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From Across the Pond |
Magic Studio: Bringing Cultural Content to Education
on February 27, 2009
When I worked at the Department for Education there was a big push to get the tremendous wealth of digitized assets, which had been produced by the many world renowned museums, galleries and archives, made available to teachers to use in their teaching and learning.
Some of the issues associated with doing this related to the work which was required to tag and add educational context to these assets. Some of the larger museums produced some excellent websites but for many it was just too big a job. Some small scale pilot work was carried out and from this work a company called Lexara produced Magic Studio.
Magic Studio is a very exciting proposition in that it enables, not only, cultural organizations to make their stunning content available for teachers and learners to use, but also publishers. In addition, and probably the most exciting aspect, it provides tools for teachers and learners to produce their own content and publish for others to use.
Magic Studio contains assets from the likes of English Heritage, Bridgeman Education and Dorling Kindersley, and deals with issues relating to licensing of the assets, contextual metadata and relevant API's so that the content can be made available through the widest range of existing portals and communities.
This growing library of assets combined with the tools for users to create their own content is a very exciting proposition and makes some really stunning content available for all to use, create and share. Well worth having a look at the product and seeing how it could bring new life to learning.
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