good site btw….. LOL!

let us know when you have completed the beta

Wow. That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a while.

http://www.zuneconverter.net

Josh (comment 43): prove it. If the only reason your company can’t succeed is because you are competing with a public service broadcaster, your business proposition wasn’t a good one to start with.

To throw something else into the mix: I’m an entrepreneur. I run two companies which create electronic learning materials, for publishers and the BBC. We have jobs at risk because of this decision, right now.

One of those companies, Spark Learning, was an opponent to Jam before it launched. Since then, we’ve been pragmatic: if it’s here and that’s what’s happening, then let’s work with it and move on. We are now, through our joint venture with the television company Tinopolis, one of Jam’s biggest independent suppliers, and creating stuff that I am enormously proud of and believe in. Also, the material that we are creating just wouldn’t have a business model, and doesn’t threaten educational publishers. I know. I am one.

The media is telling a story of the private sector forcing the BBC into this measure. This misses half of the reality. The BBC is legally obliged to commission half of BBC Jam’s content from private production companies. Often small organisations, these companies are working at the cutting edge of the new media, creating original and highly worthwhile material for Britain’s children - which will be made available to them for free. In the media, “the private sector” has become shorthand for “one particular set of commercial interests”, missing the vital point that one industry is being built while another stutters. We have just finished a ground-breaking resource for totally blind 6-11 year-olds, hosted by Benjamin Zephaniah, to help them learn to read and write using braille. There is nothing like it in the world. It is now possible that this very expensive project may never see the light of day. Until Thursday, we were working on four other similar pieces of work. What’s the point of them being wasted?

“near limitless financial resources”
Hardly.

I support BBC Jam - My son loves it.

This complaint has come from BESA - http://www.besanet.org.uk. The contact details for Dominic Savage (Director General) are besa@besa.org.uk - I have emailed them to complain about their complaint to Europe, and to point out that, as 50% of BBC Jam was commissioned from private companies, he is shooting himself in the foot.

The website has a list of members in the IT sector.

What needs to be said is that the commercial sector has benefited from over £550m. Yes a BILLION DOLLARS of state subsidy in the form of eLearnign Credits to compensate for what the BBC were doing with BBC jam. And the BBC had to spend half of its £150m with the commercial sector.

The BBC jam service was aimed at learners not teachers and it still had lots of exciting content to publish. Some teachers managed to see this at the BETT show earlier in the year and most thought that these resources would be of great benefot to learners.

In addition, the materials were multilingual designed for all of the nations in the UK, there was support for learners with special educational requirements and specific content planned for profoundly deaf and for the blind. The commercial sector won’t produce this content - there is no money to be made in it due to the small market.

The commercial sector through their representive BESA should be hanging its head in shame and not gloating.

If you feel stongly enough about the demise of this service then you should write (or email) the BBC Trust.

BBC Trust Unit, Room 211, 35 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4AA
Telephone 0870 010 3100
trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk

I think a lot of people on here have been misled. BBC stifling startups? In what way are companies such as Espresso and Pearson startups? They are major players in the education software & content market. They make stuff that are generally to be used as classroom teaching aids. BBC jam was (is? will be?) learning aids to be used by kids. At home, on their own. *That* makes the content distinctive straight away.

Personally, I fail to see why besa are now complaining. They weren’t complaining about UK Govt subsidies when it was in e-learning credits. Where income was guaranteed for a few years, with hundred of millions of pounds available. How’s that for a guarnateed income? And why weren’t these companies using that ‘comfort time’ to make sure they could compete, if that is what they do, in a post-jam space?

That is the problem in market-orientated societies such as the UK and (I guess) the USA. The priorities are about profit margins, cash flow and the bottom line. What about the actual market - ie the people who are to use the product? Anti-competitive laws do not protect the consumer, they protect the businesses. As said by many above, the only real losers here, are UK children

There was already a functioning market in elearning for schools before the BBC got involved.

Many companies were already doing innovative things, it’s arguable that the UK government agency for technology (BECTA) and their push for conformance with elearning standards was a barrier to innovation.

What the BBC did is undercut the existing commercial market, so they spent 150m with private companies. That’s on a work for hire basis for those companies rather than a build it once selling it many times basis, as regardless as to how many copies of the content were used the end suppliers only got paid once.

If it was anything like some of the other publicly funded elearning projects I’ve been involved with I suspect the suppliers wouldn’t have made much money anyway as the profit gets eaten up in the overhead of managing a demanding client.

It is simple really. Education is for all, not for those who can afford it. We seem to forget, that as a civilised society this our goal. Can I afford to pay for another online service which provides the same content. The answer doesn’t matter because I bet there are many kids who could have benefited for BBC Jam, but have no access to another alternatives due to cost. Why not save the government a ‘ton of money’ and force parents to pay for all education. That way the free market truly decides!

The BBCs central remit is to educate, inform and entertain. Jam ticks all those boxes. I fail to understand what there is to winge about.
Independent software companies are also involved in Jam. This closure of a useful resource will hurt those indies and waste £76 million of UK license fee payers money. It has been brought about by a few greedy software companies for purely financial reasons. They clearly have no interest in the wellbeing of their target students. Perhaps they could spend their time more constructively writing software better than that provided by BBC Jam which students would prefer to use.
I am disappointed in the BBC trust for not sticking to their guns and keeping the service open. Even if it does eventually re-open after a year or so it will probably be a lame duck shadow of what it could have been.
The bottom line is that every child in the UK has a right to be educated for free. 170,000 users of BBC jam have been denied that right because of a few greedy companies. Is this bureaucratic madness what we want from our precious free market?

Jam’s in-house productions actually outsource most of the build work anyway. They commission work from *small interactive production companies* - incubating small startups, not stifling them as you claim. These small companies rely on having BBC Jam content online to show off as their portfolio. For a small startup, a live portfolio is their absolute lifeblood, but now that the big interactive production companies have ganged up on the BBC and shut the service down, the small companies have _nothing_ to show for themselves. They may well go under.

It’s simply a cynical, political move by large companies which achieves precisely the OPPOSITE of what they claim. It sinks small companies, beats the BBC into submission, and opens up the market for exploitation by large, dominant producers who want to squeeze schools for every penny they can. Nobody who actually works in education respects these companies as a result of this action - the kids are heartbroken, the teachers and educationalists are apalled.

There’s room in this market for everyone, but sadly politicking, control freakery and disgraceful behaviour have won the day. The companies that brought this about should hang their heads in shame.

Was the BBC Jam content really any good?

With the exception of one deeply engaging (but somewhat age-inappropriate) Citizenship game it all looked a bit tired and unoriginal to my untrained eyes.

It struck me as the sort of thing that’s been commonly available on CD for at least a decade and failed to make any interesting use of the online medium except as a means of distribution.

Thank you for your comments on the Citizenship game. I was the producer of the game which was a collaboration between two small independent companies (shameful plug here… milo creative and Adams Trainor).

I’m obviously gutted that Citizen UK (and the whole of Jam for that matter) isn’t live and being enjoyed by users. With almost 2 years of hard work it seems such a waste, particularly as we haven’t come across anything similiar in this subject for children of this age.

Children had a lot of input in the design of the game and all of the issues addressed within the game were raised by children themselves.

Glad that you found the game engaging.