BBC Schools
The Dots
### The Dots

In September 1977, presentation was again changed to a countdown clock of disappearing dots around a spinning 'Schools and Colleges' legend. A white BBC1 legend was underneath, with the altered network clock discontinued. The spinning Schools and Colleges legend was in fact unintended and was a result of an issue with the mechanical model used. This was amended by the following summer. 

In autumn 1981, the new corporate double lined BBC1 logo was added to the model in replacement of the old one, however this amended model only lasted three months, as the mechanical model was replaced by a computer generated version. The primary difference was that the dots, instead of fading to the background colour of blue, faded to black.

Upon occasions when the schools strand was transferred to BBC2, a version with the BBC2 double lined logo was used the 2 legend replacing the BBC1 legend. Following the switch to electronic, the BBC2 version was also recreated, however during the [Falklands War](/wiki/Falklands_War "Falklands War"), a version with a hastily added BBC2 ident was used, with the replaced caption being the orange logo on a black background box.[Schools page](http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/schoolstv/bbcschools_media.html)  at [TVARK](/wiki/TVARK "TVARK") containing a video of Falklands War BBC2 legend

At around this time, special holding captions with the phrase 'Follows Shortly' were beginning to be used for junctions longer than the 60 seconds that the ident required. During a junction, the follows shortly caption would be shown over music before the screen faded into the ident. Library music was mostly used but chart music was used on occasions including [Night Fever](/wiki/Night_Fever "Night Fever"), [Summer Nights](/wiki/Summer_Nights_%28Grease_song%29 "Summer Nights (Grease song)"), (Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard, and [I'm A Believer](/wiki/I%27m_A_Believer "I'm A Believer").


Why did the mechanical model get replaced by a computer-generated version in 1981?