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GLOBAL GRID FOR LEARNING: GETTING THE LEARNING OBJECT FUTURE UNDERWAY
By David Worlock
January 15, 2007
BETT is probably now the world’s largest e-learning show, and January 2007 saw an impressive outlay of technical and content innovation. But this announcement may have got lost in the crush, in part at least because it is a soft launch, and relates to the trialling of the venture over the next six months, with a full launch taking place later on this year. And despite the ‘global’ claim, this feels initially like a UK-focussed development. The initial access for teachers will be via existing local grids for learning in the UK, through local portals (presumably via UK regional broadband alliances) and via software vendors sales interfaces. Hopefully, post-launch, the portal will be an available link on all participants’ sites, and become an asset that any teacher can use at the point of lesson preparation. Because this timely experiment could be hugely important if the UK begins to follow the anticipated track of object-based learning, with the availability and tradability of objects, and the ability to use them licitly in VLEs and in lesson planning software, becoming a key axis of change.
The partners in the current scheme, managed by Cambridge, now include Microsoft, Channel 4, EMPC (LP+), American Education Corporation (A+), Bridgeman Education, Azzurri (Encyclopaedia Britannica) and Steljes, as well as Cambridge Hitachi and Cambridge University Press themselves. In terms of Windows, this is a SharePoint application. In terms of business models, this is a pay per use or a subscription-based environment. While the trial database is not bursting with resources, it has respectable coverage for the trial. There are some 200,000 pieces of learning material available, though the vast bulk are images from Bridgeman. Very small content populations are held in learning objects though the few thousand on display are extremely interesting. Alongside images, text plus audio and video resources are also available. All material is validated and copyright-cleared. Those interested in the way in which this type of distribution channel is likely to develop will want to look at the metadata and the way in which it has been assembled, and this will be an important issue, no doubt, in the trial environment. And it is clearly no accident that leading players in interactive whiteboard software development are closely involved. Finally, this is a SCORM 2004 and SCORM 1.2 environment, demonstrating that the standards track is still in place.
GGFL presents many educational publishers with a quandary. Do they endorse it and join - or go their own parallel route to this developing marketplace? If the latter, do they have sufficient high-quality object-based content to be self-sufficient? If not, will they lose vital user contact and feedback in a wholesaler-style distribution channel? Coming as it does, hard on the heels of the UK government’s Personalised Learning announcements, GGFL is going to be a development programme to watch closely in 2007. One question which its trial will begin to explore is the one over which every education marketplace strategist organises: what proportion of the teacher population will ever use services of this type, and what happens to the lessons created after first use?
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