In the beginning, OU courses were backed up television broadcasts that aired in the early hours of the morning on BBC2, and occasionally on Saturday mornings. More recently, course videos have been delivered on video cassette and DVD, with OU/BBC programming focussing more and more on prime time offerings (as you'll know if you've visited the OU/BBC Open2.net website recently; for a full listing of OU broadcasts over the years, check out the BBC programme catalogue).
One of the great strengths of OU broadcasts was that they were universally accessible. I'm not sure - historically - how useful students on our courses found the original broadcasts, but they are fondly remembered by a huuuuuuuuge number of people, and provide a great source of inspiration for comedy sketch show writers. For example, spot the spoof OU programme clip from these three (three embedded YouTube videos follow: option a, option b or option c;-):
Did you manage to spot the spoof? Anyway anyway, these are quite a contrast to the latest offerings, such as the BAFTA winning Coast series or the brilliant Mark Steel lectures.
What prompted this post though, was a webflyer I saw today for an online educational video competition. My immediate thought was: do we have anything we could submit? If so, what? And if not, why not?
The competition in and of itself is not what got me thinking...
Rather, it was the suggestion that the 30 second to 2 minute short is perhaps starting to come of age - just the sort of content that can appear on YouTube (via the web, or - from June - via YouTube Mobile) and communicate some useful educational content on demand to the user, or embedded in some course material.
We were so nearly in a position to steal a lead on this sort of content packaging. I remember being at an OU/BBC broadcast meeting several years ago when 'filler' programming - 30s clips to go in-between scheduled broadcasts - was mooted (rather than the extended idents and BBC ads that take up 2-3 minutes of screen time between programmes nowadays). that was pre-blogtime for me, though, so I don't have any records other than a vague memory of that meeting... and no links to examples either...:-)
Anyway - if internal readers know of any shorts that can be showcased in public, feel free to pass me a link... ;-)
Posted by ajh59 at March 27, 2007 11:56 PM