BoB (Box of Broadcasts) National is a JISC funded online off-air TV and radio recording service for UK higher and further education institutions.
In other words, it’s a website service (that Kent subscribes to) that lets you record TV and Radio programmes and then play them back (whole programme, or selected excerpts) whenever you want in the future, so potentially a great teaching resource.
It’s very easy to use too. You can easily:
- search through what programmes have already been recorded (by others)
- search through programmes in the previous 30 days that you’ve missed and no one else has recorded (and still record them)
- search through up coming programmes and request they are recorded for you
- edit clips of highlights of programmes
See here for a list of the channels that are covered.
How to use it
- The Bob National website is: http://bobnational.net (or google it if you forget this)
- Login: first select your organistation ..
- Type ‘kent’ into the ‘filter’ box then click on ‘University of Kent’ in the box below
- then login using your Kent username and password (eg JB7 (not J.bond@kent.ac.uk))
- The built in HELP is very good but to get yo started, either try the
- ‘search’ link to browse or do keyword based searches for programmes already saved by BOB
- Use the ‘Programme guide’ link to search for new programmes that you want recording
- .
- If your search returns a lot of hits, you can use the ‘filter’ options on the left hand side to narrow it down eaily e.g. restrict time period/channel etc
- When you find the programme yo uwant, just click on it to play it. NB You need
- In the ‘Programme guide’ section, programmes in red boxes have already been recorded/selected for recording. If the programme yo want hasn’t been selected yet, just click on it and click the red ‘request programme’ button at the bottom of the page.
- Making your own clips/multi-part clips is easy, just see the help.
- Note, at present you cannot download clips for offline playing but you could easily paste a link into a powerpoint slide and play it.
If you have any questions then give me a call,
John