Feedback from an introductory training session on ICT for this year’s East Lothian NQTs apparently included the request that we should have covered how to use the school email system, in place of introducing Glow.
Maybe this is a sign of the times, as increasing numbers of younger people make less use of email, preferring instead the immediacy of MSN? If so, these people are going to be out of their comfort zone if they find they can’t keep in touch – with colleagues as well as friends – via MSN while in school.
Taking things a step further, we may be seeing a new generation bringing new expectations of what communication tools should be on a school PC desktop. Glow Chat may just have arrived in time.
It’s the ‘in place of’ that would worry me, David.
John
Couldn’t it be the peculiarities of our school email system that they’d like to go over as opposed to emailing in general?
I’m with you Alan, East Lothian staff email system is a maze of address books and contacts and if whoever you want to contact works in JMH that’ll be in the black hole of ‘people finder’… Not quite as straight forward as we’d like.
Given that most had just been issued with logins for East Lothian school computers, but hadn’t yet logged on, they wouldn’t have discovered the peculiarities and black holes.
Some, of course, will have had experience from teaching practice or otherwise. It may be that the feedback came from them, but I’d have thought such people would have sorted out any difficulties during their time in school.
In the ICT world, there’s now an assumption that people will pick up email if they want to, but that may not be valid. Perhaps there’s more of a need for email training than we think, not just among this group but among those existing staff who continue to avoid it. The peculiarities and black holes probably don’t help.
Like John, though, I was disappointed that feedback about our decision to use the time to introduce Glow, roll-out of which is now imminent in East Lothian, wasn’t more positive.
David
I don’t think its the case that NQTs don’t want Glow training its more of a case of prioritising their immediate needs at the start of the year.Glow rightly or wrongly isn’t near the top of their list.