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 …

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!