Resources

An interview with Martin Trickey, Director of Interactive, Teachers' TV

Kim Thomas

Not every professional would want to come home after a busy day and watch a programme about work. But teachers, it seems, are different. The surprising success of Teachers' TV a year after its launch suggests that many teachers are looking to the channel for ideas to improve their classroom practice.

Teachers' TV hit our screens in February 2005. Funded by the DfES, it is operated by Education Digital, an editorially independent consortium, and is available on Freeview, as well as satellite and cable channels. The idea that teachers and other educational practitioners would watch a channel devoted to teaching may have aroused scepticism in some quarters, but the thinking behind it was sound, says Martin Trickey, Director of Interactive at Education Digital: "The thought was that there's some fantastic teaching out in the schools, but it's very difficult to share that practice across the profession. Obviously the DfES spends a lot of money communicating across the profession, but going in and filming best practice would be a fantastic way of sharing it."

First year viewing figures have been encouraging. According to the channel, the average number of households viewing Teachers' TV in the general population each month is 280,000, and about one fifth of school staff with cable or satellite TV watch it. It may not compete with the seven million people who watch Doctor Who on a Saturday night (though as it happens, Martin's previous job involved producing Doctor Who animations for the BBC), but these are still respectable viewing figures for a niche channel.

As Martin points out, Teachers' TV is a bit of a misnomer: "Teachers' TV is not just for teachers and it's not just TV." Programmes are aimed at everyone involved with education, including governors, support staff and early years educators. Parents too, he says, watch the programmes, to find out what's happening in education.

The channel shows an impressive range of programmes. These are divided into three zones, aimed at different audiences: primary, secondary and general. Although there is a focus on the National Curriculum, there are also programmes that deal with wider issues such as involving parents in school life, dealing with difficult children and using libraries in education. A look at one week's schedules shows that the secondary zone has programmes on using ICT to motivate pupils to learn a language; using art to enhance RE; cancer and the genome; and how to attract girls to vocational courses. One of the most watched programmes is the news, which is devoted exclusively to education stories, but another hit, says Martin, has been Teaching With Bayley, a programme in which John Bayley, a behaviour management expert, goes into schools and helps teachers manage difficult classes.

What makes Teachers' TV really different is its multimedia approach. All television channels now have websites, and most allow you to watch clips of programmes or a handful of full episodes. Teachers' TV, by contrast, has 1,000 complete television programmes freely available on its website (more than any other broadcaster in Europe), and there are 150,000 viewings of programmes on its site each month.

The evidence suggests that, while viewers take a 'sit back' approach to programmes viewed on the television channel, they take a 'sit forward' approach to programmes on the web. The most popular programmes on the website tend to be ICT- and science-related, says Martin, such as examples of experiments that can be downloaded and used in the classroom.

Viewers are using the programmes in different ways. Some flick through the channels and find an interesting idea that they can use in class, says Martin; others might download a whole programme and teach a whole lesson based on it; others use it for their own professional development; while those responsible for continuing professional development in schools are using the programmes on INSET days.

The channel has also begun using video podcasts. Initially only the news programmes were available as video podcasts, but more recently the channel has teamed up with The Guardian to produce The Teachers' Challenge: a series of video podcasts by celebrities, such as Lynne Truss and John Humphreys, who try their hand at teaching. Teachers can also sign up to areas they're interested in, so that in future video podcasts in their specialist area can be sent to them directly - they won't have to go and find them.

Martin is keen to make the programmes available through as many media as possible. Recognising that it's not always easy to record programmes from Freeview, he is promoting the use of personal video recorders (PVRs): hard disks on the set-top box that can record directly from the television. USB plugins can also be used as PVRs, he says: "You can get on your laptop, plug it into an aerial socket and say 'I want this programme on Freeview at three o'clock in the morning,' come back in the morning and there it is on your laptop. You can take it into the classroom, or your staffroom, and plug it into your interactive whiteboard."

To celebrate its first birthday, Teachers' TV launched Teachers' DIY TV, a 20-part series where individual teachers direct, produce and star in their own programme. Many teachers, says Martin, are already filming their own lessons and showing them to other teachers. The idea behind DIY TV was to make that best practice available to a wider audience. Teachers selected for the programmes are offered professional support with the production and editing of their films.

For a channel that could potentially have been a dry professional resource, Teachers' TV has proved to be wide-ranging, experimental and innovative in outlook. Feedback is important, and the channel is always working to improve and refine content as a result of comments from its target audience. Martin is keen to make the programmes available through as many channels as possible - one idea is to deliver programmes to mobile devices, and over Janet, the Joint Academic Network.

And Martin's favourite programme? "I do like the Demonstrating Physics one where they blow things up."