Search Find Learn

Michelle Gallen's e-learning blog.

Why Search Find Learn?

Because I feel that Search, Find, Learn describes how we learn in the 21st century - we Search for what we need to know, we Find it, and we Learn it. This blog explores how technology is helping us do that.

Contributors wanted

Humans have been on a learning journey since the dawn of time. And it's never been so exciting. If you're using technology in an effective, experimental or innovative way, I'd love to hear from you. I can blog about your project/website/idea, or you can contribute a guest post. Send me an email describing what you're up to.

BBC Jam - a Sticky Mess


So the BBC have decided to suspend their educational Jam service.

I'd like to blog about why I think Jam failed. Why I felt it was flawed from the start. On how the BBC could done things differently. But then I read the BBC press releases on the Jam suspension, and I thought what difference will my comments make?

Liz Cleaver, controller of learning and interactive has said that BBC Jam is "a highly distinctive service which absolutely represents the direction in which I believe formal learning from the BBC should be travelling".

Perhaps Jam really is the direction in which the BBC will take formal learning. But is that the direction that the general public want 'learning' to go in?

Are the BBC going to take this 'suspension' as a chance to sit back and look at what they delivered to the public, at the public's expense. To see what went wrong, not just with the content, but the internal processes, the technologies used, the management approach, the content production methods? To see what users really feel, and more importantly, to find out what the non-users think? I'm not convinced.

BBC Jam represents £150 million pounds worth of 'free learning'. That's about the same amount the government invested in another disastrous 'formal learning' experiment - UKEU.

And Jam's £150 million pounds worth of 'free learning' is being taken from the British public as of March 20. If BBC Jam had worked, if the content was good enough, if people really used and loved the service, would there not be protests? If it really is the 'highly distinctive service' that provides creative, innovative and imaginative learning content to pupils of all ages, where's the outcry?

Maybe the BBC should stop talking about Jam, and start listening.

2 comments:

  1. Magpie said...
     

    does the fact that they have given up on Jam make them Jammie Dodgers?

    Sorry for v weak biscuit based pun :)

  2. i.am.user said...
     

    erm, they are listening, and the public, the LEARNERS are saying they're not happy. they're even writing to the queen, the poor lambs. the bbc are even listening to the money grabbing commerical sector that were too crap to get on the preferred suppliers list (you know who you are, shame on you)

    please find yourself a blackboard and write out 50 times:
    "i will check my facts before deriding a service i have little knowledge about, but pretend that i do"

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