Hi there
Following on from discussions at the MCG MW2008 conference, we would
like to follow up with anyone who is interested in making their
collection(s) (image, audio and video assets) available to schools free
of charge for educational re-use.
The Magic Studio Pro network has been developed as a means of delivering
digital assets from the cultural heritage world into school classrooms.
It works like Flickr's 'The Commons' project – except that your content
is provided alongside a set of tools designed for the education sector
and integrated with school learning platforms (oh, and we're a bit
smaller than Yahoo!).
Users in schools access the content from their existing infrastructure
and can combine assets from different collections, or with their own
user-generated content, to build, tag and share interactive learning
resources.
The mechanics of making your collections available are fairly simple –
you can:
- pull content directly from your Flickr or Picasa accounts (we have
integrated with their open API's)
- set up a dynamic content feed from your own collection (using standard
feed types)
- provide us with a 'dump' of your database and metadata and we will do
a bulk upload
Once it's in there, you will get access to a number of services to
control how your content is presented and detailed usage reports on who
is using your content and what they are doing with it (the usage reports
are provided via Google Docs integration).
We're also in the process of developing an API over the next month or so
which will allow you to manage your Magic Studio resources as well as
use them in your own mash-ups (an Atom feed is already available). And
we are working on integrations with a number of other social networks,
including a Magic Studio Facebook application.
To get a good idea of the functionality on offer to users, please take a
look at the new public beta of Magic Studio at
http://www.magicstudio.com. This consumer version is similar to the
school Pro network, minus the classroom integration.
If you are interested in taking advantage of this service, or have any
questions please contact me either on or off-list!
It is free of charge and we don't charge schools for your content. It
is also non-exclusive and you can choose to remove your content at any time.
Regards
Martyn
--
Dr. Martyn Farrows
Lexara
T 0845 4348371
M +353 (0)87 7917410
E [log in to unmask]
Skype symphony.sid
http://www.magicstudio.com
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