Can the BBC be education’s YouTube?
The BBC are always going to be involved in education and the ‘demise’ of BBC jam is simply a small dint in the educational aspirations of those who have access to our licence fees.
User-generated content called BBC BackPage is the latest offering, with parents and students making home videos to show how to learn or teach various topics. Very YouTube, (‘video by grown ups for grown ups’) except the quality is awful and from an educational perspective any parent or student needing help would be better off looking elsewhere. Rather than being totally new, or a ‘Research
Project’ as the site claims, what this appears to be is the next iteration of the BBC Homework Help project. To be fair, some educationalists obviously rate the site, for example the National Centre for Excellence in Mathematical Teaching (NCETM) has a link to the site.
If you want a serious laugh or worry (depending on your outlook) have a look at the BBC Terms of Use information, which nobody has probably ever read. Amongst their assertions are that:
- By using bbc.co.uk you agree to be legally bound by these terms, which shall take effect immediately on your first use of bbc.co.uk.
- Anyone who posts to the site (forbidden in the first clause) will; indemnify the BBC against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be incurred by the BBC as a result of your breach of the above warranty
So the BBC want user-generated content, and expect users, who rarely if ever read the minutiae of the Terms of Use, to be bound by a complex and seemingly contradictory series of legal obligations all weighted in favour of the BBC. If those posting knew this, we doubt many would actually have ever given the BBC their content in the first place. Luckily this research project is due to expire after four months, and then it will probably reappear with a new name as another research project.