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.

Huge thanks to Philip, Elizabeth, Gaynor, Tati, Arvin, Drew and Lizzie!

We’ve checked that each asset is either in the public domain or has a licence, such has Creative Commons, making it available for use by teachers.  Plus we’ve tagged each asset to make it easier to find in Magic Studio.  We’re adding to this new channel all the time and will keep you updated on its progress.

Facebook, Twitter and You Tube blocked in the classroom despite teacher demand

UK teachers are being stifled in their classroom creativity by outdated restrictions on IT usage according to new research released today by social media education company, Magic Studio (www.magicstudio.co.uk).

Three quarters of teachers want to bring User Generated Content (UGC) sites such as You Tube into their teaching and nearly half (42%) want to introduce social media tools such as Twitter or Facebook into the classroom. However, over-protective IT policies mean that 57% are blocked from accessing UGC sites and 68% from social media sites.

The potential benefits of social media in the classroom are clearly recognised by teachers, with 63% of respondents saying that they felt these technologies would increase pupil’s engagement with learning.

The sorts of services being demanded by teachers were clear. 50% of respondents wanted to use YouTube in the classroom; 17% Facebook; 16% Flickr; 10% Bebo and 10% wanted to deploy the emergent ‘micro-blogging’ service Twitter.

Martyn Farrows, Director of Magic Studio, said: “Kids are using social media all the time, every day in their home lives then, when they get into school, they’re suddenly asked to forget all about that and go back 10 years in terms of the types of media they’re consuming. How do we expect kids to really engage with learning if we’re talking to them in a way that has no relevance to their ordinary modes of communication?

“Some of these restrictions are in place because of outdated concerns over security. However there’s now a swathe of tools and services can bring the power of social media into the classroom in a safe and constructive way. Simply blocking these services is a blunt tool that’s killing off the massive potential of social media in an educational environment.”

The research was based on a poll of teachers on the schoolzone.co.uk website in April 2009.

FULL RESULTS

What level do you teach at?

Primary – 52.7%
Secondary – 47.3%

Do you or do you want to use online, user generated content tools (YouTube, Flickr etc.) as part of your teaching?

I want to – 38.2%
I already do – 38.2%
No – 23.6%

Do you or do you want to use online social networking tools (e.g. twitter, facebook etc.) as part of your teaching?

I want to – 30%
I already do – 11.8%
No – 58.2%

If yes, what tools specifically do you/would you like to use?

You Tube – 50%
Flickr – 16%
Bebo – 10%
MySpace – 6%
Twitter – 10%
Facebook – 17%

Are you prevented from using some or all of these tools in your teaching (e.g. by Local Authority IT policy etc.)?

User generated content – 57%
Social networking – 68%

What impact do you think the introduction of these familiar online tools would have on pupils?

Better concentration – 14%
More engagement with learning – 63%
Less unruly behaviour – 2.2%
More distractions – 30.1%
Misuse of services – 33.3%

If no, why don’t you want to use them?

Don’t understand them – 4.3%
Can’t see how they’d work in lessons – 24.7%
Concerned about security/safety – 35.5%
Don’t have the technical resources – 5.4%

Administration of Shibboleth for the education sector is provided by the UK Access Management Federation, supported by JISC and Becta and operated by JANET(UK).

Magic Studio is a registered service provider with UKAMF and you can view our credentials here.  If you are interested in using Magic Studio in conjunction with Shibboleth authentication, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

From today, over 50,000 registered users of SchoolZone will be able to access their very own Magic Studio envrionment.  And because we’ve used the Magic Studio platform API, existing SchoolZone users don’t even have to register separately … their SZ login will provide them with a single sign-on access straight into Magic.

All resources created and shared by SZ users will be delivered via a branded channel to all other Magic Studio users … encouraging more creativity and sharing across the SchoolZone and Magic Studio communities!

At Magic Studio, we were proud to have supported this programme over the past year.  A number of schools elected to use Magic Studio to build, create and share interactive learning resources and we are now making these available on a special area of our Network.  These can be found in the Repurpose, Create, Share channel at http://repurposeprojects.magicstudio.co.uk/.

Currently, we are showcasing over 300 resources developed by King Charles I school in Kidderminster – here’s an example:

Pretty soon, there will be over 1000 resources available from all the schools that used Magic Studio, including some fantastic resources from Allerton Grange School in Leeds.

What’s most exciting about the projects is that all the resources were created by teachers and students, with very little technical knowledge required – and all through a web browser.  The feedback was phenomenal – with the students and teachers working together, they achieved high levels of knowledge transfer, mutual respect and understanding.  The process of building the resources proved invaluable in helping to redefine teacher-pupil relationships and proved that the construction of the resources themselves is where the majority of learning occurs.

All of the resources built using Magic Studio are now available for any school to use … or to repurpose, create and share themselves!

Probably most inspiring of all was Sir Ken Robinson’s Keynote on Wednesday – standing room only in the ICC’s Symphony Hall!  His enthusiasm for education reminds us why we all got involved with it in the first place.

The subject was a familiar one – Creativity – and explored many of the themes from the RSA lecture “Changing Paradigms“. 

He spent a lot of time talking about ‘transforming education’, arguing that the current system – based on a linear subject-based curriculum with standardised testing – must be redesigned.  Primarily, because it discourages creativity and the ability of people to fully achieve their potential.

He also defined Creativity as “the process of having original ideas which have value”. Which got me thinking about how we can use technology to try to support creativity – and also about what the future for technology in education should aspire to be.

Since the internet has had the largest single impact on how we use technology to access our media, it seems sensible to assume that a future for technology in education is likely to be online, web-based for the learner.

If we look at patterns of use of media, web technologies provide us not just with unprecedented access to information – but also to unprecedented access to small bite-size chunks of media (YouTube, Wikipedia, ..) in a disaggregated form. 

These small chunks of content are provided to us in a context which encourages re-use and collaboration – with web applications that empower us to pull content from many sources, to manipulate it and self-publish.  And to do so with each other online and in real-time (Facebook, Flickr, blogs ..).

Fundamentally, the way we use the web is one of the most democratic methods of communication – it provides us with a means of expression and the ability to reach an audience.

It enables us to be creative and to share ideas – just one element of what we need to support the redesign a future education system!

England’s Past for Everyone (EPE) is a Heritage Lottery-funded local history project run by the Victoria County History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. EPE is working with academics and local communities to produce a series of paperback books, an interactive website and learning resources for schools.

EPE has projects running in Bristol, Cornwall, Derbyshire, County Durham, Exmoor, Herefordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Sussex and Wiltshire.

At Magic Studio, we’re excited that such a rich source of documents, images, text and audio will be made available to our users and look forward to seeing how teachers and home users create new, exciting resources with them.

We’ll keep you updated on progress and when the content will be available.