Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

As we build up to next months Inventorium ‘Digital Culture‘ event I read a report on the BBC news over the weekend and thought is gave some surprising statics when it comes to children and culture.

The report is based on a study which claims that millions of British children are “culture starved” as they have never been to an art gallery, theatre or museum.

When they looked into the reasons a quarter of parents said they could not afford to visit attractions with 28% saying they did not have the time and 18% believed their child was “too young for culture”.

When asked what cultural activities their children had participated in, the most popular was learning an instrument (39%), with ballet (24%), painting (23%) and singing in a choir (22%) the next most popular activities.

Emma Gray, from Marketing Birmingham, which runs the Visit Birmingham campaign, said it was important for all generations to embrace cultural activity.

“Culture can take many kinds of forms and it’s essential our children are encouraged to get involved with this at any early age,” she said.

“A few trips during the year to museums, landmarks or even cultural festivals will prove to be memorable, informative and fun occasions for youngsters.”

During the workshop on the 27th March we hope to bring a diverse group of people together to discuss problems such as this in the culture sector and then develop solutions to these problems leading to new services and even new businesses. Find out more here.

Read the full article here.

There is a disjoint in the market for digital educational resources. The emergent form of digital consumption is rapid and on-demand. The culture that allows me to instantly buy music form iTunes, download a book to my Kindle and an app to my smart phone.  This is all done by secure on-demand payment – or in the case of services like Spotify – through subscription. Read More …

This is the first of a series of posts leading up to our education event in the Science Gallery in Dublin on March 29th.

Yesterday I attended a round table discussion about Children and the Internet. The meeting was to move the focus of debate away from restrictive understandings of Child Safety to those of Child Rights. Tim Davies of Youth Work Online tabled a paper which proposed a framework for considering how a shift from blocking and protection might move to a position when children’s rights to their digital life were also protected and made richer. Read More …

Martin’s overview of BETT 2010:

A well known New York VC, Fred Wilson believes it is a good time to enter into the ICT education marketplace. I would love to believe him, however I think there is a lack of clarity on what the ICT education marketplace might be. I can see a reason for optimism and pessimism. Recent visits to BETT2010, the major trade show and a new foresight report funded by the EU, Learnovation have only highlighted my uncertainty. The Learnovation report will be the subject of a later post.

Read More …