Go with free or pay the fee?
- Article 13 of 15
- EducationInvestor, October 2013
Many firms produce films and short clips for use by schools. But how are schools using this content? How does it fit in with the rise of the tablet? Is it going to be hit by the problem of the ubiquity of free content? And are there going to be more firms or fewer in the future, with the possibility of acquisition by larger content providers looming?
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To reduce costs, the raw footage for Twig's content is acquired from companies such as the BBC: "As soon as you have to stick someone and a camera on a plane somewhere, it becomes too expensive," Cahn points out. However, Twig then adds its own information on top of that content.
The company also ensures that although its videos can be used anywhere "from California to Japan", it has specific modules tailored to specific curricula, including the UK's National Curriculum. "We spend a lot of money making these films bespoke to what you need to learn. If the curriculum says you need to learn the three types of volcanoes, our film tells these points. Then there are other films that are about the most active volcanoes and the most dangerous volcanoes - what's engaging for kids. But a lot of the time [with competitors' content] you'll get a thing about Vesuvius or Ian Stewart wandering around in some volcano in Africa but you're not actually getting the bespoke learning. Everything we make is for directly for the curriculum. Even something like Discovery Education - just to put a boot into one of our competitors - a lot of material is just clips from Discovery programmes which were not made in the first instance to help you learn."
That tailoring of content to the National Curriculum is one of the reasons Emma Chaplin, deputy head of Harbour Primary and Nursery School in East Sussex, still uses Espresso. Although she uses videos from companies including the BBC, National Geographic, the BFI and Pathé, as well as occasionally YouTube, Espresso is her first port of call. "The majority of things I need are on Espresso, on tap, and linked to the curriculum."
She notes that only the day after the Department of Education updated the National Curriculum for ICT, changing it in the process to Computing, she received an email from Espresso informing her of how it would update its content - and how it already had. "They listen to us and ask us what we want and need," adding that her and other schools' request for additional phonics teaching material had resulted in that material being added to Espresso's library, which is updated weekly, she says.
For many customers of premium content providers, it's the tailoring that makes the services worthwhile investments. Paradoxically, the sheer amount of quality free content available has made it less appealing, with teachers unwilling to spend the extra time required to find a video that meets their and the curriculum's needs from among the amount available - when it's simply far easier to head for a paid-for service and search there.
Rosemary Scales, a music teacher at Leighton Park school, finds that few companies produce the music theory videos she wants, so she's had to either produce them herself or search for them online. "YouTube, if you pick the right things, is fantastic. Some of the BBC documentaries are brilliant. There's the TED lectures, of course." She then gathers and curates all the videos herself, including those generated by students using iPads, on MediaCore.
An additional source of revenue and demand comes from parents - but not directly. In return for a small additional fee, many content providers will allow a school to extend access to content to parents. Many schools do this because as well as giving the parents ready access to content suitable for their children that they can work through with them at home, the providers offer a 'walled garden' suitable for children to explore by themselves.
Sue Wakefield-Gray, mobile technology co-ordinator at ACS Hillingdon, uses sources as diverse as the TED Talks, NASA and the Khan Academy. However, she pays for content from BrainPop because of the lack of advertisements on the site. "There are amazing sites, but often they link to ads for how to get flat tummies in two days, for example." Similarly, Sherston offers an all-in-one package that allows younger children to explore a large range of content themselves in 'safety', with content that's been tailored for that age group. "What appeals to me might not appeal to a seven year old."
It's this idea of curation that some companies are looking at in order to maintain their appeal to schools. Point2Educate's Skeels hopes that Point2School will become like a mall - or an iTunes - for educators: whenever they want something, instead of scouring the Internet, they will come straight to Point2School to obtain content from the many publishers in the 'mall', all of which would be guaranteed to be relevant and of high quality.
Charles McIntyre, one of the co-founders of edtech Europe, argues that these 'mall' providers will need to include measurement tools to maintain demand from schools. "With curriculums and the measurement of value-add being so important in education, obviously the ability to have tools that deliver against that are going to be ones that you see more and more of."
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