Roles for Digital Libraries in K-12 Education

In this article we examine the question of what roles digital libraries may appropriately play in K12 education. The EduPort Project [1] has provided a research testbed for exploring those ideas and testing some of the possibilities. In the context of digital libraries how to transform atoms into bits is a technical problem being addressed by much research and development coming from both industry and academia. The problem is how to tap into the kind of knowledge that teachers possess and how to gather content of the kind useful in learning. That problem is best addressed by means of dedicated demonstration projects that specifically target the education issues and the educational settings.