Case study: Sirma Media, Bulgaria
The Challenge:
Sirma Media is the first Bulgarian publisher of multimedia knowledge products – electronic encyclopedias, dictionaries, educational games, language tools, web-based knowledge databases, digital repositories, learning management systems, etc. Sirma Media was established in 2002 with the release of the first Bulgarian electronic encyclopedia “A-Z” in cooperation with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and “Trud” Publishing house. The multimedia encyclopedic products of Sirma Media (“Knowledge products” educational package), together with the knowledge and educational web-portal Znam.bg (www.znam.bg), as well as the Semantic repository for educational electronic resources are available to all Bulgarian schools and are actively used in the educational process in Bulgaria. Despite this fact, active teachers, students and the administration of the Ministry of Education and Science identified an enormous demand for quality electronic educational resources in Math and Science.
The Solution:
In order to fill this gap Sirma Media and Young Digital Planet formed a strategic partnership for joint activities on the Bulgarian educational market. At the end of 2007 Sirma Media developed and presented the first 20 pilot lessons of Universal Curriculum – the world’s largest pool of interactive resources for upper primary & secondary Math and Science created, localized and adapted by Young Digital Planet. The pilot lessons were uploaded for free access and tests to the National educational portal of the Ministry of Education and Science. Apart from the online access, the e-lessons were also distributed on demo CDs which were handed out to students and teachers during educational fairs, conferences and forums.
In 2009 Sirma Media signed a contract with MES for the localization, adaptation and licensing of the rights for usage of the e-lessons in all Bulgarian schools and for the integration of the localized e-lessons into the National educational portal of the Ministry.
The Result
Within a very tight schedule Sirma Media managed to carry out the localization and adaptation of 1100 e-lessons using a large number of educational experts - school teachers, university professors, and science domain experts. Sirma Media also integrated the e-lessons into the „Educational resources” section of the National educational portal of MES, thus providing free access to all teachers, students and educational staff.
Additionally, practical methodological guides for all the lessons were developed by Sirma Media, providing teachers with ideas and tips on how to best use the educational materials in each lesson.
The Future:
Currently Sirma Media is reviewing the opportunity to localize and introduce the Primary e-lesson series by Young Digital Planet to the Bulgarian educational system. Sirma Media is also examining the market for the opportunity to launch Bulgarian versions of eduSensus - the Premium Series for Early and Special Education. As far as the Universal Curriculum e-lessons are concerned that have already been localized into the Bulgarian language, Sirma Media is planning to import all the multimedia content from Flash to HTML5 with the technical support of Young Digital Planet tools to make the content available for a wide range of mobile devices.
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Case study: ZVAIGZNE ABC, Latvia
The Challenge:
Zvaigzne ABC is a Latvian publishing house and one of the largest in the Baltic countries. They were looking for a partner who could help them in entering the digital world of education.
The Solution:
Young Digital Planet answered this need with high-quality education interactive content and years of experience. Zvaigzne ABC decided to use the eContent for upper primary and secondary for Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Science based on the Universal Curriculum. For several reasons (Internet access, traditional teaching-learning methods, etc.) presently two premium courses are available on CD as Science for upper primary and Physics for lower secondary. The other components of the Universal Curriculum are being localised at the moment.
The Result:
The first year has resulted in the creation of three products – Science in two parts and Physics in the Student’s version of the Universal Curriculum. Currently the products are being introduced into the market with the help of various marketing activities such as teacher training seminars and lessons for students. The team has taken part in all major educational exhibitions in Latvia. Taking into account the scope of the market, social media such as Twitter, YouTube, draugiem.lv and Google+ are used to promote the products among teachers, students and parents. The team has also started their own blog to promote the interactive materials in iZvaigzne series and stress the importance of technologies in the modern learning/teaching environment.
The Future:
As soon as the Internet becomes more accessible in Latvia Zvaigzne ABC would like to introduce yTeach, a delivery platform for educational content, to the Latvian market and fill it with interactive resources.
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Case study: NucleoEducativo, Chile
The challenge:
The Chilean Ministry of Education planned to deliver a significant amount of digital curriculum content to public schools. Their initial experience was mainly with local developers who presented offers that included high costs and long development periods.
Núcleo Educativo as one of the local developers spotted a unique opportunity to implement a ready-made solution and established a partnership with Young Digital Planet setting out to localize Universal Curriculum for the Chilean market.
The solution:
After numerous meetings with MoE, they realized that taking the localization path could save them both time and money. The high quality of the content, activities, methodology and technology offered by Universal Curriculum convinced MoE that this was the best method to achieve their goal.
Once the decision was made, the next step was to analyze and compare both curriculums and select those lessons from the UC set that best matched not only the Chilean Curriculum but also the topics considered to be the core of individual subjects.
Customizing the lessons to the specific needs of the country meant not only translating the texts into Spanish, but also transforming the way they were presented to students and producing new material in the form of didactic support required by MoE for both the teacher and the student.
The result:
As a result 110 Lessons were delivered; all of them perfectly adapted to work for Chilean teachers nationwide. This represented about the same amount of world-class digital content as the previous two years of local development.
All this was possible due to the flexibility of the “raw material” that gave a range of alternatives allowing our teachers and technicians to do their work with a lot of freedom – and also the original lessons setting that gave us the possibility to rearrange and match them to the didactic approach of the Chilean MoE.
The achieved results allowed Chile to develop one of the most popular educational sites in the Spanish market in a short period of time.
Site: www.educarchile.cl
Search input: http://www.educarchile.cl/Portal.Base/Web/VerContenido.aspx?&ID=136020&q=young%20digital%20planet&site=educarchile
Note: The content is available only for Chile.
Comparison of the original and the customized versions:
Click here.
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Universal Curriculum Upper Primary & Secondary Maths and Science
Watch a fascinating animated collection of Universal Curriculum assets and activities !
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Universal Curriculum
myeverCLASS
One of the world leaders in complete eContent and software solutions for the educational sector, Young Digital Planet is now targeting the social networks market. Over 30,000 teaching and learning objects for sciences, mathematics, biology, physics and chemistry will be available in myeverCLASS – the first-ever e-learning content platform on Facebook.
“Today’s schools cater to the Facebook Generation that has significantly different habits of interacting and learning than the representatives of Generation X or Generation Y once had. The interactive content offered in our applications is in direct response to the needs of today’s children, because they offer a lot of visual content and tests with immediate answers. Interacting with this content in the familiar Facebook environment will make the learning process effortless,” said Katarzyna Derenda, the Managing Director of Young Digital Planet, International Operations.
According to the Managing Director of Young Digital Planet, the interactive content is particularly helpful in engaging pupils in the learning process; the knowledge is acquired faster and with deeper involvement. The initial research indicates that the content provided by Young Digital Planet also leads to higher school grades.
myeverCLASS is a e-learning platform developed by Eruditus, a company specializing in web content solutions. According to the CEO, Mantas Ratomskis, this e-learning solution stems from the fact that people tend to spend an increasing amount of time on social networks. Once a hotspot for communication, exchange of information and entertainment, Facebook has the potential to become a valuable source of education and self-improvement, he believes.
„myeverCLASS is about offering everyone an opportunity to learn and develop from any place on Earth. What makes this platform exceptional is the access to a wealth of unique learning content from Young Digital Planet. At the same time, we made it as ergonomic and easy-to-use as possible”, said Mr Ratomskis.
Eruditus solutions are aimed at maximizing student involvement in the learning process. With myeverCLASS, they can set up their private virtual groups and chat about the study content by raising questions, providing examples and sharing relevant links. myeverCLASS integrates all of these functions under one platform umbrella.
myeverCLASS is available to all Facebook users, whereas the premium educational material from Young Digital Planet will be available solely in the United Kingdom and Poland. “We shall gradually increase the number of countries where exclusive premium content is available and expect to attract no less than 2 million users worldwide by the end of 2011,” Mantas Ratomskis from Eruditus predicted.
The majority of myeverCLASS functions are free. However, access to the exclusive interactive content provided by Young Digital Planet will be available at a £4 monthly fee in the United Kingdom and 6 zloty in Poland.
The launch of myeverCLASS is expected to take place in September, 2011 and www.myeverclass.com is already open for registration. Every registered user will earn one or more days of free subscription to premium content of myeverCLASS. Also, users are encouraged to invite their friends to try it out – each successful recommendation will be rewarded with free days of subscription.
Information for journalists and bloggers: if you want to be the first to try out myeverCLASS functions and benefits, just drop us an e-mail (gytis@e-ruditus.com).
About Young Digital Planet
Young Digital Planet SA is one of world leaders in complete e-Content and software solutions for the educational sector. For more than 20 years it has pioneered new technologies and developed educational learning solutions for a wide range of international customers, including Ministries of Education and leading publishers from around the world. Since 1999, YDP has been a part of Sanoma, a large European media group with annual net sales of approximately 3 billion EUR. Together with such established names as Malmberg in the Netherlands, WSOY in Finland, Nowa Era in Poland and others, YDP is part of the Sanoma Learning and Literature Division. Learn more at www.ydp.eu
About Eruditus
Eruditus is the developer of myeverCLASS – the first-ever e-learning and digital educational content distribution platform on Facebook. Using the most useful learning tools, we add social layer and game dynamics to an amazing interactive content. Our vision is to become the world's largest distributor of electronic content for social networks. Eruditus Ltd. has attracted investments from Lithuanian venture capital fund “Verslo angelų fondas I”, the country’s largest publishing house „AL Holdingas“ and private investors.
For more information:
Mantas Ratomskis
Eruditus, CEO
+370-655-62571
mantas@e-ruditus.com
www.e-ruditus.com
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Comparison of the original and the customized versions of Universal Curriculum (Nucleo Educativo, Chile)
Customized lesson
A larger and reorganized menu reflects the alternative approach to the content used by Chilean curriculum.
The original page has been split in order to fulfill the pedagogical requirements.
Original lesson
The original lesson included a lot of information on each page that was further divided into chunks and reorganized in the customized version.
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