In a post about Scotland's new schools extranet/virtual learning environment Glow, John McConnell discusses a question raised at a training session for the system. Glow provides video calling and desktop sharing, and attendee Hilery Williams asked:

Why not simply use Skype?

Of course, Skype does pretty good video calls, and there are plenty of easy ways to share your screen with others.

But, this time, I’m not about to leap to Skype’s defence. There are some clear logistical difficulties — the need to provide a single log on, for example — and some constraints — the need to track user activity. That’s not to say they couldn’t be overcome, but I respect the choices made by Glow’s developers, and John does too:

A national authentication core makes possible a mode of collaboration that simply cannot be replicated easily, or so flexibly, outwith such a system. That is not to say that one is better than another (although many will argue one way or another, of course) - but they are different. Whether they both have validity in terms of their vaue to for learning and teaching is something we can debate.

Ewan McIntosh points to his comment:

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.

and argues this — that the sense of community is, in a way, far more critical to the broader success of systems like Glow than the infrastructure which underpins it.

A virtual community can be close to work, cheap and contain all the conveniences we need to get through our day, but so can some pretty dead meatspace suburbs, where there is no inclination to declare 'community spirit'. Glow, like many 'VLE' online filing cabinets of content before it, could become like this, though I hope and believe it will not.

Likewise, some of broadbandless villages in Scotland, where nothing seems to work properly on a windy day and the 'conveniences' work on a timetable all of their own end up having some of the most enviable community building I've ever seen. For me, this type of village is the socially connected, rather messy world I inhabit online, made up of people living in blogs (houses), wikis (bothies) or Twitter (village notices).

It’s this ‘messy’ online world where I think Skype really shines. It’s fast and lightweight (with no configuration to speak of) and flexible (video, calls, chat, mobile, all in one box; with extras abound to do almost anything else). For the creators and users of Glow, however, the question remains as to whether is will become a ‘ghost town’. I, like Ewan, hope it doesn’t, but let’s hope it can live happily alongside Ian’s ‘exciting village for the future, with its gossips, town halls and bothies’.