Edge Hill University provides staff and students with access to the Box of Broadcasts (BoB) on demand TV and Radio broadcast service, and The Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching (TRILT).

An old fashioned television set.

Here are six things you can do with these services.

One: Access Old Recordings from the BBC’s Digital Archive

The BBC is currently digitising its library and making it available to education institutions. The records of all BBC broadcasts can be searched using TRILT and the recordings requested although not every broadcast will be available.

At Edge Hill we have access to 24 requests per year, so if you want to view or give your students access to very old BBC broadcasts you can try to access them this way.

Some recordings will already be on BoB, so check there first, but otherwise Learning on Screen advises that:

Members can login to TRILT with their institutional login and make an enquiry about a historical BBC broadcast by emailing the TRILT URL to the services team: [email protected]

Two: Make Clips from Sections of Broadcasts using BoB

Three: Request Copies of Broadcasts as an MP4, MP3, or on DVD

As an example we’ve had requests for an MP4 version of a sports event so it could be analysed with software.

Four: Create Playlists of Videos Using BoB

Five: Get Notifications of Upcoming Broadcasts

Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching (TRILT) allows you to request email alerts for forthcoming programmes up to 10 days in advance of their broadcast. This helps ensure that you don’t miss the chance to record useful programmes.

To set an alert up, go to TRILT, click on ‘Sign in’ at the top right of the screen, and log in as you would to BoB.

Choose ‘Auto Alerts’ from the menu on the left hand side.

On the Auto Alerts page you can use the ‘set up your email address’ to set your preferences for the computing device you are on now. You can then save Auto Alerts which will be emailed to you on a selected day of the week.

If the programme is broadcast on one of the channels that BoB records, you can then make a note to log in to BoB to search for it and request that it is saved.

Six: Access films you were struggling to get hold of

While the TV broadcasts are sometimes edited, it may be your only free (legal) option. I’m tempted to say that it’s one of the few places where you can see a pre-special edition version of Star Wars, but the quality is too poor for you to get your hopes up. I can honestly claim that you’ll be getting the experience I got when watching it for the first time as a kid.

Next Steps

We have a list of playlists and related resources that we’ve created to get you started thinking about how to use these resources, along with links to guides on our Wakelet page.

beaumont_smaller
Peter Beaumont
Learning Technology Development Officer

my new television set” by brandon king is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.