It seemed the most unlikely of joint-billings - the Star Wars director George Lucas and a modest Scots initiative to improve e-communication within schools.

In what must rank as one of the most heady compliments ever given to an education system, the film maker announced to members of the US House of Representatives that America should adopt Scotland's pioneering school websites as a way to improve pupil access to technology.

May the force, indeed, be with Glow, a scheme which sets up chatrooms and shared resources for pupils and is being held up as a shining international example of how ICT can help teaching and learning.

Mr Lucas, who heads his own not-for-profit education foundation and is on the quest for what he calls “edutopia”, told representatives on the telecommunications and internet sub-committee that the US is lagging behind Scotland in using 21st century tools to teach its children.

He said: “This year we describe a project from Scotland called Glow, the first national schools intranet, which provides every Scottish school with a common e-platform for student and teacher e-mail, for parents to have regular communication with their schools, for publishing school websites and for features such as online course and videoconferencing between schools.

“This kind of common platform makes perfect sense. As companies and government agencies do, school districts and states should invest in ensuring that each of their locations has the same suite of online tools for their work and communications.

“But school districts and states have been slow to invest at the level the Scottish government has done for its schools. For a nation of five million people, the system cost $75 million and took four years to develop.”

Glow, which is run by the organisation Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), with £37.5 million funding from the government, is credited with revolutionising e-teaching in Scottish schools.The network could eventually see around 800,000 pupils, teachers, parents and education professionals from all 32 Scottish local authorities linked together.

Currently 17 out of Scotland's 32 local authorities are using Glow with the remainder scheduled to be up and running within the next year. Some give permission for children to use the websites at home as well as school; some do not.

Andrew Brown, a secondary school history teacher, explained that the website and chatroom were a tool that the children naturally engaged with. Pupils devoted more time to working online than they would to conventional homework.

“The engagement levels are up because it's a different medium and one the pupils are quite comfortable using,” he said.“If, for instance, the children are asked to investigate a character in an English text, they go away and tease it out a bit more on the chatroom. A lot of kids in class who aren't happy to put their hands up are quite happy to type the answers.

“What Glow brings to Scottish education are collaborative social tools which people in education are unwilling to use because of the dangers. By putting it in the closed and safe environment of Glow, where the teacher monitors it, you can use them with confidence. It means you can bring in things you would have never dared to before - discussion, chats, web conferencing, input from outside.

Laura Kerr, a Primary One teacher in Lairdsland Primary in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire, described how she set up a collaborative project with a school on Shetland, with the children sharing personal experiences in a chatroom.

She said: “One of the biggest benefits is that pupils can teach and challenge each other - they can use the freedom Glow affords to extend their own learning. The pupils just love it. They're constantly asking me when they'll get to talk to their Shetland friends again. The parents are also very enthusiastic and supportive - their children have been talking about it so much that they're keen to find out more.

“I absolutely love Glow. It has the potential to bring things to life in the classroom and take learning that step further.”

Laurie O'Donnell, director of learning and technology at LTS, who was honoured by George Lucas's Educational Foundation for his work on the scheme, said: “Scotland has led the world in the development of Glow. Our goal at the very beginning was to ensure our children and young people had access to the very best technology and tools for learning.

“Educators and government officials from China to Singapore to Australia have been visiting LTS to see how Glow is going to be used to enhance learning and teaching in Scotland.”

Audit Scotland recently found that Glow is one of the most competently handled public sector capital projects.

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