We recently asked on the Edugeek forum if anyone would be willing to help us research integrating BrainPOP UK into their school VLEs.
The response from the Edugeek community was amazing (a dedicated blog post about that another time). We’re still collating the research but we wanted to show you an example of how generous and helpful some people can be.
The below are two screencasts made by James May, ICT Manager at St Margaret’s CE Junior School. They are evaluating the Its Learning VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) platform for their school.
Obviously one of the major considerations when buying a VLE is ease of use and ability to integrate the products you know and love. Our request was just the excuse he needed to apply his growing Its Learning skills.
The first movie shows how he inserted our new POPbox (our POPbox shows the current featured movie and can be embedded into a webpage):
The second shows how he linked BrainPOP UK movies directly into a “discussion” page, using an iFrame technique (using an auto-login URL we supplied so the user doesn’t need to login to BrainPOP UK to access the resources). iFrames can show “a webpage within a webpage”. This is useful as the teacher can link directly to an individual movie, invite comments and the pupil doesn’t need to necessarily leave the VLE.
Huge BrainPOP UK thanks to James for his time.
What does this tell us?
- BrainPOP UK is pretty easy to integrate into your VLE. The techniques James showcases here are fairly standard and could be replicated in the vast majority of VLEs. We’re building a set of “How to” pages for each of the major VLEs in the UK. If you are unsure, let us know and we’ll help.
- If you don’t ask, you don’t get. We are very grateful to the EduGeekers for their support and experience.
March 17th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
These approaches would work for any website or web application that allows you to create iFrames or embed code.
The problem with the auto-login URL is that it’s publicly accessible. You just need to view the source code of the page to find it.
You may need to consider more sophisticated authentication mechanisms than that, if this is an issue. Perhaps an auto-login url that changes every month. It’ll be a hassle for the admin to keep changing it, but is the only way (AFAIK) without having joined up authentication or single-sign on mechanisms between the systems.
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:19 am
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your comments.
We have a number of methods available to protect the URL, including IP detection. We also offer Shibboleth as an alternate SSO. In the example above it’s kind of the simplest solution that works. It’s only using a temporary login which has now expired.
This approach of granting access to BrainPOP UK will be used in protected VLE systems on the whole, not public websites. Each URL is also time bound to the length of a subscription or trial. If the trial expires then the URL ceases to work. If a school found out someone was abusing the subscription they had paid for we can amend the user details and thus render any “old” URLs obsolete immediately. So part of security isn’t relying too heavily on technology or DRM, but in having a good relationship with the schools and making sure they are aware of how to protect and manage their access.
It’s worth bearing in mind the option of NOT doing anything like this. What tends to happen without taking this route of obsfucating the access is usernames and passwords are given out or simply displayed on the page.