Education Technology in Schools

British Pathé? Great ... but can you get it to work?

After reading the 'Pathe Returns' blog post by a colleague, you may have tried to find out more whilst sat at your home computer and wondered why it doesn't seem to work. Well, British Pathe is a commercial organisation that (quite rightly) charges local authorities and broadband consortia a subscription. This means the resources are not freely available on the web.

I want to see these great quality educational resources being fully used by schools, and I can't help but note that its difficult to find out how its done, with information obscurely published across several web locations and without an easy guide. If you go to south east grid website you might be forgiven if you can't actually find the information; (its in the projects tab).

I thought it helpful to provide information on how you can access the resources, especially if your first attempts have drawn a blank because unwittingly you tried from a home broadband connection (assuming you found the British Pathe site!).

Its not obvious but you need to use a broadband connection provided by Kent 'Schools Broadband' to gain free access to the resources. The British Pathe web site automatically detects you are from a subscribing authority because of the source internet address, and Kent schools use a fixed range of addresses. This does mean however that you can't prepare lessons from home without registering and paying for your own account or accessing from within a suitable learning platform.

This also means you can't access Keith Harcourt's excellent 'starters for study' helpsheets. If you click the British Pathe Starters for Study helpsheet links on the South East Grid for Learning (SEGfL) website from outside of a school you will briefly see a 'NEN Connecting' badge flash in the bottom right hand corner before the page reverts to the main SEGfL home page (It has to be said that it unhelpfully doesn't tell you why the link isn't working ... but being excellent practitioners you'll intuitively guess what's happening of course).

A great suggestion is to add a desktop shortcut to teacher and learner network profiles, then you won't need all of the above! Trust me its worth it and these great resources will enrich your curriculum.

Oh, and a reminder that there are other great resources from the British Film Institute.(although the creative archive is no longer available despite the links)

Besa bash the BBC!

I find it hard to reconcile the recent press release from trade association the British Education Suppliers Association (BESA) with the BBC Trust Decision it refers to.

Parking the fact that BESA members benefitted from £500m per year through Curriculum Online and e-learning credits, they just don't seem able to let it go! BESA's take on the BBC Trust committee's report is a little mis-leading and its worth stating that the BBC Trust Committee found:

" ... no evidence to suggest that Bitesize and Learning Zone Broadband did not go through the correct approvals process at the time they were introduced."

" ... no evidence to suggest that, prior to 2007, the development of Bitesize and Learning Zone Broadband occurred without sufficient regulation."

They do conclude however that an impact assessment should have been carried out, a somewhat technical point.

I profoundly disagree with BESA's assertion that the BBC has no place in providing a free, universal entitlement to accessible high quality resources for all children. In my opinion this is at the heart of the BBC's public interest mandate. As a body that represents an industry that lives on public money, BESA must recognise that the way the public purse is spent is not its business and the tail shouldn't ever wag the dog. Playing shops by giving schools money in the hope they spend it on the right resources is innefficient, (Curriculum Online was not a success as is proved by the number of BESA's members product CD's we still find buried unistalled in drawers in school departments).

There is of course a legitimate debate to be had about the scope of the BBC's wider activities, but the organisation provides services that are highly valued by educators and recognised as cutting edge.

Capita CS v Bromcom? ... fighting talk!

I picked up a report in the Guardian last week that Bromcom PLC are crying foul at what it sees as Capita CS' domination of the schools Management Information System (MIS) market.

I remember that the Becta MIS and value for money report (PDF) in 2005 made a number of recommendations after concluding that a dominant supplier in any market is not a good idea. It didn't however take up all of the recommendations.

Bromcom's complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (PDF) centres on what it sees as the anti-competitive practices of Capita CS, claiming schools have overpaid by £75m over ten years. The Capita CS practices cited by Bromcom include costs escalating at above inflation and barriers to choice. The first of these is fairly easy to kick into touch as the scope of school MIS systems has increased considerably and (predictably) so has the cost needed to keep pace. Any supplier would have to address the significant changes to reporting requirements. Complaints about anti-competitive practices, including bundling may be more difficult to shrug off in light of the same issues leading Microsoft to being fined in the EU court for similar

SIMS has developed a school MIS ecosystem that has become embedded in school organisation. Its a bit like Apple and its iTunes / IPod where the solution works better when it works together . Like Apple, commentators suggest that interoperable standards are needed to ensure that competition works to keep the dominant supplier on its toes and bring forward fresh approaches. Unlike Apple, where anyone can creat applications, SIMS is arguably fairly closed to developers. Perhaps now is as good a time as any to re-consider the recommendations of the MIS Value for Money report? There is a huge cost to changing a mission critical system across schools, but care must be taken not to block new and innovative products from other suppliers. I think standards such as Services Interoperabilty Framework (SIF) might be considered a serious contender for allowing greater competition. the alternative is for SIMS to have an open Application Programming Interface (API).

A side-note is that Capita CS has been shortlisted (PDF) as ICT supplier of the year in the 2010 BETT Awards (PDF) for its SIMS product set.