The Toolkit is a portable and easily customizable online framework, which enables educational business customers outside the UK to host, manage and deliver a range of rich media content that they have created or acquired from various sources. Such content can then be delivered via a licensee’s customised service to primary, and/or secondary schools and/or tertiary institutions in their territory(-ies), as well as to students at home. The Toolkit’s infrastructure is based on the systems that have been and continue to be developed to create, store, deliver and serve so successfully Clipbank in the UK, arguably the most competitive and technologically-advanced education market in the world.
Content that is flexibly sourced and easily customised
In the first instance, the Toolkit has been designed to store, deliver and serve video clips, ideally between 1-5 minutes in length and digitised to Mpeg-1 format (playable in most widely-used browser video players). Clips can be sourced by a licensee, generated by a licensee, or licensed from Espresso (under separate agreement). In addition, they can vary in quantity since the Toolkit is scalable to manage any number of clips based on a licensee’s requirements.
The metadata accompanying these clips currently cover 20 customisable fields, including commentary transcripts, subject (up to 16 subjects can be set up and pre-defined according to a licensee’s requirements), category, level, and curricula and examining board linkages.
Presented and managed as you choose
The Toolkit provides a database-driven system with a dynamic web front-end, which allows assets to be stored, tagged and “published” to the licensee’s local service on whatever frequency is required. It uniquely comprises:
• A proprietary, customisable and scaleable Content Management System (CMS), which is successfully used by Espresso Group and can be localised to manage rich media content across 11,000 schools. It currently deploys video in Mpeg1 format, allows for rapid modification of the presentation service and is very easy to use – e.g. a video can be added in under 10 clicks.
• A proprietary, customisable Content Presentation system featuring an interface that allows users to interact with content. It can publish content in non-English languages, has Key Word Search functionality and a Path Exporter capturing the path to the video clip you are watching for use in another application. It boasts an in-built video player with full functionality (play; pause; fast forward; rewind), clip duration display and dragable clip position display.
Securely delivered and fully supported
A Content Delivery system which:
• Enables secure and managed content delivery to authorised schools/locations via a central management console
• Currently delivers 5 Terabytes of content to 11,000 schools every week in the UK
• Manages edge caching technology at schools
• Allows content and content channels to be added or deleted per school
• Has fully updated and supported software architecture
• Has remote device management capabilities
• Has been developed over seven years
• Supports Shibboleth SSO Authentication
• Comes complete with annual upgrades, including latest software release
• Comes complete with full training and support
Continuously growing and developing
Based on a licensee’s requirements, the CMS can be developed to enable the storage and delivery of other standard video formats (including Mpeg2, Mpeg4, QT, Windows Media Video) and other assets such as audio, images and Flash activities. It will also be able to facilitate customisation to any language, easy adaptation to local tagging taxonomies and to cater for content integration into Learning Platforms.
The Content Presentation System can be developed to include custom “skins” to target specific user groups (e.g. primary school audiences). In addition, end users could add their own clips encoded in Mpeg1 format, create their own learning paths, screen-grab single frames of a video for use in another application, attach their own Word docs, image files, web links, etc. to a Learning Path, plus record and add a custom soundtrack to clips.
Proven, engaging, customer-driven toolset
• Tried, tested and secure
• An extremely profitable business model
• Makes discovery, evaluation and use of educational video clips and rich media content by teachers and students accessible, intuitive, faster and easier
• Allows timely release of new digital services and delivery of digital content in various formats
• Streamlines video content procurement
• Enables easy localisation and customisation as required
• Has built-in multilingual support
Please Contact Us for further details
