National Digital Resource Bank

At the recent NAACE2009 conference Jim Knight spoke of the role that NAACE members have played in the National Digital Resource Bank, stating:  

“A partnership with the Spanish Telecommunications and Information Society has been signed…..to develop a National Digital Resource Bank, to create, search for, and share digital content.  NAACE members responded really well last year with members from more than 100 Local Authorities agreeing to share publicly funded Digital Teaching and Learning Resources.

"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.”    

There are plans to provide a huge collection of resources - to be downloaded, from a
central repository, hosted on the National Education Network, to school and college Learning Platforms.

There will be a number of press articles over the next few weeks as journalistic interest is very high in the project, most particularly as we are using an Open Source solution developed in Spain. The assistance of both JANET(UK) and Jim Knight were needed to get this agreement and the formal signing took place  a week before Government announced its wish to see more Open Source projects - so a genuine first!

An open source solution has delayed the project but provided substantial cost savings and will enable the project to grow and provide resources for education at minimal cost.