Why not just use Skype?

Posted on | February 29, 2008 | 15 Comments

Tess Watson has blogged about the Glow Mentor training happening over two days in East Lothian. Having read about what was going on, I was pleasantly surprised this morning to get an email from one of the trainees, Hilery Williams, with a question that I was only too happy to try to answer.

Hilery has a history with SSDN/Glow. She was a colleague in the Scottish Executive a few years ago when we were working with the local authorities across Scotland to develop the initial specification for the national schools’ intranet (i.e. Glow, i.e. SSDN), and she produced a superb document for us that gave us the basis for specifying our requirements around accessibility to Glow for students (and teachers) with additional needs. I can recall, about Hilery, that what she does not know about learning difficulties (or whatever its currently accepted terminology might be) probably is not worth knowing. She now works in an outreach post in this area of expertise in East Lothian and she has kindly given me permission to share the question she asked me and my answer to her.

Part of her training yesterday was in the use of Glow Meet, which is Glow’s core collaborative environment. In particular, they had been making use of Glow’s facility for desktop video conferencing. Hilery asked the question:

“Why not simply use Skype?”

This is just an excerpt from quite a long answer I returned to her:

“….because of the requirements for full integration with the other collaborative and learning tools (for instance, application sharing), because of the need to bring it within the secure, single log-on, environment, because we would not be able to scale Skype easily for 800,000 authenticated users, because we need to be able to monitor and track activity within the environment, because we would have no control over quality of service (ie we could not ensure quality of service to users if we were not delivering it ourselves from our own national data center across across our own national network), because Skype does not cope well with multi-user conversations (in Glow Meet you can have as many participants from as many different sites as your bandwidth will allow)…….”

The interesting thing is, this is exactly the question (on the wider set of capabilities of Glow, not just Glow Meet) that many of my friends and colleagues have asked me before, but replacing the reference to Skype with references to any one of a hundred other free social technologies or free collaborative tools – they miss the fact that Glow is a service to a large-scale set of users within an authenticated environment (ie you have to log in to use it, and the system knows who you are, what you can access, what you cannot access, etc). Skype and other similar social technologies are brilliant tools and can certainly be used on a small scale or in a much less integrated way (which is fine) – but there would never be any guarantee of service or service quality, and they don’t (for the most part) scale or integrate with other tools.

Small is beautiful, I know, but big is just necessary sometimes. Anyone doubting this should consider the additional capability that Glow brings with it, namely the ability to create online communities (Glow Groups, as they are called within the environment) derived from any subset, large or small, of the whole Glow community. And this is not a top-down capability – these groups/communities can be set up by anyone anywhere in the system who has been granted the requisite permissions (and my recommendation, all along, to the local authorities has been to devolve such permissions to every teacher in the country and, in more controlled ways, to students too).

I hope Hilery was happy with the answer.

Technorati Tags: hilery williams, glow, skype, social technology, collaboration

Category: Web 2.0, education, glow, learning, social technology

Comments

15 Responses to “Why not just use Skype?”

Douglas Crabbe
February 29th, 2008 @ 4:44 pm

There is a great comparison ( and no doubt contrast in certain areas ) to be drawn here between Glow and the pervasive “company intra-net” that has been adopted in all sectors. Most companies could survive using Google Docs / Mail / etc yet choose to invest in their own infrasturcture and create these commercially driven secure environments for collaboration. Glow is a company intranet and yet its focus needs to be more around being a safe environment for all users rather than a haven for commercial data. Many companies are currently striving to keep up with the changes in information tools that exist by introducing secured versions of these open wikis and blogs etc to their corporate intra-nets. The challenge for Glow will be around adopting these and other proven additions to a corporate environment ( remote access, inter-operability for example ) in a manner that retains the safe-haven that currently exists.
Neil MacFarlane
February 29th, 2008 @ 5:15 pm

In addition to the points covered in John’s excellent response, it’s worth remembering the resource and security implications from the use of Skype. It is liable to take over machines to use as supernodes on its network. For a further discussion of some of the issues, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype

I should say that I am a personal user of Skype in a small way from time to time, but you can see why a national project would be unwilling to mandate its use when corporate networks might block it and home users would not necessarily understand all the implications.
Robert Jones
February 29th, 2008 @ 5:55 pm

I was at the same training as Hilery, and enjoyed the two days – particularly the session run by Martin Brown that looked at the role of an e-mentor.

Glow isn’t going to offer a huge amount that’s not available to those teachers who are already using Web2.0 tools with pupils, but such teachers are a tiny minority now, and even their use of the tools in the learning and teaching process is often sporadic. Hopefully we will soon be seeing the vast majority of pupils being offered the opportunity to use Glow as part of their regular daily experience of school. Add 1-1 and it starts to look very interesting
John Connell
February 29th, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

Thanks for the comment, Douglas. The main difference, I guess, between Glow and a company intranet is that Glow is not an ‘all eggs in one basket’ solution – it is merely a web service (although a very rich one) that schools and local authorities can choose to use it or not – even when they do choose to make use of it, they can continue to use any other services they wish alongside (or indeed, instead of).
Tess watson
February 29th, 2008 @ 6:45 pm

Some interesting discussion here.

More to come on Mentor training at the weekend.
john
February 29th, 2008 @ 6:47 pm

Hi John,
So maybe the question could be ‘Why not just use flashMeeting?’
Only kidding, feeling a bit marginalised as my LA seems to be slow in picking up the glowtorch.
I am with Robert in his view of daily use hard to do without one2one. My computer becomes a much more powerful learning tool if it is always there and always connected.
john
February 29th, 2008 @ 6:50 pm

2 comments here in the time it took me to type my last one.
I like this:
even when they do choose to make use of it, they can continue to use any other services they wish alongside
and hope that that choice is given to teachers as well as LAs.
Bryan
February 29th, 2008 @ 8:04 pm

As another with a “slow uptake” authority, I’m utilising all the web2.0 (and don’t I just hate that jargon) technology I can with my class and other classes in school.

My sister works in E-learning with a major Scottish University and questioned Glow when I initially told her about my role as a mentor. She too pointed out VLEs and Skype, etc,etc as viable alternatives and I have to say that – although slightly miffed that she was taking the wind out of m Glow Mentor Sails – I find myself agreeing with her.

It’s all very well to applaud the security aspect and other benefits afforded by Glow but if, in my authority’s case, it’s not up and running yet then you have to ask the questions: 1-what do I want to do with the class today/this week/this term?, 2-what do I want them to get out of it? and, 3-what can I use to facilitate that?

If there’s something which will do the job then I feel duty bound to adopt it and provide the kids with whatever opportunities I can. That may be me all over or perhaps it’s partly tied up with the whole “rural communities poverty of access” thing.( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_158_40/ai_n14815123)
John Connell
February 29th, 2008 @ 8:23 pm

Bryan,

I absolutely agree with your reasoning – needs must! Perhaps we need to start naming names in terms of which authorities are dragging their heels, for whatever reason, on Glow.

Security, by the way, was a key and important aspect of the specification for Glow on the part of the authorities when they participated in the early discussions. For me, however, the central function of the authentication system within Glow is nothing to do with security and everything to do with the collaborative power it generates. We need to see past the ’safety’ aspects of authentication to the more important capabilities for community building that it infers on the overall system.
Alastair Crease
March 1st, 2008 @ 12:25 am

John, I was interested to read your post as it mirrors a recent experience I had here in Northern Ireland. I was in a meeting with some school principals where we were presenting Microsoft’s Office Communication Server technology which we are piloting with schools and also Marratech. One of the principals asked exactly the same question and it is heartening to know that the answer given more or less exactly matched the answer in your post!

Also, your comments around security and authentication are interesting and have also been circulating in NI where we have many similar issues to those in Scotland. Security per se is not the key, but rather the issue of secure identity as a keystone for the community building you describe. The trick is getting people to realise this potential.
John Connell
March 1st, 2008 @ 1:34 am

Precisely, Alastair – the interesting thing is that even people who pride themselves in ‘getting it’ in relation to ICT in education often do not get this very point. They tend to get hung up on the ‘big system’ or ‘managed service’ aspect, which actually is the exact opposite of what an initiative such as Glow is all about.

And C2K is not so very different – I have had enough conversations with Jimmy Stewart and his colleagues to know that!
Hilery
March 1st, 2008 @ 4:26 pm

Thank you John for your answer and for opening it up to others. What a great deal of fascinating discussion – and insight for such as me who has her own techie ‘learning difficulties’ to contend with! – was generated.
And how glad I am you chose not to add my photo!
Tess Watson
March 1st, 2008 @ 8:47 pm

I should have included this link in my last comment.

http://edubuzz.org/blogs/tessawatson/2007/05/09/marratech-vs-skype-and-msn/

Tess
Tony Parkin
March 4th, 2008 @ 1:20 am

As always John makes absolute sense and puts forward sound and compelling arguments given the duty of care, quality assurance…

But why am I still left feeling unsatisfied, feeling that the education system is still in control, that limiting students to working with only others on the same system is a backward step in the 21st century global landscape and the world they are inheriting….?

And I am sure it is only partly because I want some of our English students collaborating with some of their peers north of the border….! The most creative students and schools seem to have knack of turning away from ‘walled gardens’ to more compelling environments.

Maybe the solution lies in John’s subsequent point – “even when they do choose to make use of it, they can continue to use any other services they wish alongside”. Perhaps they can have their cake and eat it …. and perhaps Glow will even point them at such opportunities…!
John Connell
March 4th, 2008 @ 7:18 pm

That has been the whole point of Glow from the start, Tony, that it would be an open system that would allow it to be used in tandem with any other tools that you want to use. I have the same dislike of walled gardens as you and your students have.