Innovation Profile 048

Will your learning content survive over time?

Computer technology changes very rapidly, which can be annoying but does bring some advantages. However if your learning content cannot be accessed on new systems it could be a disaster.

For a long-term business like education it is critical that the data standards used to hold learning content will survive even if the technology changes.

There is a huge amount of ICT-based learning content that has been created in the last twenty years that is now effectively lost. When did you last see a school using a 5.25 inch floppy disc drive or a 12 inch Interactive Video disc? But even more important than the physical media are the data standards. Will the software you now have make sense of the data in older learning content?

If we are to build a critical mass of ICT-based learning content and save the work of continually re-creating it, we must adopt software and data standards that will be strongly supported into the future.

There are two levels at which this is important; standard data types for individual files and content containing many forms of data compiled into documents or multimedia. Adobe (http://www.adobe.co.uk - or http://www.adobe.fr .de .it .es etc) provide an excellent example of both of these. PDF format documents, created by Adobe Acrobat and read through the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, will be saved on a huge number of machines worldwide. Though the software has developed considerably over time, the standard format ensures even old documents are readable. For the future, Adobe's reputation and strength provide a good guarantee that new devices will be enabled to read PDF files.

Adobe also provide software such as Pagemaker and Photoshop that have proved durable over long periods. If a school/college has thought through this issue of information survival and adopts Adobe software as the standard for creating and editing image-rich media, it will be possible to continue to upgrade and adapt learning resources over many years.

This is also an issue that should concern every teacher personally. All teachers create a huge amount of material to support their work during their career. If teachers who are just starting their careers make the right choices about software and data they will be able to build on their earlier work, instead of continually re-creating their lesson resources.

The Adobe Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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