Well it was good while it lasted but if you value any of the materials from Teachers TV then you have only until the end of this week to copy or download them. I knew that the site was no longer going to be funded by the British government but the promise that the materials would continue to be available made me think that the site would be left as a legacy website. But no, the notice confronting me when I went to check a link today is that the whole site is going to disappear. I guess that a website with such a huge repository of materials would still cost a great deal to host passively even with no new materials.
Teachers TV started as a TV channel with a support website. But viewing figures were abysmal and there were many reports that the last thing a teacher wanted to do after a hard day at school was to sit down and watch a TV programme about education. And yet the service was full of valuable material which was perhaps more suited to dissemination as a website. On a website you can browse according to need and don’t have to wait for a specific episode to be broadcast. Teachers.TV materials were high quality resources for professional development events and the website also included several worthy initiatives to enable teachers to plan and track their own professional development.
The materials are Creative Commons licensed but downloading was restricted to UK use only while the site was live. The only good thing to come out of the closure is that now the materials may be downloaded and used in any part of the world. Even so you need to be registered to download so even this requires action before April 29th, the official closing date.