Here is a history lesson for all you content users. The history of TV4Education and how it all started.

About 7 years ago we had a library system called eLibrary. One of our biggest users put the question to us “why don’t we catalogue and stream “VEA content”?

Having never heard of streaming let alone “VEA Content” we decided to investigate on behalf of our user.

Our developers started investigating what needed to be done to stream multimedia content and I decided I would contact this company called “VEA” from country Victoria”.

Chasing VEA was a project in and of itself. We left numerous messages and letters putting forward our request and explaining how we would grow their user base by streaming their content from our library system (something that had never been done).

After persisting for 6 months, someone from VEA did answer my phone call. I remember the day and the phone call very well because of the response I got to my request.

I was told if no one responded to my calls and communications, I should be well aware that they were not interested in talking to me!

My shocked response was “my goodness, what a response, all you are doing is setting up a competitor”. Her response on the phone was “whatever, good luck” and she hung up!

The rest is history and www.tv4education.com was born about 24 months later after lots of development and even more discussions with our end users on how they would like to see the product develop.

www.tv4education.com is never standing still as we constantly keep talking to teachers, curriculum coordinators, and education professionals.

In a world where cost is escalating almost monthly, our cost to users are trending down as we continue to grow our subscriber base – and that’s in line with our business ethos that “education is a right and not a privilege”.

 

 

Just finalized and released SmartSuite CLOUD project this year – and proud of my amazing staff

At Functional Solutions International Pty Ltd, our core belief is that “Education is a right and not a privilege”.

Everything we do is predicated on this belief and hence to make sure no educational institution is disadvantaged because of financial constraints and any technology constraints.

No other hosting provider provides a more innovative, robust, cost effective FIXED cost hosting solution for educational institutions – guaranteed!

We built SmartSuite from the ground up to be an educational platform that would give any school a set of world class educational tools that would require: –

1. Zero local IT support.
2. Run on any current browser.
3. Would be device independent.
4. Would totally integrated not modularize to have escalating cost for implementation.
5. A FIX affordable cost for all educational institutions with no hidden convenient extras.
6. Unlimited CLOUD usage, storage, and accessibility.
7. No penalties, no exclusions, no exceptions.
8. One simple annual subscription cost for EVERYTHING including hosting.
9. Definitely no Ransomware behavior on exiting the service by holding data.
10. Comprehensive list of modules growing every month.
11. Sophisticated Library Management.
12. Incredible growing educational multimedia content library comprising over 150,000 curriculum records from day one growing by a minimum of 150 records a week.
13. A digital delivery system.
14. Digital lesson creation module that can build lessons from any number of parts of any number of multimedia records and digital objects.
15. A classroom management system to manage the delivery and teaching of digital lessons.
16. Work and integrate with any other digital system.
17. Audit and track all digital activity of all students and staff.

Our feature and function list keep growing every month as institutions come on board and request additional functionality which is provided at no extra cost.

SmartLibrary CLOUD is the most innovative cost-effective product to hit the education space, ever!

We believe we have achieved our goal to bring World Class Educational CLOUD solutions to any educational institution without requiring “big budget expenditure” and delivering a CLOUD solution that far out rivals anything in the current market on functions and features.

As we keep saying “Education is a right and not a privilege”.

I am so proud of my team of what we have achieved and continue to achieve for education!

 

Things I just don’t understand in the education space and probably never will!

1. Why run an education system to prepare our youth for the workforce and on the other hand shut down Australian industry by using foreign products in the education process? It just does not make any sense! 
2. Why not just have a simple “We only buy Australian” policy.
3. Why whinge and whine about low wages, but use foreign products and services; sending Australian currency overseas and worse still diminish our tax collection base from which we build our education budgets! It’s madness.
4. Why whine about shrinking education budgets at schools when schools are locking themselves into multi years contracts for products and services that are becoming cheaper almost every month?
5. We teach students to “question everything” but when it comes to school purchases, it’s just the opposite; we believe all the marketing and professional presentations and question nothing?
6. What’s happened to common sense and openness? What’s wrong in asking all your suppliers to provide product comparison grids (so you can build your own). Or is it we are not after the best, we just want what we want because it’s familiar and learning something new is hard work!

Are we doing the best for our school, our students, our community and our country or are we just occupying till retirement simply because no one else cares and it’s easy?

When I go to bed at night I always asked myself, did I make a difference in this world today and if there was a God, would He be happy with me?

I have three children and one grandson (I hope there will be plenty more), I want to make sure my legacy will be around for them and all the others on this earth long after I and my family turn to dust!

Michael