Laurie O'Donnell was waiting on the platform of Dundee station last Wednesday morning for the Glasgow train, with a hat pulled down over his ears to keep out the cold, when an old friend slapped him on the back. “Well done, big man,” he said to O'Donnell cheerily. “Get a free lightsabre with that honour.” As his friend walked away to catch the Edinburgh train, O'Donnell turned back to see the other passengers on the platform looking at him uncertainly.

References to the Star Wars films have been scattered in the path of Learning and Teaching Scotland's director of technology several times a day since the George Lucas Education Foundation, set up in America by the creator of the famous science-fiction films, bestowed an honour on him last week. O'Donnell was named as one of the organisation's “Global Six” for 2008, in recognition of his work on Glow, the world's first national intranet for schools, and for promoting the use of technology, such as computer games, in Scottish education.

Even officials have been unable to resist. Liz Hunter, the director of schools in the Scottish government, sent an e-mail that read: “Well done. And may the force be with you.” O'Donnell chuckles as he tells the tale, still tickled by the appreciation and the fond teasing that comes with it. The attention, however repetitive, comes as an affirmation of the scope of his department's work.

Lucas established the foundation to encourage innovation in teaching, because he felt “bored and frustrated” at school and considers the traditional curriculum to be out of step with children's lives. O'Donnell believes he will “probably get a certificate”, but there is also a trip to the foundation's San Francisco headquarters to be arranged, where he hopes to meet Lucas. It is the recognition, the acknowledgment from somebody outside the confines of Scottish education, that is encouraging.

Glow is, in effect, a gateway, it provides the means by which education can take advantage of the digital age. A five-year project, costing £37.5m, it is being rolled out local authority by local authority, school by school, until all the country's pupils and teachers are linked to each other. Every pupil will have a homepage and an e-mail address, chatrooms will develop for each subject, classes will be available in the form of video conferencing, teachers can access lesson plans, homework can be submitted directly for marking, and parents can talk to teachers by e-mail.

For O'Donnell, a former teacher and local authority adviser, the intranet, the development of pupil and teacher blogs, and the use of computer games as teaching aids is not so much a revolution as an evolution.

“I was speaking to a friend recently who learnt to write with a box of sand, with his finger,” O'Donnell smiles. “My father learnt to write with a piece of chalk, a slate and a damp cloth. Over time, technologies change. Computers are just part of that journey. It's a natural progression and schools don't operate in isolation. I bank differently than I did 20 years ago, I shop differently.”

A tall, thin, jovial man, O'Donnell manages to be both zealous and self-effacing. When he received an e-mail last December from the George Lucas Foundation informing him that the award would be announced three months later, he sent a reply asking: “Are you sure you've got the right Laurie O'Donnell?” He continually stresses that the work of his department is collaborative and that this award should be shared among his colleagues.

There has already been interest in Glow from across the world: officials from Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, America, Northern Ireland and Wales having visited to study the project. Scotland is leading the way and O'Donnell considers it the beginning. Take teachers, he says, they spend time drawing up lesson plans, yet Glow will allow them to access proven resources. “If every teacher in the country saved one hour a week, in terms of duplication of effort, that's 52,000 teachers at £20 a head, which is £1m,” he says.

Glow is web-based and so can be logged onto via computer or games console. But what of those children who don't have the use of such technology at home? O'Donnell believes the next step is to provide devices to pupils, in the way that jotters and textbooks are considered standard.

“What Glow does is level the playing field in schools, so it doesn't matter if you're in Glasgow or Shetland or Dundee, you have access to the same resources,” he adds. “But there are huge inequalities beyond the school gates. You'd hope that pupils would be able to use community access, like at libraries, and you'd hope that schools would extend the school day. But over time, local authorities will have to think about how they cater for those pupils. Prices are dropping, already there is a move towards hand-held devices. The key thing about Glow is that it's web-based, so as long as you have a device with a connection, it is available.”

He does not foresee classrooms of the future where every child sits in front of a screen, learning by computer. The technology is to complement teaching methods, a tool in the same way that books, television programmes and class visits can be utilised. The responsibility for when to use each resource will remain down to the professional judgment of the teachers. Children are growing up computer literate, though, and he believes education has to acknowledge that development.

There are other potential benefits to Glow, such as internet safety. In a world where the use of social networking sites is becoming second nature to children, a sense of responsibility and caution has to be encouraged.

“Every parent and every teacher should be concerned about the dangers on the internet,” O'Donnell says. “Glow is a closed community, so the only people inside it are authenticated through local authorities and schools. There is no completely risk-free online environment, but it's safer than being on sites such as Bebo or MySpace. It's controlled, it's managed, and its purpose is education. Glow is one way of us addressing that issue and we can provide an education into how to deal with the online world, in terms of giving away personal details and being wary of who you're dealing with.”

O'Donnell cringes as he reveals that his eldest child, Amy, texted her friends to say, “My dad is a global hero”. Yet he sees his own two daughters using their mobile phones, playing computer games and surfing the internet and wants that familiarity with technology to be of use in the classroom. “Kids are connected, and we're trying to make schooling more relevant,” he says. “We're tying to bring it up to date.”

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