The SchoolNet Digital Collections Program:
Building a Knowledge Base on the Web


Linda Stilborne
Ingenia Communications


ABSTRACT:

This paper will provide background on the SchoolNet Digital Collections Program. This program, sponsored by Industry Canada, ran as a pilot project from Dec 95 - April of 1996 and produced more than thirty sites intended to provide a knowledge base of Canadian Material for K-12 Schools. In June through August, a second phase of the program was funded by the Federal Youth Initiative and produced approximately 80 additional projects.

The Digital Collections Program is unique in that it provides both a learning experience for teams of student developers and a product which promises to have value for schools. In addition, the project makes available on the World Wide Web Canadian Heritage materials that are otherwise inaccessible. This paper will describe the process and mechanisms that were in place for developing and coordinating projects across the country. The program included a distance learning component for development teams, some of whom were not initially familiar with the Internet. During the summer phase, the program also included low skill teams, some of whom had not previously used a computer. This paper will look at some of the challenges faced by individual development teams. It will also look at the kinds of materials that were developed by project teams. The Digital Collections Projects range from sites which profile archival and heritage collections (e.g. Native artifacts, architectural history, a community history of the "original information highway", Transatlantic Cable in Canso Nova Scotia) to resources about writers, (e.g. Earle Birney, Pauline Johnson,Yves Thriault ). An assessment of the kinds of projects that are likely to provide a valuable knowledge base for schools, and of issues that can interfere with the effectiveness of both the project development experience and/or reduce the ultimate usefulness of the material to schools. Finally, the paper will consider just how an initiative such as the Digital Collections Program ties to distance learning and to the broader issue of educational applications on the World Wide Web. Conference attendees will be invited to share their views.

Keywords: Digital Collections, Knowledge Base, SchoolNet, Content


Distance Education has been constrained for many years by the fact that students at a distance and, as is often the case, from rural locations do not have access to research materials for class projects, term papers and reports. The Internet and the World Wide Web provide an excellent opportunity to build electronic libraries that can support the learning goals of many distance education courses. This paper looks at one attempt to develop an information base as a complement to learning. It also identifies some of the challenges of developing the information base, and of ensuring its relevance in a teaching/learning environment.

The SchoolNet Digital Collections Program ran initially as a pilot project from December 1995 to April 1996. The purpose of the pilot phase was to test the viability of having student teams that were dispersed across Canada involved in the development of Web sites related to Canadian cultural heritage. Theoretically, with a sufficient base of heritage material available online, Canadian students would be able to access informational materials that could contribute to learning in classrooms or online.

Approximately 30 projects were produced in the pilot phase. These are available for viewing on Canada's SchoolNet: http://www.schoolnet.ca/collections/. In June through August, an additional phase of the program ran. The summer phase was jointly funded by Industry Canada and the Youth Initiative of Human Resources Development. This phase resulted in approximately 80 additional projects being produced.

Ingenia Communications, the company that has provided technical support for Canada's SchoolNet since its inception, was hired to provide technical and learning support to the development teams and to the program as a whole. Once contracts for developing projects were finalized, Ingenia became involved in the overall process of assisting teams, supervising and troubleshooting. In addition, the company helped to craft the basic guidelines that teams would follow in developing their pages. In the final stages, Ingenia reviewed completed projects, requesting changes and corrections as necessary, prior to posting the projects on SchoolNet.

The Digtial Collections Program had four objectives:

  1. To provide work experience for students and unemployed youth ages 15 to 30. Although in the initial stage, most of the teams were developing materials in a school setting, they were doing it on their own time and being paid a small allowance for their involvement. For many, the initiative provided a short-term job experience along with the opportunity to learn The skills that teams were to develop included a knowledge of scanning, presentation layout and graphics design, HTML programming, organization and material preparation, business management and entrepreneurship.
  2. To contribute to local economic and social development while encouraging the development of emerging Canadian multi-media companies. Student teams were often supported by local technical expertise. In the summer phase, the students involved were sometimes trained and/or employed by local companies involved in Web Page development.
  3. To provide wider access to Canadian Heritage material. The materials developed included the presentation of arts collections, historical collections, museum and archival material, and material related to natural history. Ideally the material would have some direct relevance to school curriculum, though as it turned out, this was not always the case.
  4. To encourage the development of knowledge-worker skills particularly in rural, remote and economically disadvantaged communities.
The Digital Collections Program experience is best related in the context of the ultimate product. In the end, close to 100 projects were successfully completed. In fact, nearly all of the projects were successful to the extent that most are now available and accessible on SchoolNet http://www.schoolnet.ca/collections/. I would like to highlight a few of these projects in the light of the above objectives and provide some commentary on why these stand out as successful initiatives. In talking about the projects, I will also provide background on some elements of the program.

COMMENTARY:

Projects like this are of little value unless we all know more than we did when we started. Although many worthwhile things happened as a result of the Digital Collections initiative, some of the projects were more successful than others particularly in terms of their ongoing value as a resource for distance educators and schools. Here is a personal list of advice/cautionary notes and issues to be aware of in a developing a far-reaching knowledge base.

Still the Digital Collections Program has provided a starting point that hopefully will inspire Canadian cultural groups to continue developing this type of resource so that there will eventually be a comprehensive and cohesive Canadian cultural resource. It is also vitally important for educators to participate in the development of any type of digital knowledge base if the material is to have lasting value in the education arena.
Linda Stilborne
Educational Project Manager
Ingenia Communications
K2L 1Z5
lstilbor@ingenia.com
http://www.ingenia.com/trifolium

Linda Stilborne has been involved with the Digital Collections Program from its inception as a coordinator for development teams, and as the primary person responsible for developing the online learning materials. She is a teacher and a coordinator for the Ottawa Distance Learning Group and co-author of The Teachers Complete & Easy Guide to the Internet, published by Trifolium Publications.


COPYRIGHT

Linda Stilborne © 1996. The author assigns to the University of New Brunswick and other educational and non-profit institutions a non exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author grants a non-exclusive license to the University of New Brunswick to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author.

N.A.WEB 96 - The Second International North America World Wide Web Conference http://www.unb.ca/web/wwwdev/ University of New Brunswick.