Innovation Profile 106

Digital content is sharable

Effective and well-organised learning resources and content enable teachers to spend more time interacting with students. Commercially produced content is usually supplemented by teacher-produced worksheets, guides and material for extension and remediation.

It is a major task to assemble and refresh all the learning content needed in a year's teaching, for all the different age groups or subjects one teaches. But two things about the digital world make life easier; the ability to continually copy digital content and to share it.

Considerable help with assembling learning content is available from companies providing ICT tools for learning. A good example is Adobe who produce and make freely available lessons, course guides and projects. These have been written by teachers for teachers and many schools/colleges will find them useful.

You can see at http://www.adobe.co.uk/education/main.html the wide range of resources available. These are not just for art and design teaching but are useful in many areas of the curriculum and for all ages of students.

ICT has reached a level of maturity such that, though there is still rapid development, many data standards are now stable. It is possible to find digital learning content that is so well designed that it is likely to still effectively promote learning in five year's time, or even ten years. The stability of data standards means that it is very likely that the ICT systems in five or ten years will still be able to manipulate and use this content.

The key question is how many schools/colleges are planning long-term as to how the digital learning content they need will be assembled, developed and made available to all teaching staff.

When the teachers in a school collaborate, the digital learning content available to learners can grow rapidly. Learners will be able to extend their learning beyond class time and the teachers will see how in future their time will be saved.

The Adobe Systems Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with 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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