Find it, Rip it, Share it, Come and Get it might sound a bit like the slogan of another illegal file sharing enterprise but in fact it is the ethos of an exciting new project called the Creative Archive.

The Creative Archive (creativearchive.bbc.co.uk) aims to provide copyright-free digital media for free download from the web, and is being developed by The BBC, Channel 4, The British Film Institute (BFI) and The Open University. The project is one of many new websites working to provide open content for the global internet community, particularly in the field of education.

[The Creative Archive pilot has now finished with the participating groups removing the vast majority of the free media they provided during the trial.]

The first downloads are available on the BFI website (www.bfi.org.uk) and have already been downloaded over 5000 times since they were posted on the site on the 13th April. With much more material promised for the future visit the Creative Archive website to keep up to date with developments and find out about new archive materials that you will be able to download and use in the classroom.



Speaking at the inauguration of the Creative Archive, independent film director Peter Kaufman highlighted, ‘the growing recognition that libraries and museums and archives are the equivalent of unexplored gas and oil fields when it comes to content that might be discovered, converted, repurposed, and marketed…The commercial sector is now devoting increasing attention to cultural heritage resources, educational material and open content.’

The power of the internet is however making the gatekeepers - those with archives of digital information - think very carefully about how to provide access to their information. Filesharing communities have shown the commercial value of data to be potentially worthless. The open nature of the internet makes it the epitomy of a free market. Google now searches over 8 billion websites and there are more every day. The internet has only been going for 10 years, imagine it in 100 years. It is our world in code and what one person tries to charge for, another provides better for free!

The British Museum in London is home to a beautful domed, circular library right in the heart of the museum: a full 360° of ancient leather bound books from floor to ceiling, positively oozing knowledge and history - a throbbing heart of knowledge feeding from the ancient artefacts that surround it. But those books are now merely the backup servers to the computer stations littered around the floor of the library. No longer can you even touch those precious paper backup files, and nor need you. For you can access every page in the library from any one of the computers with a simple search! And that is the amazing thing about the internet because not only can you access that library but potentially every one like it all over the world, and then not only every other library but also every company, and then every household… but then that is where the bubble went pop!

Not because the internet couldn’t do it. It has done it. It has just taken a while for everyone to catch up and realise how to access all this information. And for many, how to make it commercially viable. It has taken time and a range of tools have needed to be developed to make the internet an effective database for all this information.



Speed has become the defining factor for the internet and broadband technology is now beginning to make more and more commercial ventures successful on the internet. Broadband, for example, is the driving force behind the audio and video content that has propelled iTunes into our ears and made online music downloads a financially viable activity.



Along with a broadband internet connection the other key tool to online media enjoyment is the media viewer. The media viewer is the program you use to watch and listen to audio and video downloads online. The main programs are Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Real Player. The latest versions of these players are always available to download for free from their respective websites. It’s important to have the latest version of the player because the way in which media is viewed on the internet is always changing. Don’t worry, your player will automatically prompt you when it needs to update, but try and make sure this is done before a class as updates can often be several megabytes. Many commercial sites often have these media players configured into their own websites in order to improve the viewing experience and to keep you logged onto their website.



Video streaming is an excellent way to enjoy media online but it does require a fast internet connection. What happens is every time you click the media file you want to watch or listen to, the website transmits the media file to your computer through the media player, almost like watching TV on demand. You can watch the file as many times as you like but you cannot save it onto your computer. This system has been designed to protect the copyright and content of the media companies.


Many websites now offer video streaming bringing great five-minute clips to computers around the world. All the big media companies now offer free online content. In the past, the only place you’d see the latest movie trailer was at the cinema or when you hired out a video. Now, with a click of the mouse you can check out any film you like, old or new on the internet. A whole host of websites, led by the Hollywood studios themselves, are providing trailers online.

One of the best independent movie sites is My Movies (www.mymovies.net). Not only does it have most of the current films but they also have an enormous archive of classic ones too. Generally you will find a selection of clips for each film, often including interviews with the actors and behind the scenes footage.

Film trailers can be viewed purely for enjoyment or students can be given some task. You could ask students to watch 3 trailers and compare them; or watch a trailer and tell someone else about it. If you don’t have time to work out your own lessons some clever teachers in Japan have designed a site (English Trailers - www.english-trailers.com) where you can watch a trailer and complete a range of cloze and quiz activities they have designed to go with the movie clip. All the hard work is done for you.

For more in-depth analysis of complete films, try out some of the ideas on the Film Education website (www.filmeducation.org). This charitable organisation from the UK has been producing professional educational materials to accompany films for 20 years. Many of their materials are now available online.

Brilliant resources websites like this are popping up everywhere. Often when teaching around the world it was hard to get hold of an English TV or film clip, a piece of music, or some other nice bit of authentic audio for students to appreciate some real English in the classroom. This is changing fast, and for those with broadband internet there are hundreds of websites out there rich in educational content.


The BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) is a treasure trove of online media. The Creative Archive is more of an extension of what they have been providing for years. I remember the joy of my first teaching job in Brazil in 2000 when I realised I could just tune into BBC radio online and keep up to date with the latest repetitive hits on Radio1. Of course, I soon discovered there’s much more to BBCi than meets the eye.

There are two key learning English parts of the BBCi site. The first is Learning English from the World Service (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice). You might recall that in Webwatcher in ETp Issues 35 and 36, Russell Stannard gave some great tips for using VideoNation, one of the features of the World Service site. Also to be found on this site are mini-courses in business English and Words In The News where students can complete a range of activities in structured online lessons. And that is just the start, with a whole range of their radio output designed with accompanying teaching material too. Register online to get a weekly email of what’s on offer.

The other key BBC site, as far as teaching English goes, is SkillsWise (www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise), a literacy and numeracy site primarily designed to support teachers and learners studying within the UK curriculum. It was launched as a pilot site by the BBC in 2001 and provides materials for students and teachers within the UK curriculum. Within the Words (literacy) part of the site, students can study a whole range of language skills. All areas give full explanations, include fun Flash games and often incorporate audio and visual materials.

These are just a couple of parts of the BBC. Hidden around its many pages are thousands of educational resources. A current favourite of mine is the BBC Voices project (www.bbc.co.uk/voices). By clicking on an interactive map of the UK, you can listen to any one of over 1,000 short voice recordings of people from all over the UK. This fantastic audio library has been compiled over the past 18 months in an attempt to document and analyse the diversity of British accents and vocabulary.


Another great website is Frontline (www.frontline.org). Mentioned by Kaufman as a leading website providing open content, it offers 48 fantastic documentaries to be viewed online. Frontline is the flagship current affairs programme in the US and has been producing engaging documentaries since 1985 probing the critical issues of the day. The best documentaries are free for online viewing and many come with detailed lesson plans and extra resources worksheets.



Not to be outdone, the Australians are also producing fantastic educational media for the internet market. English Bites (www.abcasiapacific.com/englishbites) from Nexus, the educational wing of The ABC (something like the Australian BBC), gives vibrant daily content about life 'down under' with a whole assortment of activities to complete as you watch streamed media direct from Australia.

Many other big TV channels are now moving into providing online content. The Discovery Channel (www.discovery.com), The History Channel (www.historychannel.com) and MTV’s Overdrive (www.mtv.com/overdrive) all now feature regular online content. On The History Channel, the self-proclaimed ‘multimedia gateway to the past’ you can browse a huge archive of speeches and videos reliving moments that have changed and shaped the world. Other big institutions are also getting involved. The Olympic Foundation (www.olympic.org), for example, has recently incorporated 20,000 hours of archive Olympic footage for users to view on the web. Anyone can go to the Olympic site and watch hundreds of different clips documenting defining moments in sporting history.



An interesting new commercial tool, that could soon have a big impact is the Press Viewer from Press Display (www.pressdisplay.com). Press Display is newspaper website offering users instant access to over 200 newspapers from 55 countries around the globe on your desktop or tablet PC. Their neat little viewer provides you with a digital version of the print newspaper in exactly the same format. Just flick, zoom and read the newspaper on your computer or handheld. This cunning little tool could soon be giving us more and more of what used to be our print media.



Apart from the big commercial enterprises offering audiovisual treats in cyberspace, there is no shortage of ‘other’ websites produced by organisations and enthusiasts. Teachers, well most anyway, are always great at sharing ideas. It’s often what makes teaching bearable, and certainly what keeps it fresh – the opportunity to share and develop ideas, constantly keeping things new and interesting for the students.

From the thousands, I have picked a couple of great ‘teacher’ designed websites that amazingly produce a resource a day for the teaching community. Sean Banville, a Japan based teacher, publishes up-to-the-minute topical resources and audio to go with a daily news story at his website: Breaking News English (www.breakingnewsenglish.com). And at The English Language Listening Lab Online (www.elllo.org) a wonderful group of teachers based around the world provide some daily fun and realistic English practice on their brilliant site. And that really is just scraping the iceberg, as there seems to be no end of generous, philanthropic teachers around the world providing and sharing their English teaching materials on the web for free. For every search you do, you could unearth another selection of sites.

A last example of a great site for audio resources is Randall’s ESL Listening Lab (www.esl-lab.com). Randall Davis, another teacher who has taught in forward-looking Japan, has created an amazing archive of short audio clips designed to replicate real life situations. All the clips come with a nice selection of pre-, during and post- listening activities.


With there seeming to be no end to the depth of audio and video available on the internet it is timely that Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) have now released a new ‘video’ search engine within their search tools. So, if the sites supplied here don’t quite fit the bill, or if you have something in particular you want to see or show your students you can simply search for the type of footage you are looking for and cruise the results. It was reported in The Times in May 2005, that the Yahoo search engine is the latest in a string of products from a range of companies that will eventually allow users to cherrypick the TV programmes they want to watch from a global library of content available on the web.

As well as a goldmine for couch potatoes this access to content is equally mouthwatering to educators. Permanently logged into computers somewhere in Washington DC the NAVCC or, National Audio Visual Conservation Centre, is busy compiling what promises to be the biggest archive of digital data in the world. Planned to open in 2007 this cyber-library promises bountiful seas of resources to supplement our teaching and enrich our lives. In the meantime check out some of the sites featured in this article and bring your classes to life with real English no matter where you are in the world.


First published in the English Teaching Professional
Issue 41, November 2005

www.etprofessional.com

Reproduced here with the kind permission of Keyways Publishing.
(c) 2007 Keyways Publishing Ltd.

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More links to audio-visual wonder sites:

The Movies
www.apple.com/trailers - Apple’s archives of brilliant Quicktime trailers
www.sonypictures.com – Upcoming and current movies from Sony Studios
www.pixar.com – The latest offerings and some behind-the-scenes action from the animation geniuses
www.mymovies.net – Massive archive of film trailers old and new. Including multiple clips, interviews with actors and behind-the-scenes footage.

Movies with lesson ideas…
www.english-trailers.com – Students can watch the best current trailers and complete challenging, fun comprehension tasks while they watch the clip
www.filmeducation.org – This BAFTA winning website produces excellent educational resources to maximise the cultural content that can be learnt from watching movies.

Music
www.astralwerks.com – A brilliant ‘independent’ record label that has artists like The Chemical Brothers, Gorillaz, Death in Vegas, AudioBully and many more on it’s books. All their artist websites include great videos free to watch online.
www.universal.com – A similar example from a media megalith.

TV Channels
www.bbc.co.uk – World Service, Skillswise, Horizon and much more
www.abcasiapacific.com/englishbites/ - Daily news and culture show from Tania Nugent down under
www.frontline.org – A Michael Moore style, investigative journalism, documentary channel
www.discovery.com – Regular clips with educational questions featuring the best upcoming TV content on the various Discovery channels
www.historychannel.com – Archives of famous speeches and video of important moments in history
www.mtv.com/overdrive - The new free broadband TV station from the massive MTV network.

EFL Treats
www.breakingnewsenglish.com – Brilliant website providing activities and resources to go with the leading global news story of the day.
www.elllo.org – A brilliant listening lab for students to tune into and listen to English in a controlled but natural clip. Accompanying activities give students loads of challenging tasks to help them improve their listening.
www.esl-lab.com – Randall Davis doing lots more of the same on his fantastic EFL site.

Other Institutions
www.olympic.org – look at past Olympic games to access enormous archives of video information featuring the highlights of past games.
www.learnenglish.org.uk/kids - This great site includes some brilliant Flash fairytales for younger students to watch, listen to and enjoy.
www.stonesoup.com – An inspirational magazine that provides a forum for children to publish and read their stories online.
www.wiredforbooks.org – A website from Ohio University that is preserving classic interviews with authors on its website for users to listen to. This great site also includes Beatrix Potter, Alice in Wonderland and other classic children’s books for online listening pleasure.