The BrightZone Institute, Inc., in partnership with founding consortium member, BigContact, LLC, are developing the BrightZone eContent Publishing System

eContent is the digital fusion of the millennial learners’ social media with the additional digital learning resources of multimedia, audio & video, print, digital learning objects, and digital learning enhancement solutions found either within their schools or society in general. Five distinct formats of eContent can be published in this integrated fashion:

Instructional curriculum creators, who can be teachers, students, parents, and mentors, can use these publishing capabilities to prepare and enhance eContent in a unified and seamless fashion for its distribution as BrightBytes (digital learning snippets) via a digital transmission or cast called an eduBlogCast. These BrightBytes n then be delivered to MP3/4 players (iPods), media cell phones, or computers via the Internet (broadband preferred), telephonically, (wireless preferred), via television (broadcast or satellite), or by WiFi transmission systems.

These BrightBytes are developed specifically to function as digital math learning snippets or micro math learning sessions based upon either audio and/or video formats. Their primary function is to stimulate the students to become further engaged with the mathematical reasoning and problem-solving concepts contained within the snippets by creating a broadband Internet link to their school’s eduBlog.

The school’s eduBlog is a website in which online journal entries by specific class or group of learners are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. It is also the vehicle for linking the learners to their school’s existing digital learning resources already developed as instructional materials and activities. The eduBlog also becomes the online community of learners where teachers, parents, and mentors can observe, communicate, and supervise the learning activities of the learners while they are in their BrightZone (personal learning environments).  

The key point of distinction of this solution from the current uses of the Apple iPod and/or  Microsoft Zune:

The BrightZone Personal Learning Environment’s integrated eContent publishing platform delivers its eduBlogcasts in a manner in which digital learning resources can be deployed in a simple and integrated fashion to the learners who learn most effectively utilizing any one of three of the four principle learning styles or a combination thereof: 

Aural Learners: audio podcasts via online radio

Visual Learners: video podcasts and interactive visual media via the online TV

Reading/writing Learners: news feeds, the text of the eduBlog, and/or the textual content that can be linked to the eduBlog from the school’s curriculum resources

The iPod and/or Microsoft Zune do not facilitate integrated linkage to the existing written  textual materials. 

Finally, the BrightZone Personal Learning Environment approach will serve to empower and encourage the learners as key participants within this community of math learners to become creators of new digital learning resources and activities that can then be shared within their community. This process will also produce an ever increasing archive of materials for current and future research on how these lifestyle technologies can positively impact academic achievement of the learners.