discovery education streaming is one of my favorite resources. the service is a paid subscription, although every school i encounter has access either paid for by the district or intermediate unit. if you are unsure if your school has an account, you can email discovery education directly to inquire. upon initial log in, you will be required to enter a school passcode & create a user account. you will use your user account name & personal password to log in every subsequent visit.
what is discovery education?
discovery education is an umbrella of services provided by the discovery channel for the classroom. today i will focus on discovery education's streaming service (formally named united streaming). discovery streaming allows you to access over 80,000 video clips, fully searchable, on most any classroom content you need. there is an especially immense number of videos for the science & social studies classrooms. a simple search for the american revolution, for example, finds 207 full videos broken into 827 manageable clips. many videos come with pre-made teacher guides with synopsis, vocabulary, & a quiz. some topics may also reveal audio files, pictures, encyclopedia articles, & quizzes. you can save your favorite clips & files to your account, making them easily accessible to you for future visits.
a major component of this service is the discovery educator network. the network allows you to connect to teachers across the united states to share lessons & ideas. many teachers have a blog hosted through the network, completely accessible to all network members. there is also an elite group of discovery education members known as star educators. star educators are responsible for sharing the features of discovery education with colleagues & receive a multitude of gifts throughout the year for their service. in the last year alone, i received a laptop bag, clock, dvd set, & materials for my own training sessions.
example.
i created a sample lesson using discovery education streaming. in a few short minutes i was able to search for a video clip on proportional representation, add it to my media, & write a quiz. together, all components create a lesson for students. students are then given a url by which they can access your customized lesson. your lesson has customizable features, including alignment to standards, receiving an email update every time a student completes the quiz, & many others. questions can be formatted as multiple choice or short answer. you also have access to hundreds of pre-made lessons & quizzes that could save you valuable prep time.
for reference, an example video on the battle of trenton, from a simple search:
final verdict.
discovery education is one of the best online resources available to teachers. the library of videos is second to none. add the discovery educator network, your my media folder, & lesson creator, discovery streaming becomes even more appealing. the only negative i can think of is the fact that some videos are older, but i understand why discovery channel cannot immediately release its newest productions to a streaming video service. check out discovery streaming, it's one of my favorites.
