The ICT in Education Website and Subscription Service
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The ICT in Education was set up nearly ten years ago. The aim of the website was very clear from the outset: to provide teachers and others with practical guidance on using information and communication technology in the classroom, whether for administration or for curriculum purposes. The facts that the UK's department for education and science (DfES) decided (unsolicited) to provide a link to the site from their own website, and that it was one of the first sites in the country to be awarded National Grid for Learning approval, certainly did no harm to the site's credibility.
As well as there being a host of articles on the website, together with podcasts, which are freely downloadable, and a range of digital products for sale, two subscription services are also available.
One of these, which you may be familiar with, is the electronic newsletter called Computers in Classrooms. This was launched around 1999, and then was suspended when I went to work for the QCA. (The QCA and other governmental organisations do not approve of individuals publishing work under their own name for a very good reason: people often assume that they are espousing official policy through the back door!) It has since been revived, and its subscriber list growing steadily. More of that in a moment.
A few months ago we also launched a paid-for subscription service known as the Premium Subscription service, which is also covered below.
But first, why provide ANY subscription service, free or otherwise? After all, it would be easy enough to publish everything on the website, and sit and wait for the visitors to arrive. There are two reasons why that approach isn't enough on its own. Firstly, anyone working in education does not have the time to trawl through umpteen websites every day, or even every week, to see what's new. The ICT in Education website is often updated every day, including weekends, so not checking it for a week could mean “missing” half a dozen or more articles. Secondly, some people prefer newsletters to website articles: not much effort is involved in receiving them, plus you can print off the whole thing and read several articles over breakfast.
There is even a third option available, a sort of compromise between going to the website and signing up for the newsletter. Many people reading this will have heard of blogs, or online journals. Some may have also come across the idea of the RSS feed. This sounds complicated, but RSS – standing for Really Simple Syndication – makes it possible for you to be told whenever the blog has a new entry. You can subscribe to several blogs in this way, and – here's the beauty of the whole approach – only look at one website, or in one place on your desktop, for any updates.
Now, in common with many other sites, especially newspapers and other information portals, the ICT in Education provides an RSS feed so that you can be alerted to new content, which you can then choose to look at or take a rain check on for the time being.
So, what do the subscriptions provide that the website doesn't? Let's start with the Premium Subscription service. What the Premium Subscription service does is take the view that less is more: articles tend to be less discursive than the ones typically posted on the free part of the website or in the newsletter, whilst the regular e-briefing provides top-level information in no more than two sides of A4 – frequently less. The articles are often on “uncommercial” topics as well, the kind of thing you won't usually see in a standard newsletter or magazine because they are too specialised.
For example, there was a series on how to get a job as an ICT manager, another on displaying children's work properly, and a briefing paper on how to go about changing or implementing a management information system in a school. The e-briefing, which is usually published every week or two, contains information about new government directives and research reports – not just from the UK but from all over the world. In fact, we've estimated that on this basis alone, the subscription rate of £60 (+ VAT) pays for itself on receipt of the very first e-briefing, due to the time savings involved.
Of course, many people are quite content with the free subscription service. After all, it is open to all, and contains a wealth of practical advice and guidance on implementing ICT. The fascinating thing for me is that subscribers come from all over the world – and they all face the same issues!
The composition of the subscription lists, and of visitors to the website, is very interesting in itself. The website receives an average of 300 unique visits a day, mainly from people living in the UK or the USA, but also from other countries such as Singapore, Saudi Arabia and European countries. The free newsletter is subscribed to by education advisors from local education authorities in the UK, employees of governmental agencies and private corporations in the UK, and teachers (especially ICT co-ordinators) from all over the world. The Premium Subscription service has attracted senior subject leaders for ICT as well as school district supervisors or similar.
So what of the future? The short answer is: who knows? But we have already experimented with blogs, wikis and, now, podcasts. Perhaps in future we will provide digital video-based articles, and we've started to experiment with constructing QuickTime movies. One thing is for certain: whenever we try out new technologies we'll be interested to see how useful they might be in the classroom!
Terry Freedman has been teaching, advising and writing about ICT in Education for more years than he cares to remember. He is currently an independent ICT consultant and runs the ICT in Education website (www.ictineducation.org). Terry has been a MirandaNet Fellow for several years.
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