Exchange of Educational Content: Network of Clearinghouses for Educational Software and Content

ICT: Triggering the paradigm change

ICT culture is democratic – more so than any other innovation that has reached the classroom before computers did. The same way as writing ceased to be the privilege of a small elite group and became the tool of the masses and modern culture based on the written text was born, digital literacy also becomes the daily routine of society with great speed.

Traditional pedagogy focuses on verbal and numerical intelligence and leaves relevant ICT intelligences – for example, flexibility, critical thinking, metacognitive skill – unrecognised. Providing universal access to ICT, we may defeat the global knowledge divide through the educational methods inherent in this emerging culture. The success stories of school computing show that ICT actually acts as the Trojan Horse: in the PC box, up-to-date educational methods may be smuggled within the walls of traditional schooling. Rigid, limited knowledge transmitted in the traditional classroom gives way to flexible, frontier-less knowledge. After 2000 years of short-lived reforms, ICT forces frontal teaching off the stage. Computer-supported learning environments are best to realise the constructivist paradigm: individualised instruction in life skills. The way of learning leads from the locality of the classroom towards the flexible and changeable “virtual universe” of networked communities.

The essence of this culture is literacy: the retrieval, storage, processing and interpretation of digitally transmitted information. Up-to-date ICT tools seek to assist these processes with growing efficacy. These applications communicate more than information technology – they share digital culture. Therefore, in the focus of teaching about ICT today we find the user, not the info-specialist.

The COQS index is a measure that combines four types of skills in using the Internet into an overall “digital literacy” score. The skills included are:

• Communicating with others (by e-mail and other online methods),
• Obtaining (or downloading) and installing software on a computer,
• Questioning the source of information on the Internet and
• Searching for the required information using search engines.

The index combines these items (based on self-assessment) into a single scale with a range from 0 to 3, with “0” representing the lowest possible digital literacy score and “3” representing the highest. The overall average score on the COQS scale is 0.8 in the EU-15 countries and 0,35 in the NAS-10 countries compared with the US score of 1.5. The level of digital literacy varies strongly within the EU, with the NAS-10 countries in general as the ones showing the lowest level of Digital Literacy among the total population. Estonia and Slovenia show a slightly higher level of Digital Literacy than Italy, Spain, France, Greece and Portugal.

Importance of educational digital content

The expansion of the information society within education should rest on four pillars:

1. Hardware and Software – provision of suitable infrastructure,
2. Internet access – fast, inexpensive, and readily available connectivity,
3. Skills and competencies, necessary for making full use of technology and finally,
4. Content provision, to communicate current and authentic knowledge.

The further down we go on this list, the more we lag behind – both on a national and on international level. Educational software and digital content development should be a very significant investment for countries intending to focus on improvement of teaching and learning through ICT according to the eLearning Action Plan¹. The European Union is underperforming in reaching the goals of the Lisbon Strategy.² One of the factors of failure is the low level of available digital content. The European content market is much more fragmented and undeveloped then in the US.³ So the countries of the EU should invest more in content development and it should be done in a more effective way. It seems natural to consider the redundancy of parallel design, production and testing of new products and content, and investigate the barriers and possibilities of sharing, on a non-profit basis the results of huge intellectual and financial investment.

Digital teaching materials constitute the intellectual infrastructure for educational reforms initiated by ICT. Learning in 2010 will certainly be an interactive process, not a one-way alley – through participation in knowledge building communities, eLearners will both learn and share their experiences with others. In a more and more globalised community, we need connected databases of teaching materials developed in co-operation and shared to increase equity and understanding among cultures. The digital construction of learning materials and databases containing them do not only replace the production and use of traditional textbooks, but also alter the whole infrastructure of the work of teachers of all disciplines.

ICT should be invited or even forced to get out of the labs and conquer the classrooms. There is no alternative! Teacher training will have to be altered; meta-knowledge, networking capacity and methodology should be in the focus. Such synergies may already be observed in space research, oceanography, and meteorology. We should not believe, however, that these developments make offline publications redundant.

These changes inaugurate a new division of labour, with new types of publications. Today, 90% of materials used at school are traditional, printed textbooks. 7% is the share of CD-ROMs and DVDs and Internet content occupies only 3%. These proportions, will be radically altered, perhaps even inverted by 2010.

Facing problems

Herbert Simon claims that the concept of knowledge, which until now was taken as a noun denoting possession, is gradually becoming a noun denoting access. Providing access to state or EU-financed, high quality educational software may be the chance ICT culture needs for faster progress. Common problems on the field of digital, educational content are as follows:

• Overwhelming majority of English content and lack of content in other national languages, especially those of minorities,
• Missing standards about how to define educational content,
• Missing international accreditation system for educational content,
• Few standardised Content Management Systems,
• Lack of experience and practice in educational publishing companies,
• Limited government subsidy for the publication of digital educational content,
• Unregulated property- and copyright management.

Developing a common content market

One of the possible solutions is to catalyse the development of the market of digital educational content. We believe that it is also the interest of the non-profit content provider to reach the broadest audience possible and showcase, for example, treasures of cultural heritage or achievements of national science. But is sharing digital educational content a realistic option? Is educational content transferable to another different schooling system? International surveys like IEA, PISA and TIMMS, show that there is a significant common curriculum content to be taught and assessed. Therefore, it seems to be realistic to suggest that digital teaching materials do travel well.

Making common market requires more than open coordination. Standardization, legal clearing, and identifying common needs are essential. The eContent Programme has started this process, but it should be accelerated, because of the previously mentioned delay in the Lisbon Strategy.

Proposal for a Network of Clearinghouses for Educational Content

Content development efforts could be more targeted and efficient if a network of clearinghouses for educational content was set up to monitor and evaluate products, publicise best practice and catalyse further development in the field. Through building up a European repository of high quality digital teaching materials, we may reduce highly expensive parallel development, considerably accelerate the dissemination of best practice in computer-supported education, enable under financed schools to make full use of educational computing, and ultimately contribute to the democratisation of ICT culture in the schools of Europe.

The Hungarian model

Hungary entered the Age of Digital Teaching Aids with a national learning content management software project launched in 2003. It makes high quality digital teaching aids freely available for both students and teachers. We hope to establish an internationally unique Digital Knowledge Base that covers the whole of our secondary curriculum. Expandable and reusable multimedia and interactive tools in this pool incorporates all areas of learning. They may be customised and adapted by ICT-oriented teachers to suit their own learning philosophies. The Hungarian Schoolnet is currently developing high quality digital teaching materials available for students, teachers and parents through this searchable Internet database.

From 1^st of September 2004 all the secondary school students in Hungary will be able to reach digital content from most of their curriculum. Content development however is a never ending process. We would like to continue with developing content for primary schools as well.

We found that there are many ways to get digital educational content:

• Developing by ourselves
• Developing by content developers, educational publishing companies
• Buying ready made content (translating if necessary)

Buying ready made content can be much cheaper due to a wider consumption potential, but you can find many problems, for example:

• Unfinished property right management problems,
• Unfitting technical requirements and standards,
• Different pedagogical methodology, etc.

We would like to provide a model for solving these problems through the establishment of the Hungarian Clearinghouse for Educational Content as a part of the eCampus Program of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Telecommunication and Informatics, that will collect, catalogue, clear for copyright, evaluate, and eventually translate into different languages best examples of digital teaching aids. This centre will serve as a non-profit brokerage system, an archive, a research institute and an educational facility at the same time. Experts associated with the Clearinghouse would search for high quality products, negotiate copyrights for sharing, provide a translation, organize local field tests and in-service (distance education) courses for teachers and policy makers on most efficient use. Regular web-based and hard copy publications would feature selections of shared software complete with assessment results and indications for use.

We would like to invite governments and major commercial software producers in the area to consider the exchange of some of their products for the mutual benefit of establishing a large array of tried and tested, reliable software and content for schools and adults alike according to the 4^th Recommendation of Euorpean eLearning Summit Declaration⁴.

We are also preparing an independent national accreditation system which would be able to qualify different educational contents from different sources if those are compatible with the Hungarian educational system or not. This means: not only the Ministry of Education or the Hungarian Schoolnet will be able to develop or to buy and publish appropriate content, but there would be a chance for the national online educational content market.

Initiative for EU member countries

We invite member states of the European Union to consider launching this initiative and initiate the establishment of a range of similar centers. If educational software development becomes a co-ordinated international effort, ICT will stand a better chance to realize its potential and modernize education.

We propose to set up the European Centre for Exchange of Digital Educational Content (ECEDOC) under the supervision of the Committee of Education of the European Council. This Centre should provide the EU members with initiatives:

• for defining and classifying educational content,
• for suggested technical standards
• for suggested meta data system
• for managing property right issues
• for international accreditation of digital educational content
• for sharing best practices about learning content management systems and content
• for unified applying for eContent tenders

The Centre should provide the European Council with:

• suggestions for eContent tenders
• suggestions for eLearning tenders

Sharing of content will also help close the digital divide and increase the equity of opportunities for less advantaged countries in making full use of the potentials of infocommunication technology to reach the goals of the Lisbon Strategy.