I-Corps: Investigating the Viability of an Integrated Tool for Content Creation and Aggregation

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

The move to digital learning is well underway. The instructional materials market includes both textbooks and supplemental materials; however, this market is changing as content formats and adoption cycles change, but experts expect it to remain strong in years to come. Organizations of all kinds and sizes can benefit from content management strategies as they adapt their practices and infrastructures away from hastily organized web pages, limited access databases, or worse--URLs printed on paper. Each year, millions of high quality digital learning resources are created but only a tiny fraction of those materials are found and used by American teachers and school children. With growing pressures to transform classrooms into 21st Century education spaces, desperately needed is a tool to improve identification and organization to help "great piles of stuff" on the Internet become "piles of great stuff" for innovative and engaging educational experiences. The proposed Web2MARC technology has the potential to strongly impact current and future markets. With a tool like the Web2MARC,, these organizations can simultaneously retain learning assets, realize the advantages of digital content, and break the cycle of redeveloping content from the ground up at great expense every time curriculum needs to be updated or new content is created. The Web2MARC is a database plug-in that can be installed in repositories of educational content. The plug-in will allow users to download information about the content in the form of metadata records that can be tailored with information such as Common Core State Standards linkages and imported into many types of content management systems. Web2MARC is an easy-to-use tool that will allow users to quickly and easily create descriptive records for pieces of digital content that can be tagged with keywords that make them easily findable and usable. The Web2MARC will allow users and to easily and efficiently group contents such as blog posts, status updates, presentations, articles, tweets and other multimedia content into their favorite compilation site: an organization website, a personal website, a library catalog--any place users choose to organize and promote information.