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.

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.

Selected as Technology Innovator in Digital Education for 2009

July 23rd, 2009 – Lexara, the people behind Magic Studio, today announced that it has been selected to 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. Lexara was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction.

“We’re delighted to be recognised by the AlwaysOn Global 250.  We’re committed to investing and developing new ways for the education sector to engage with content and interactive technologies and this award is a wonderful acknowledgement of our efforts” said Ben Hayman, C.E.O. of Lexara.

Lexara and the other AlwaysOn Global 250 Winners winners will be recognized at the AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford, taking place at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, on July 28-30. This two-and-a-half day executive conference is co-presented by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program will highlighting the significant economic, political and commercial trends affecting the global technology industries.

“It’s no secret that technology and innovation are vital to bringing our country out of economic recession,” said Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “The companies on this year’s list have not only created innovative technologies that solve real business problems, but have stimulated economic growth through the generation of new jobs. I congratulate every winner selected for this year’s award and wish them all tremendous success in the future.”

The AlwaysOn Global 250 winners were selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders. The AlwaysOn editorial team conducted a rigorous three-month selection process to finalize the 2009 list.

A full list of all the AlwaysOn Global 250 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn website.

About AlwaysOn

AlwaysOn ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a global blog network. In 2004, AlwaysOn continued to lead the media industry in innovation by introducing a social network where members can connect and engage. AlwaysOn is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (Summit at Stanford, OnMedia, OnHollywood, OnDC, GoingGreen East and West, Venture Summit East and West) and quarterly print “blogozine” by empowering its members to post and share their ideas and meet each other online. As our loyal readers know, AlwaysOn is committed to the free-market, merit-driven approach to reporting and event programming. No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants.

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 …

• As well as being able to export completed interactives as SCORM packages, you can now also export as Common Cartridge packages
• SCORM packages can now be uploaded and shared
• Larger sizes for videos are now supported, up to 500 pixels wide – this means that videos uploaded can be used in their native size and are resized automatically for use where appropriate in interactives (e.g. when projected onto IWBs)
• For Gateway users, we have introduced a new home page and user interface

In addition, video and audio players now show a new ‘progress’ bar.