Please note all features advertised on this page are available to United Kingdom clients only due to UK licensing laws relating to broadcast TV content.
The Planet eStream Connect service provides Planet eStream users with free* access to several libraries of fantastic educational content to support their teaching and learning. These resources can be browsed, searched, downloaded to your Planet eStream system and made available as part of your media library. Educators can then make use of the great tools available in Planet eStream to create curriculum relevant learning resources such as interactive quizzes, chapters and playlists. Here is an overview of the content available to qualifying Planet eStream customers…
Comprising over 2 million TV and radio programmes from the entire BBC Digital Archive covering all broadcast material dating back to 2007. Unlike other platforms, Planet eStream enables educators to easily search and filter the archive independently instead of having to request items. Your selected content is then automatically downloaded directly to your own Planet eStream media library. This direct access to the content is unique to Planet eStream and makes searching the archive more streamlined.
There is also access to millions of additional programmes that form the extended BBC archive. Content from the extended archive can be accessed via our built-in Archive Request service.
This great resource includes over 550 items from the BBC Shakespeare Archive such as plays, sonnets and documentaries dating back to the 1950s, an excellent resource for English Literature educators.
See how you can easily record TV and radio programmes and access an archive of over 2 million programmes to support your educators.
As part of the Planet eStream Connect Service, we also offer a TV and radio recording service via our cloud-based TV Scheduler. Using this service, you can quickly and easily build up a library of great television and radio programmes by adding content from 79 free to air TV, radio and satellite channels.
The Planet eStream Connect Service aggregates all Freeview TV and radio broadcasts ever recorded by members of the Connect community dating back over a decade. There are currently over 2,000 educational organisations using Planet eStream to enhance their digital learning provision ranging from Secondary right through to higher education. The ability to access such a comprehensive and diverse pool of educationally rich broadcast content provides a fantastic resource for your educators.
The Planet eStream user base Freeview archives, alongside the BBC Digital archive offers one of the largest Freeview TV archives available to educators in the UK.
Further education colleges who are members of the Blended Learning Consortium can find subscription BLC content to add to their media libraries via our dedicated Blended Learning Consortium Channel within the Planet eStream Connect service.
As well as being able to search for known programmes users can also utilise keywords to search the entire archives subtitles. This is an incredibly powerful tool, enabling educators to quickly discover new content to support their teaching.
The BBC Research and Education Space (RES) Project is a platform built by the BBC that indexes and organises the digital archives from libraries, museums, broadcasters, and galleries to make their content more discoverable, accessible and usable to those in UK education and research.
As part of our ongoing commitment to development, we have been working closely with the RES team at the BBC to provide integrations with RES. For more information please see the following RES Blog.
Currently, users can create image galleries powered by RES, and also search for images and include these as related media items in Planet eStream.
John Jackson, Technical Services Director at Planet eStream, shared his experiences of the journey so far and the next planned phases of development. Click here to read more
Watch our short promotional video on our integration with the BBC RES project to create RES powered galleries and related media.
"I'm really pleased we have this facility. It gives students of MFL a really rich resource which will help them in so many ways. The variety and quantity of programmes and films now easily available to all students, wherever they may be, will have a huge impact on their study of languages. Their listening and speaking skills will be developed and their awareness and understanding of many cultural and historical elements will also benefit. Not to mention the entertainment and enjoyment they will derive from watching some superb material. " Linda, Modern Foreign Languages Department, Coleg Cambria
"I am currently working on a group of modules on our VLE that are relevant to all of the students within Doncaster College and the local community. I have been using Planet eStream Connect to search for shows shot in Doncaster, making them more relevant to the students, who are more invested in the content because they recognise the locations and people. " Joe Carratt, Learning Technology Support Assistant, Doncaster College
"I teach English and, as soon as Planet eStream Connect was launched I started to make use of it in my teaching. It’s the most exciting resource I have used since I started teaching 18 years ago. " John Field, Director of Digital Learning, Tudor Hall School
"The biggest curriculum area to have benefitted from the service is the animal management department. As the BBC have a huge collection of wildlife and animal programs (all accurate and high quality), the staff in Animal management have been requesting large amounts of programs to be used within the classroom for examples, as well as whole TV shows to be used in conjunction with blended learning, enabling our learners to work both independently and collaboratively outside of the classroom. Planet eStream Connect is a fantastic resource. The most important elements are the speed and ease of access, and the guaranteed quality that the BBC delivers. " Ben Craig, e-Learning Coordinator, Reaseheath College
"As staff begin preparing online sessions for our students, we now have the BBC’s Digital Archive available to provide the highest quality multimedia content, which supports the new learning activities that are being created. Out teaching staff have been relieved to be able to source such good quality resources, and make them available to students so easily. Planet eStream Connect has taken a lot of pressure off staff, some of which are creating online learning for the first time, as they build new learning experiences for our students. Our Students are appreciating the high quality content that their online learning experiences are built around, and this is evidenced in the attendance to sessions and level of engagement whilst they are studying online, and we fully expect this to be borne out in the Student Voice feedback that we collect at the end of the year. " Neil Prior, Head of Digital Education, Berkshire College of Agriculture
*Free access to the Planet eStream Connect Service requires a valid Planet eStream licence that includes the Freeview Scheduling hardware for locally hosted systems or access to the Freeview Scheduler on our Cloud Platform for hosted systems.
Use of the Planet eStream Connect Service is subject to your organisation having a fully paid up current ERA Licence. Details on ERA Licensing can be found via the following links;
http://www.era.org.uk/licence-updates/era-updates-schedule-terms-era-licences-reflect-new-member
http://www.era.org.uk/the-licence/details-rates/rates-agreements
An Overview on Accessing Broadcast TV and Radio Resources with Planet eStream
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