Excellent news today from Gary Clawson, CEO of Northwest Learning Grid about the upcoming launch of the National Digital Resource Bank, a nationwide repository of adaptable, re-useable resources shared under a creative-commons non-commercial, share-alike licence, hosted on an open source platform. Initially, resources will be available for free to those local authorities willing to share their resources with others.

For many schools, having an open source learning platform like Moodle is great, but Moodle only provides the tools for teachers to create online learning communities, it doesn’t come with resources built in. Many schools find themselves developing very similar learning resources and activities but we haven’t yet seen the collaborative development and sharing of resources to mirror the culture we see in open source software development itself.

Given the recent announcement from the Cabinet Office that  seeks to “embed an “open source‟ culture of sharing, re-use and collaborative development across Government and its suppliers” this announcement is particularly timely. It’s also great news that this open content repository will itself be hosted on an open source platform, Spain’s AGREGA repository, thanks to an agreement which JANET(UK) and Jim Knight MP helped to broker. Use of open source looks as though it will be saving the project around £5 Million a year; Gary said:

“Repository licence costs were a real barrier, with school licence costs that seemed to be almost like a tax on sharing. We had to create a project that could grow both nationally and internationally without cost restrictions, and now because of the use of Open Source we are able to do so.”

Gary also indicated that there should be a huge collection of resources available by September, with access to a few early trial resources quite soon.

Here’s the press release:

“UK schools to get free and open digital learning resources Following a recent agreement with the Spanish government, UK schools, through their Local Authorities will soon have unrestricted access to free and open digital learning resources courtesy of the National Digital Resource Bank. Delivery of the new national content repository will be managed and led by the North West Learning Grid and supported by Sirius Corporation plc.

The announcement comes after the signing of an agreement signed on 6th February 2009 in Madrid between the Spanish Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Information Society, Francisco Ros, and JANET (UK) to provide a repository solution which will deliver the National Digital Resource Bank. The Spanish Government will share source code and technical documentation from their multi-million euro open source development called AGREGA and the solution will be hosted on the UK’s Educational Network, JANET.

At this years Annual NAACE conference on March 3rd 2009 the Schools Minister Jim Knight stated that “The UK is renowned for excellence in ICT infrastructure, development of Digital Resources, and willingness to work with other countries and has combined these three elements in this landmark project”

Despite strong government funding , to date, the enthusiasm for Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in UK schools has been dampened by the absence of good quality learning content. Much of the commercially available content is too expensive for many schools and much of it unsuitable for use within Learning Platforms. However tens of millions of pounds of digital resources have been created using public funding in Local Authorities, City Learning Centres and schools themselves. In addition many charities and industry partners have valuable digital resources that they would like to make available to schools. Access to these rich and freely available resources has been prevented by there being no UK content repository facilitating that sharing.

Gary Clawson, CEO at the North West Learning Grid said: “The National Digital Resource Bank is quite literally the missing link in UK Digital Resource Strategy. We have a great infrastructure, we have lots of media rich resources and we have implemented Learning Platforms in every schools. But despite this, schools have been unable to share resources with other schools because of different technical solutions implemented across different Local Authorities. We had failed to make the sharing of digital resources an easy process for our teachers. Now we have a partnership of more than 100 Local Authorities, the creation of the National Digital Resource Bank using Open Source software and incorporating international standards, will enable UK schools to access the most comprehensive set of Digital Learning Resources available anywhere in the world.” 

Mark Taylor, CEO, Sirius Corporation said “The National Digital Resource Bank is the first major national project that relies on open source software, open standards and open content. The scale and ambition of this project has been made possible by the use of free and open source software. Being tied into a commercially licensed platform would have restricted the NDRB's ability to scale. It would have been just too expensive. The NDRB shows how to reduce the risks associated with national IT projects and make them more affordable.”

Notes to the Editor

About National Digital Resource Bank

The National Digital Resource Bank is a bank of resources that are available, under a creative commons non-commercial share-alike license, that have been mapped and tagged and made suitable for use with learning platforms. The bank of resources is available free to any local authority wishing to become a member of the scheme and willing to contribute their own publicly funded resources. Resources range from, tutorials, activities and interactive games covering entire courses to individual photographs, audio clips and worksheets.

About North West Learning Grid
North West Learning Grid is a consortium of eighteen Local Authorities and more than 2,000 schools, working in partnership to improve the process and management of learning using the latest information and communication technologies. Central to its activities is the provision of e-learning content, much of which is free to access to all schools and their learners. As a National Education Network provider, North West Learning Grid also maintains broadband connectivity between its 18 member authorities and the National Backbone provided by JANET(UK). For more information visit www.nwlg.org or call Fiona Iglesias on 07799 374 075.

About Sirius Corporation plc
Sirius Corporation plc is a leading European IT services group specialising in enterprise-class Open Source infrastructure solutions including databases, email systems, file & print, directory services, and cross-platform authentication. The company is the only Becta-accredited provider of open source software and services to schools in the UK. For more information visit www.siriusit.co.uk or call Tom Callway on +44 20 870 608 0063.