...they ask these 10 fundamental questions:
1. Do my existing resources match my needs?
First, understand your needs and opportunities before embarking on any kind of decisions. After all, you may have everything you need. But making an inventory checklist of requirements will help to find out if that is true, and identify weaknesses. After that, it is more straightforward to assess any products you may be thinking of purchasing. Include the kind of challenges you face with regard to your staff as well as your students. Ask how do you get ALL of your staff to engage in the most effective ways of achieving the OFSTED objectives? Do you have champions among your staff who could be persuaded to share their knowledge with those who are more reluctant, and how can this be done without taking up even more time and effort? And what about closing the gap between the more and less able? What about finding resources that will challenge the more able while you are concentrating on helping the less able? And what about getting reluctant learners to become more engaged in learning? If you have challenges in any of these areas, then perhaps you need to consider new ways forward.

2. Can I meet OFSTED objectives with my resources?
OFSTED ask Outstanding schools to demonstrate that 'Pupils read widely and often across all subjects.'

This may be one of the highest priority needs you have. What about meeting the 'widely', or even more, the 'often' objective? How do you achieve this? I can say with great confidence that you are unlikely to have the physical books in your school to do this, especially in non-fiction. Not only would finding a book for each student take up a vast amount of space, but it would nowadays be economically unfeasible.

Many schools try to add to their stock with extra copies provided by excellent school library services. Do you use a school library service? But even with the best will in the world, library services supply you with just a few topics books to meet your needs each term. So step back and think…How are those one or two books meant to support an entire year group? Can 50 or even 100 students crowd around a book or two to read widely about their subject? Could any level of short term loan make this system work? Can all students prepare for a topic with that single copy of a book?
Can I get a systematic and wide range of e-books, videos and more, curated to the curriculum K-8? – yes
Curriculum Visions is the most cost-effective way to provide the backbone for your curriculum – available in school and at home for every child. No need to share out books.
"I have to say that I am so impressed ... The amount of resources you have is amazing! I love the way the topics build on one another so students can dive as deep as they want. This is great for those self-motivated students and those who get interested in a subject and want to know more... "

3. Can I make electronic resources more than a 'nice-to-have' extra?
So if you do not have the number or range of physical books to achieve the OFSTED goal, what do you do next within an increasingly challenged budget? The approach adopted by many outstanding schools is to engage with electronic resources in general, both at home and at school. They make them core to what a school does, and not a 'nice-to-have' extra.

But now I can hear you think that although there will be some 'champions' in your school that have embraced all means of learning, there will also be those who 'don't have the time' (often meaning they are fearful of reconfiguring what they do). So you will start to feel that using electronic resources to supplement your needs is expensive because it will only be used by a few.

But the answer to this is not to pull away from resources, but to do what beacon schools do, and use your champion teachers to help the others. That is, increase the use of the resources available to them, not resist additional resources because the learning process might be hard for a short while.
4. Are there real economies of using electronic resources?
E-books offer, in real times, far better economies which genuinely allow all students to read widely and often around their subject. The economics of this makes sense. In our case, unlimited access to all books, by an unlimited number of students, at home as well as at school, costs just £3.00 – £3.60 a month per classroom, depending on your needs. Let's break that down. £3 gives access to over 800 curriculum books (to say nothing of the other resources on each portal page (except teacher resources) so long as you only want access on laptops. £3.20 adds in the teacher resources (photocopiables, wall displays, lesson plans and much more), but still on laptops. £3.60 allows all of that to be fully available for use on mobile devices asa well as laptops.

If you asked a student to read part of a different book each year, you would not get through all of the books. But even if you just asked them to read around the topics for their year and ability, you could be looking at a need of 100 books a year. How does the website membership compare with a typical modern hardback which would be £12.99 a copy? It's a no-brainer in terms of economy when you need large numbers of copies.

OK, so even if that made economic sense, you have voices saying that not all students can access the material at home; but even if you confined it to school it makes sense. And as you can read our e-books on tablets and even mobile phones, there will nowadays be few students who cannot get access to our e-books at some time. And even if there are some, does it make sense to penalise the majority, or more sense to try to support the few who need to be supplied with those resources?

All of that simply relies on book economics and delivery. It does not even begin to scratch at the surface of using books on whiteboards, using videos to introduce and amplify points, and using a wide range of printable lesson plans and photocopiable test sheets. Go through the economics of buying photocopying resources and you will see the same logic applies.

Different companies offer different economic models for this. So search around to see which is the most cost-effective.

Consider another route. Many schools belong to school library services that provide their schools with access to e-books as part of their subscription. Does yours? If it does, are you making use of it? If your school library service does not offer e-resources, why not, and what can you do to persuade them to get it for you? And if you don't use a school library service, but the SLS offers e-resource access, will this tip the balance as to how you feel about subscribing to them? Whatever, before you decide anything, ask your local SLS what they can do for you! If you have one of the excellent and forward-looking SLSs near to you, you might be pleasantly surprised.
5. Are resources awkward to use, or can they be reached in seconds?
So that's the economics to think about. What about the practicalities? With a quick click, the book, video, lesson plan, picture gallery, artifact and so on are available. But that means diving into the resources, so what would be an easy way of helping all staff engage in this?

If you use a VLE platform such as Moodle, you already have a way of delivering material selectively. But we can make life easy even if you don't. Each of our e-books has an interactive bookmark. You just download it and drop it in the folder for your class, or wherever they use the material. It looks like a library card, and has a direct link, so students (or reluctant staff) don't need to go through the website to open their chosen resources.
An interactive bookmark that will open the book directly without going to the website.
Try it out: click the picture to download your interactive bookmark
6. Do I go for a computed word search or a librarian-curated search?
Not all searches are equal. The standard kind of search will find all instances of a word and present a list of links to get to them. We don't do that. We are library-based publishers who are used to compiling indexes. You wouldn't dream of seeing a long list of words in an index would you? That is because a skilled person has looked through all of the instances of a word and selected only those with meaningful links to substantive content. That is exactly what we do for each of our search entries. It is NOT compiled by a computer, but compiled by a human in exactly the same way as a book. As a result the list is shorter and more closely targeted. Someone has asked "how is this word connected to the curriculum?" before adding it. I don't think you will find many other people who take that trouble.

Notice also that, when you click on a search word it gives a definition, then a passage of text and possibly a picture or video. But at the bottom it takes you to a PORTAL where all of the main resources connected to that word can be found on a single page. Again, it is a curated service, not a computer-generated one. The resources such as videos and books, all also have picture icons to make it clear in a user-friendly way, what a resource type is.

We have always valued librarians , and the role they play, often unnoticed behind the scenes. We try to bring library skills into the service. Again, if you value curated searches and portals, then that would be an additional reason for making use of e-resources where curated work has been done.
7. Are resources easy for computer-phobes to use?
Many people still do not like computers because they appear to make life so much harder. One way around this is to use people-friendly book covers instead of long lists. Here is what I mean. Every page you go to in our site uses pictures so that you can see instantly what is available – even for those members of staff who are not so confident. This, for example, is the foot of a search entry:
At the foot of each search entry is a link to further books to read and to the main subject portal. This provides a natural progression to find more for advanced readers.
This is the top of a portal (in this case Greeks). It puts all kinds of media together in a single place so that students can find what they want more efficiently. The content has been curated by a librarian, not a computer.
Subjects can be browsed via friendly cover icons.


8. Do I get more than just books and videos to engage students?
So far, I have talked about replacing physical books with electronic ones to give you more copies at an affordable price. A number of companies can do that. But when considering a service, don't just think about replacing books, and don't think the random videos you can get from YouTube are all you can get. Our videos, for example, are done by us for you, so they are uniformly presented and levelled, just as our books are. And access to all resources is internal, with no external links, so the site is SAFE for students to browse, even at home.

But that is only the start of what can be done, and all within the same subscription price in our case. Some of the most attractive features of our site are the audio-visual interactive Eavesdrops - a spectacular way of getting into History as though you were there, by listening to the action of the time. There are geography biomes ones, too. To see an example of an eavesdrop, click this link:
You get over 60 audiovisual experiences from just one screen of the many 'Eavesdrops through the ages'.
9. Does it really save you time, and thus money?
If you or your staff are spending ages searching for resources, going on YouTube, finding snippets of free stuff and trying to bind them together into some kind of coherent lesson and so on, you may think you are saving money, but in reality you are not. Nor are you getting consistent, levelled quality of material you can trust. Any time spent doing that is time you can't be spending helping students. So if you are going to add to your resources, they have to save teacher time, and in some cases that saved time may even mean being able to take more classes with the same staff. Time in school nowadays really is money.

The only way to save time is if things you need are easy to find when under pressure, convenient to use and readily understood. The biggest time-consumer is making up lesson plans and photocopiables. So look for those in any paid-for resources. (In our case we have over 2000, built around every main curriculum topic.) Another time-consumer is having to do many clicks to get somewhere and therefore losing track of where you are. What you need should be no more than two clicks away, and getting home should be just one click. (In our case click subject, then topic and everything will be displayed in one screen, or open search and add your curriculum word, then click to see the word, and at the foot click again to go to the portal.) Check to see if others can do that.
10. Is there a low risk bar – like zero?
A website may superficially look good, but will it work in your classroom as you move from subject to subject, set homework and so on? If it doesn't, and you have to pay up front, you will have made a costly mistake. The only way to find that out is to try before you buy.

We lower the risk bar to zero, because you can try our site out at silver level, complete with all features, through our 30 day free trial. We have so much confidence in our materials that we take away the risk of you making a costly decision. Head teachers can also ask for the last few days of their trial to be upgraded to the other levels if they are close to finalising their decision. It just needs a phone call. Always keep your risk bar low when you consider resources.
Finally ...about service
The last, and one of the most important things you need to consider is service. Look at a range of companies and find out how much help you can get if you need basic tutorial guidance, or if things go wrong.

At Curriculum Visions, because we have been teachers, we know that help is vital if something goes wrong with just a few minutes to go before a lesson. We include a help desk and an e-mail link as a free part of our service.

Dr Brian Knapp, Director, CurriculumVisions.com
Subscription type
Cost per student per year
What's included
SILVER £3.00 x number of classrooms (all primary/infant /prep school classrooms must be subscribed; secondary schools please ask) Book, picture and video resources at school and home for whiteboards, desktops and laptops.
In detail: Access to all books and videos, picture galleries, search topics and portals all of the time without restriction on desktop and laptops at school AND at home. Does not include access to teacher resources or use on mobile devices.

GOLD £3.20 xnumber of classrooms (all primary/infant/prep school classrooms must be subscribed; secondary schools please ask) As silver PLUS access to ALL teacher resources including photocopiables.
Access to all books and videos, picture galleries, search topics and portals PLUS teacher resources including photocopiables all of the time without restriction on desktop and laptops at school AND at home. Does not include access to full use on mobile devices.
PLATINUM £3.60 x number of classrooms (all primary/infant/prep school classrooms must be subscribed; secondary schools please ask) As gold PLUS full access on mobiles such as iPads and iPhones.
Access to all books and videos, picture galleries, search topics and portals PLUS teacher resources including photocopiables all of the time without restriction on desktops and laptops at school AND at home PLUS mobile devices.

If you are a teacher at a school and want a free trial
for your school, please click here