Magic Studio » News http://blog.magicstudio.com All things about Magic Studio Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:41:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 New SILVER module available http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/04/27/new-silver-module-available/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/04/27/new-silver-module-available/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 09:41:38 +0000 martynfarrows http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=377 We have made a new SILVER prototype module on Leadership available for testing at: http://prototype3.silver.magicstudio.com/login/signup_finish

Why not give it a try and find out what type of Leader you are!  You can leave feedback about SILVER here:

http://silvereducation.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/user-testing-prototype-3-leadership/

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/04/27/new-silver-module-available/feed/ 0 Magic Studio availability 15 March http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/03/15/magic-studio-availability-15-march/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/03/15/magic-studio-availability-15-march/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:14:23 +0000 martynfarrows http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=373 We experienced some performance and outage issues this morning Monday 15th March.  The issues mainly affected asset upload and ‘create’ functionality and the service was unavailable for approximately one hour.

The problems were caused by bandwidth/availability issues at our hosting facility and were rectified by 12.30pm.  We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused to our user community.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/03/15/magic-studio-availability-15-march/feed/ 0 New Magic Twitter, Facebook and social bookmarking goes live http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/02/03/new-magic-twitter-facebook-and-social-bookmarking-goes-live/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/02/03/new-magic-twitter-facebook-and-social-bookmarking-goes-live/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:16:20 +0000 benhayman http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=370 Magic has provided links to these Social Bookmark  services for a while via the AddThis widget and thats been handy. However, a few weeks back we decided to make things even easier to share and now you can share directly from Magic. For Facebook sharers, we are also now passing a nice Magic Thumbnail across to your Facebook Profile along with useful metadata from Magic about the item.

So its now just a single click to share any Magic resource you like the look of via a Tweet or into Digg and Delicious.

We like to share so we hope you like this new and improved feature as well.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/02/03/new-magic-twitter-facebook-and-social-bookmarking-goes-live/feed/ 0 English Heritage channel tops 6500 resources http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/02/02/english-heritage-channel-tops-6500-resources/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/02/02/english-heritage-channel-tops-6500-resources/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:44:47 +0000 martynfarrows http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=364 Our content partners at English Heritage have made over 1000 new resources available to the Magic Studio network through their English Heritage channel.  This brings the total number of resources from EH to over 6500.

The content comes via a live SOAP feed from the Heritage Explorer website, meaning that Magic Studio users also benefit from the contextual and metadata information authored by the English Heritage education team in Swindon.

The new content comes from counties all over England, with images from Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Derbyshire, North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and Shropshire.

All of the material is licenced for use free of charge with the Magic Studio network, with links to related resources from other content providers and users.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2010/02/02/english-heritage-channel-tops-6500-resources/feed/ 1 Resources for Ancient Greece http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/12/02/resources-for-ancient-greece/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/12/02/resources-for-ancient-greece/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:38:05 +0000 markfarnell http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=358 We’re working with schools to bring together some useful assets and interactives to help with the teaching of Ancient Greece at Key Stage 2.  So far we’ve been adding public domain and other licensed images to Magic Studio, and we’ve also added a few interactive resources (some from us and some from Schoolzone).  We’ve made two bundles, one of the images and one of the interactives – just search for “greek” or “greece” and select “Bundles” under Options and you’ll find it.  If you have any comments please let us know, in the meantime we’ll be adding some more assets and interactives over the coming weeks ready for the new term after Christmas.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/12/02/resources-for-ancient-greece/feed/ 0 Digital Content for schools: new content upload/API http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/10/23/digital-content-for-schools-new-content-uploadapi/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/10/23/digital-content-for-schools-new-content-uploadapi/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:56:23 +0000 martynfarrows http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=352 In partnership with SchoolZone, we are looking for a number of content
collections (images, audio, video) who are willing to make their
material available free of charge to engage with an online network of
80,000 teachers.

If you can provide us with a web feed (Atom, OAI, RSS) or already have
your content in YouTube, Flickr or Picasa, we can pull it (and the
metadata) directly into the Magic Studio Network free of charge.  We
are happy to take small or large feeds, as long as the content is
relevant to the curriculum (primary or secondary).  Content is then
made available to teachers and students within the network, free for
educational use only.

In return, we provide you with a web-based interface that allows you to:

  • manage your feed(s) and generate branded channels of content
  • set specific licensing terms
  • build your own interactive learning resources
  • collaborate with teachers online
  • interrogate and generate detailed user statistics from the network
  • automatically watermark your images
  • add more education-specific metadata and curriculum tags

If you are interested in taking part, please contact us.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/10/23/digital-content-for-schools-new-content-uploadapi/feed/ 0 Magic Studio launches the Content Exchange http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/09/28/magic-studio-launches-the-content-exchange/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/09/28/magic-studio-launches-the-content-exchange/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:18:43 +0000 markfarnell http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=342 Exciting news for us today as our Content Exchange goes live!  Sitting alongside the free content, the Content Exchange also provides our users with a “pay for use” model, allowing you to take advantage of the increasing number of new commercial content providers in the Magic Studio Network.

How does it work?  Just use a credit card to create a Magic Studio account with a minimum payment of £2 – your account will immediately be credited with Magic Studio Credits to the value of 10p each, so £2 will buy you 20 Magic Studio Credits.  These credits can then be used to buy commercially available content from publishers in our network, allowing you to decide how much or how little you buy based on your own needs.

There are already over 337,000 items available in the Content Exchange and we’ll be adding more over the coming weeks.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/09/28/magic-studio-launches-the-content-exchange/feed/ 0 English Heritage channel now with over 4000 resources http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/08/18/english-heritage-channel-now-with-over-4000-resources/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/08/18/english-heritage-channel-now-with-over-4000-resources/#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:34:49 +0000 martynfarrows http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=321 We are delighted to announce that our content partners at English Heritage have now made over 4300 resources available to the Magic Studio network through their English Heritage channel.

The content comes via a live feed from the Heritage Explorer website, meaning that Magic Studio users also benefit from the contextual and metadata information authored by the English Heritage education team in Swindon.

The collection consists of a rich and varied set of imagery – from aerial photography, through to iconic buildings and war records.  All of the material is licenced for use free of charge with the Magic Studio network, with links to related resources from other content providers and users.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/08/18/english-heritage-channel-now-with-over-4000-resources/feed/ 1 Magic Studio Learning is bigger… http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/08/11/magic-studio-learning-is-bigger/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/08/11/magic-studio-learning-is-bigger/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:49:55 +0000 markfarnell http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=318 We’ve combined our two free channels, Magic Studio Learning and MSL Extra into one; all the assets previously available in MSL Extra are now in Magic Studio Learning and available for use by all our users.

If you’ve seen MSL Extra before it will no longer be available as a channel to you, but don’t worry all the content is now in Magic Studio Learning.  If you used some content from MSL Extra, don’t worry this change will not affect any existing use of an asset.

The content in Magic Studio Learning is from a variety of free sources on the internet that we have used in various projects with schools and Magic Studio.  Each one has been tagged to help search and also contains the relevant licence under which it was made available and the URL from where we sourced the asset.

We’ll continue to add free content to Magic Studio Learning in the weeks and months to come.

]]> http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/08/11/magic-studio-learning-is-bigger/feed/ 0 Magic Studio selected in the 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250 http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/07/16/magic-studio-selected-in-the-2009-alwayson-global-250/ http://blog.magicstudio.com/2009/07/16/magic-studio-selected-in-the-2009-alwayson-global-250/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:52:09 +0000 martynfarrows http://blog.magicstudio.com/?p=305 Great news, Magic Studio has been selected on the 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250 List!

The AlwaysOn Global 250 Award is given to private, emerging technology companies creating new business opportunities in high-growth markets.  Magic Studio was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction.

Of course, we are delighted to be selected as ‘one to watch’ in Digital Education. Ben will be heading out to San Francisco at the end of this month to talk to the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley about our plans for the business.

A full list of all the AlwaysOn Global 250 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website at http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/32719

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