Why does the UK need a national digital resource bank?

By 2010 virtually every UK school will have access to a learning platform. However, despite a great deal of funding and effort from Local Authorities these platforms are having very mixed levels of actual day to day use by either teachers or students.

Over the last 7 years there have been many strands of public funding that have resulted in the creation of curriculum focused digital resources but most of these resources sit behind individual intranets and learning platforms and are used only by small groups of schools.

Thousands of teachers all create similar resources to deliver to the same curriculum. Being able to find and personalise something already created would save teachers so much time.

Since the demise of elearning credits schools have reduced their expenditure on digital resources and many have been unwilling to pay annual licence fees for resources knowing that if they do not have the funding the following year, teachers will have to restructure their delivery to students.

Getting resources into learning platforms can sometimes be difficult; sharing resources between different learning platforms is nearly impossible. This has created many new barriers to schools and teachers sharing resources they have created themselves.

The national digital resource bank will deliver a vast range of publicly funded resources under a creative commons licence and populate your learning platforms, preparing them for effective use.

It will also create a sharing community of educators who will identify, review and improve a common set of national digital assets.

How does it work?

The resources

Finding quality teaching and learning resources on the internet can be a time consuming and laborious process. Many users of resources have little understanding of copyright and licensing especially when it comes to modifying, editing or building onto somebody else's work.

The resources in the national digital resource bank are mapped to the curriculum and presented in such a way that finding a suitable resource is made fast and efficient.

Resources in the bank range from multimedia rich, highly interactive games, animations and presentations to word documents, spreadsheets and more traditional PowerPoint presentations. The resources cover all key stages from early years to key stage 5 and all curriculum areas from maths to music.

All resources in the bank are licensed, by the owner, under a creative commons license that allows for editing and repurposing. Resources from the bank can be downloaded in editable formats where appropriate e.g. PowerPoint, Word, etc and personalised by the user in the knowledge that they are not infringing any copyright or licensing conditions.

In addition to local authority member contributions, the national digital resource bank is working closely with charities, industry and public bodies to harvest the wealth of resources that exist on the fringe of the educational community. Many high quality resources of enormous value to teachers are sitting under-used.

Over the coming months the national digital resource bank will actively harvest from these sources and ensure that teachers and schools benefit from investments that have been made.

Further, as the bank grows, the ndrb will actively harvest resources that support a number of targeted agendas for example home access, diplomas and other new qualifications and initiatives where its members will feel the greatest benefit.

The technology

Despite the publication of frameworks and technical guidance there is limited standardisation of resource packaging and management between learning platforms. Lack of interoperability is creating an ever-increasing barrier to the sharing of resources and development is largely dependent on the enthusiasm of individual platform providers.

The ndrb uses a highly flexible system which takes full advantage of Web 2.0 technology. The repository can be accessed via multiple routes including from the ndrb website, using embed tags that will place a widget on any web interface or via RSS or ATOM feeds that will 'push' new resources to the user based on their search criteria.

At its outset any of these methods can be used to quickly embed the search engine into a learning platform or other web interface. Resources from the bank can be downloaded in editable format for repurposing or in a variety of packaged formats including IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004.

Moving forward, the national digital resource bank will be working with learning platform providers to integrate the system into learning platforms in such a way that resources, when downloaded, arrive directly into a designated location inside the learning platform and are packaged appropriately if a packaged format has been requested.

Single sign-on and co-operative working between providers of digital resources both free and licensed, whilst showing signs of adoption, is slow to deliver real benefits to end-users and is in need of someone to co-ordinate development and standardise delivery.

Imagine a world where a user logs in to their learning platform and searches for a resource using a simple search widget on their homepage. When the results come back they include resources the user can safely access because they are licensed under creative commons from their own repository, resources from federated repositories and resources that the user has a license to access because they have been bought on their behalf by their local authority, school or regional body.

Matching evaluation criteria for all these resources allows them to quickly and efficiently sort and evaluate which best meets their needs and then they are able with one click to preview and download or access the resource in the format of their choice.

No logins, no passwords, no having to check with their ICT coordinator or be expected to know intuitively what is available to them or has been bought on their behalf, no need to know anything about the technical requirements of their learning platform.

This is the vision for the ndrb in the future. As the ndrb moves forward we will be supporting the adoption of single sign-on authentication and working with commercial providers of content and other providers of repositories of user generated content to integrate our systems to create a seamless service for users.

The ndrb will play a pivotal role in the development of common standards for technical interoperability, preview and evaluation all of which will bring direct benefits for users.

The Spanish solution

One of the biggest barriers to implementing ndrb has been cost. There is no central funding for the project and North West Learning Grid was tasked by BECTA to come up with a "sustainable solution" for Local Authorities.

We looked at repository software that could manage the many publicly funded assets that will be in the bank. However, commercially this was going to cost several thousand pounds per Local Authority per annum, almost like a tax on sharing.

Then we looked at Open Source solutions and found a new and emergent repository application being developed in Spain called AGREGA. The repository, one of the most advanced and flexible systems available, is being released under an open source license in the summer. With the help of the Schools Minister, Jim Knight and JANET(UK) we were able to finalise an international agreement with the Spanish Ministry to access this repository ahead of schedule and also to share learning resources.

The use of open source gives us three key benefits:

Cost - we believe we will save Local Authorities and their schools around £5M per annum by not procuring a nationwide commercial repository licence.

Licencing - by using Open Source we have absolutely no licencing limitations and therefore ndrb can be extended into other areas such as FE/HE without any real restriction. Particularly important for those of you establishing 14-19 partnerships.

Being part of an international community - use of open source is much more prevalent in other countries than in the UK, but that is about to change with ndrb. These strong international communities around open source will also be the same communities who will share educational resources with us. A giant swap shop of digital learning resources and finally the UK is able to participate using its own extensive bank.

Commitment, collaboration and partnership

The ndrb is about partnership and creating a sharing community of educators and this is being achieved at every level within the education community in the United Kingdom.

We are all part of a National Education Network (NEN). The NEN providers consist of 10 regional bodies and the 3 devolved administrations. For the vast majority of Local Authorities your NEN provider will be assisting you by working alongside you in populating and exploiting the national digital resource bank.

"The strength of ndrb lies in the willingness of regional bodies such as YHGfL and many Local Authorities to share resources and to benefit from that aggregation of teaching and learning materials. YHGfL is not only committed to playing an important role in the growth of ndrb but also to helping schools in our region to fully exploit this wealth of digital resources, enhancing teaching and learning and ensuring that learning platforms finally start to deliver their potential to transform how we teach and learn."

Phil Moore, Chief Executive, Yorkshire and Humberside Grid for Learning (YHGfL)

BECTA are our strategic body for the implementation of ICT in schools and we are grateful for their knowledge and support in helping us to ensure that ndrb delivers tangible benefits to all teachers and learners.

"The development of sustainable services such as the National Digital Resource Bank to support the discovery, sharing and reuse of digital learning resources is welcomed in support of the harnessing technology strategy.  This is a challenging initiative and Becta will provide guidance and support to ensure that, as part of the National Education Network, it sits within an overall digital content ecosystem that successfully meets the needs of our teachers and learners."

Dr Stephen Lucey, Executive Director Strategic Technologies, Becta

The ndrb is hosted at the centre of UK IT education provision, on the JANET network to which all schools and colleges are connected.

"JANET is very pleased to be able to support the national digital resource bank. As a partner in providing the National Education Network, we believe that initiatives of this type are essential in realising the potential of ICT in education.  The scale and ambition of ndrb exploits very effectively the power of JANET as a resource for all UK schools".

Bob Day, Chief Technology Officer JANET (UK)

But most of all this is a partnership of Local Authorities who will determine how ndrb will change and evolve and will develop and exploit the biggest collaboration around digital resources ever undertaken in the UK.

"Knowsley is a Wave 1 BSF Authority with a transformational agenda. Central to this agenda is the ability to deliver personalized learning supported by a highly developed learning platform. The national digital resource bank is perfectly timed for us and will help us considerably in the development of our learning platform. We have already contributed many resources to the bank and look forward to contributing much more alongside being able to access learning resources developed by many others." 

Damian Allen, Director of Children?s Services, Knowsley Borough Council

Funding and sustainability

Membership of the ndrb is ONLY for Local Authorities. Our reasoning behind this is that we believe that there is a need to support Local Authorities in delivering learning platforms by providing them with resources that will convince their schools that the Authority wide solution offers the best value to them. Should you not have an aggregated platform we will work with you in developing access to ndrb for your schools so they are not disadvantaged by being unable to access this national project.

The great value of the ndrb lies in the pulling together of publicly funded resources from a rich variety of sources worth tens of millions of pounds. All of these resources can be used freely under a Creative Commons licence. The ndrb allows for the resources to be taken and kept by Local Authority members long after the repository may have ceased to exist.

Even though the actual resources are available at no licence cost to any user of them, the ndrb does require physical hosting on JANET; resources have to be identified and collected; and the repository application requires modification and development. This management and hosting requires a regular funding stream to ensure the bank?s continued availability to members.

We are proposing a very simple model - the sharing of all costs associated with service provision divided by the member Authorities accessing the ndrb. In order to best ensure that the cost will reflect each Local Authorities circumstances we will link this directly to the existing harnessing technology grant.

First of all, it is important to recognise that the cost of managing and providing the ndrb has been reduced to an absolute minimum. By harnessing both open source and a large partnership of committed educationalists and utilising the availability of the National Education Network we have created the most cost efficient way of delivering a national repository. Our assessment of current and future costs suggest to us that we need to recover only ONE QUARTER OF A PERCENT of the harnessing technology grant to maintain and develop the ndrb.

For the average Local Authority the cost of using the ndrb will be £3,300 per annum and the service can be used geographically for any learner or content delivery system that the Local Authority wishes to use it for.

By sharing the costs directly, ndrb members become its owners and will lead the future direction of the service.

The ndrb demo site will be available to access freely until October 1st 2009 and we will contact each Local Authority separately to discuss their subscription and their wish to remain part of this national project leading up to that date.