Magic Studio

The ambitions of the Digitial Britain report published last week are relevant to education in a number of ways. We all know that schools ‘increasingly rely on electronic content and the richness of the Internet’ … the question is how will ‘Digital Britain’ bring improvements to access, use and re-use of digital resources?

Without having to dig deep into the meat of the report, the executive summary there already mentions:

• ‘affordability’ through the Government’s £300m Home Access scheme (point 19)
• the increased proliferation of UGC, social networks and disaggregated content (43)
• the need to develop more flexible approaches to monetization of content and copyright licencing (47)
• ensuring good quality, plural and relevant multi platform content for children; and giving them the skills to make the most of new technology (63)
• incorporating ICT as a core competence at Primary and an emphasis on applying digital knowledge in real life contexts at Secondary (64)

All good stuff.

Receiving slightly less coverage in the media (!), but also published in the same week, was a strategy document produced by Becta designed to improve the discovery, delivery and sharing of digital learning resources.

At a very basic level, the strategy recommends the promotion of an ‘ecosystem’ with a central index upon which added value services can be developed and built to enable discovery, delivery and sharing of digital resources.

The ecosystem is built around the principles of sustainability and re-use; and is designed to support access to free, public sector content as well as the creation of new revenue opportunities to commercial content and service providers.

In other words, the ecosystem strategy supports many of the objectives of Digital Britain, as they relate to education.

Joined up? Or coincidence? Either way, it’s great to see a recognition and desire for change …