Thursday, March 15, 2007
Kids will have to look elsewhere for educational entertainment, after the European Commission received complaints that the British Broadcasting Corporation’s website was “unfair competition” to the commercial online games market.
The site, called BBC jam, will be suspended on March 20, 2007, pending review, per the BBC Trust.
BBC jam offers educationally-oriented games aimed at 5 to 16-year-olds, created with an operating budget of £150 million (US$290 million) over five years, US$85 million of which allocated to independent content producers. The government funded service is formally requesting proposals on how it should promote education and learning digitally, without being “non-compliant”.
NUT Cymru, a Welsh teachers’ union, is worried about the closure.
Both NUT Cymru and the Welsh Assembly Goverment have questioned the extent to which commercial firms would step in and fulfill the terms of the Welsh Language Act 1993.