who've they've never actually met, one of six hundred 'friends' whose banal updates ("yet another delicious cup of coffee") fill their day with fascinating irrelevance. You know what I mean.

But here's the crunch: the students in our classrooms and, it is likely, those for years to come, can't get enough of connecting with others online. Bebo, the most popular social network for tweens and teens in the UK, has just been bought out by AOL for $850m. There's a reason for that. UK teens are spending about a quarter of their average 200 daily minutes online in front of their social network, communicating in almost-real-time with their school friends. It's hugely addictive, connecting to both friends from school (the 21st Century equivalent of tying up the phone line talking to friends you only saw an hour ago at school) and other young people who share the same tastes in music, authors or life goals.

The challenge for Glow is going to be eating into some of those 200 minutes. It's a tall order, but it seems to be winning out so far. Its challenge, to create yet another online community in which people are prepared to interact out of school hours, faces the competition of 'fun, relaxed' Bebo and the potential duplication of toolset as youngsters have instant messaging from both their learning, on Glow, and their social posse, on Instant Messenger.

Glow and Bebo are two very different communities, one compelling its users to take part in order to learn something new and connect with those who can help them learn better, the other compelling users to stay because, well, their friends are other users of it, too. Thankfully, from early conversations with the young people now using it for their learning, Glow's place in their digital lifestyle seems clearcut. Perhaps this is one potential social network that will not only connect learners to each other and to experts who can help them better themselves, but it will plug students back into learning outside the school day.

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