A new report from Seb Chan at The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, “Will schools use collection content? The Learning Federation Pilot Report, explores whether schools would make use of learning resources culled from the collections of the Powerhouse Museum.

The report notes that “Of the 643 digital resources provided to schools as part of the new model of collaboration between TLF and the three museums, 55 digital resources were selected by schools to include in collaborative learning activities. Of this number, six resources were used more than once.”

Stunning numbers, although the report is more complex than they suggest. The Powerhouse blog notes that “the obvious hurdles of Copyright, content suitability, writing style at the museum end, and the teacher training at the schools end were far greater than any of the technical data supply issues.”

We had many of the same issues in working with museum/library collections, Omeka, and teachers this summer, with the greatest challenges not being technical but tied to basic issues of historical thinking, reasoning, and understanding.  More on that later.

This blog post and report are fascinating.