web analytics

Glow – “a walled garden” – #GlowPlus #EDUScotICT #SLF2012

I attended the SLF 2012 last week – it seems to have been scalled down compared to previous years but there were still very good opportunities for networking and of course a diverse seminar program.  It was good to renew old acquaintances and catch-up with old colleagues.

I was not able to attend the round-table discussion which was entitled “Do we need a national ‘intranet’ “   but was able to review the recording of it which is published below.

http://edutalk.cc/do-we-need-a-national-intranet

It is an interesting exchange of views which was I was keen to listen to.  Most of the people involved seemed to be active teachers – its always interesting to hear views and opinions from people who are at the “chalk face”.

During the discussion and not for the first time, I heard the term “Walled Garden” used to describe Glow – (originally called the SSDN Intranet).  But I feel this an inappropriate term to describe the current service.  The impression given that Glow is a Walled Garden is based, I believe, on a flawed understanding of what does and does not constitute the Glow service.

I first heard the term Walled Garden back when Education Service Providers (ESP) first started to offer Internet connectivity to schools back in the 1990’s.  Companies including BT and RM (there were many others) who were early on the ESP scene would use the term Walled Garden as a reassurance to schools and LA’s that the service they offered was safe and full of content that had been validated to be suitable for children to use.  The ESP’s would provide a feed to schools (often based on modem (9.6 – 16 baud) and later ISDN (64 – 128 kbps) connectivity) which provided access to content they had provided and also a subset of content which was available on the public internet.  Internet content was surveyed and validated before it was considered safe to include it in the walled garden.   The term Walled Garden implied that the “stuff” on the inside was OK to use and what was on the outside may or may not have been acceptable.  At the time this generally seemed to be a welcome development and schools/teachers/LA’s were happy to use the service.  There would be a service available to teachers who could nominate new content they had discovered as being both useful and acceptable – these items would then added the walled garden.

When the SSDN Interconnect was introduced early in the 2000’s, Scottish LA’s were faced with a need, some for the first time, to implement and maintain their own Internet filters for education users.  On the face of it, this meant they needed to build their own walled garden as opposed to having this done by an ESP.

The JANET (Joint Academic NETwork) network on which the SSDN Interconnect was built  was basically an extension of the internet and as such provides a path to the any content which is available on the internet – JANET provided the core network for the SSDN Interconnect and also a route to the Internet.  At this time, existing users of JANET – Universities and Research Institutions, provided some degree of filtering at their point of connection to JANET.  The Internet includes various content types including static web pages, content repositories, online databases, email transit and of course many other rich types of content including audio and video.  The general model of connectivity was that the LA took a SSDN Interconnect feed at its HQ then passed on connectivity to the Internet for its schools ( the primary service users of the interconnect) via is own Wide Area Network (WAN).  When Glow was introduced it was build at a data centre which was also directly connected to the SSDN Interconnect

Without any filter service this would mean that school users could access any content on the internet and schools could access services with broadband content  (such as YouTube which was a new service when Glow was being procured) which could consume large amounts of bandwidth and degrade the performance for all users of the internet service as the WAN became congested.  LA’s generally used their internet filters (typically setup at the point where the LA network connected to the SSDN Interconnect) to protect the network resource from abuse and overuse.

Getting back to the title of this post!  When the term “walled garden” is used to describe Glow,   I believe that this is a misuse of the term and leads to a mistaken impression of what Glow provides and is “responsible” for.

What Glow is:
Glow (the SSDN Intranet ) is a trusted  and Authenticated service  which offers through a single sign on system access to a number of services which are free at the point of use to all users.

the available services are as follows:

Account provisioning system, Web Portal, Email service, User Groups (hierarchical structure), Video/Audio publishing service, Web Site publishing service (internal to Glow or to the Internet), Desktop Conferencing (with Audio & Video), Chat (Glow chat for children and MSN Messenger for Teachers), National Directory,  Discussion Forums, Blogs, e-Portfolios, Calendars, Email Distribution List Service, Secure File Transfer, Cook Books (online instructional manuals)

Notice that filtering is not included in this list!

I may have missed some services but from memory these are the “core” services which are (or were available since Glow was introduced) available to all school users in Scotland according to their role and Glow group membership.  All user accounts are provisioned from School MIS systems which are considered to be a reliable and trusted sources of user credentials.

Glow is also described as a closed system – I preferred to use the term Authenticated.  Glow never was closed or filtered.  It is perfectly possible any authorized user to identify a good resource on the internet and link it into the glow environment.  As a web based service it was intended from day one that this would be possible and I believe that this is possible today.  If a resource cannot be accessed by a user whilst currently logged into Glow via a LA LAN/WAN this is due to the filter policies that the LA has applied to its Internet feed.  It is equally true that such a resource when linked to a Glow resource will be accessible when a user access’s their internet account from a non-LA location.

I feel that it is very important that any discussion about the use of ICT in support of Scottish Education be based on fact and is not muddied by red herrings.  Statements like “Glow is a Walled Garden” are no more than “red herrings” in my view.  See what I have said earlier on the general topic of Internet Filtering – which  another aspect of ICT in schools which does in my view need to be considered and acted on!

http://www.ruachonline.org.uk/blog/?p=714

 

 

2 thoughts on “Glow – “a walled garden” – #GlowPlus #EDUScotICT #SLF2012”

  1. Would be nice though if the people responsible nationally for adding content would talk to those responsible for filtering in local authorities.

  2. Yes that seems to be an obvious requirements. I recall having long and very detailed discussions with the LA people who manage the filter policies to get some Glow services enabled. We also had to do a security review to satisfy the LA people that there was no undue risk of opening up certain port to traffic form the Glow Data Centre. The cricial consideration should be enabling access to useful resources for the sake of better learning opportunities. There is not doubt conducting a risk assessment is sensible – but that process should be given appropriate priotity, efficiency and speed. Thanks for the comment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.