A few years back when I was working at the Dept. of Education I started having discussions with software developers about alternative business models for educational software. This basically came down to a discussion about software becoming a freely available resource with any revenue stream coming from appropriate goods and services which added value to the software.

I was told by certain policy colleagues this was a ridiculous idea, but some of the more forward thinking software developers I discussed this approach with saw the value in a growing community of users of their content who may pay for services. One company, Caspian Learning saw the value in this approach and started to give away their 3D engine which enabled students and teachers to create their own virtual worlds.

Move forward 4 years and Caspian Learning are still here and doing very well. Now more and more software vendors I'm speaking to are seeing the value of giving away their software and looking for alternative revenue streams that support their products.

We are now in an age where content is king and that may be because many pieces of content and tools are now freely available.  Our tech savvy students find what they want, when they want it, from where ever it may be for free. More importantly they do what we least expect them to do with it.

So the world we may be once dreamed of a few years back, where user generated content becomes a reality, is here and how is the educational world going to respond? We are now in a position where community rather than content is king, you only need to look at applications such as Facebook and MySpace. If educators stick with the current comfortable paradigm where the norm is accepted we will never move the potential of education forward and we will fail our students. We need to embrace innovation and ensure that all students are given the opportunity to achieve their full potential, not only those that fit in with the norm. By giving students the freedom, the tools and the confidence to show what they can do, free of unreal constraints, we can hopefully realise the full potential of technology in education.