Digital Knowledge Base Program Short content summary

The content development program of the Sulinet Express Program Office

Content development, as a strategic area

The Sulinet Express Program operates with the support of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Informatics and Communications and the Ministry of Employment and Labour. The content development strategy of Sulinet might be determined according to two target areas:

• The Sulinet webpage – The goal is to operate a well functioning educational portal, which is visited approximately by 50.000 users a day.
• Development of digital educational auxiliary materials, which are usable in the field of the public education as open source.

The goal in connection with digital educational materials is to create a proper digital curriculum-database, which covers the knowledge areas of every grade. The created database should cover the different knowledge areas of the curriculum, and it provides teachers and students with lesson-plans, methodology, curriculum and basic learning units, which they might use in the everyday education. By the creation of the database our fundamental aspect was to provide every participant of the educational system with the opportunity not only to use, but also to create new digital material.
The content development program is realized through tenders (within the frame of public procurement procedure) in co-operation with teachers, educational organisations, e-learning companies, publishers and content developers.

Our main tasks in connection with the digital content development are:

1. Decentralisation of the content development
2. Involving new partners into the program
3. More intensive participation in the configuration of the European standard systems
4. Launching and co-ordination of teacher in-service training
5. Providing teachers with professional and technical background for the connection to the program

Digital Knowledge Base, LCMS framework

The main goal, what we would like to achieve is to create a complete curriculum-database, which can be arbitrarily customized and developed. For the sake of the cause the digital knowledge base will be published with a framework, which meets the following requirements:

1. the content should be accepted wide-spread
2. in the development of the content should as many teachers as possible participate
3. the database should not be closed, the individual learning objects should be freely improved
4. the individual learning objects should be freely movable, and adequate with the different learning, teaching strategies
5. they should suit those expectations of the European quality management system, which have reference to the educational software and the web tools
6. the learning objects, learning units should suit the international standards of the e-learning framework, so they should be set into frameworks
7. during the development of the content the creation of an adequate knowledge base should be ensured, during this process the group of the users should be formed
8. the system should be permanently supervised by the help of pilot teaching, surveys and follow up

Collaboration with the market participants, teachers and educational organisations

During the process of the database creation companies need to be involved. Ideally the market participants involve also teachers when they compete (co-operative curriculum development). For the market participants several public procurement procedures have been announced. For one of these competitions companies dealing with development of digital curriculum can/could enter. These companies were supposed to have competent references. A tender was also announced for which teacher communities, educational organisations could enter.
For the calling for tenders of the digital knowledge base 1,2 billion Ft was available.

Considering the content development every target audience participates in training formed according to the adequate modules:

• Educational areas – the professional group leaders of the subjects:
  • Studies on informatics with supplementary multimedia-based educational auxiliary materials
    (multimedia-based tools and software)
  • CBT/WBT methodological studies
• Teachers non specialized in Computer Science:
  • Studies on operation informatics
  • Studies on informatics with supplementary multimedia-based educational auxiliary materials
    (multimedia-based tools and software)
  • CBT/WBT methodological studies
• Teachers specialized in Computer Science and information system managers- as professional supporters and developers
  • Studies on informatics with supplementary multimedia-based educational auxiliary materials
    (multimedia-based tools and software)
  • Preparation of media databases
  • Professional multimedia editor systems