Bringing lessons to life

Instructor, Jan-Feb, 2005

Imagine being able to find and use the exact video clip you need exactly when you need it. With unitedstreaming, a digital video-on-demand service from Discovery Education, you can. When your school district or state purchases unitedstreaming, you have instant access to 40,000 video clips and 4,000 full video titles. You're able to instantly download content from Discovery Channel School, United Learning, Weston Woods, and many more companies. Search by keyword, subject area, curriculum standard, grade, or all available titles. Once you've found the appropriate titles, you can stream or download the video content.

Improve Test Scores

During Brian Hamilton's first year of teaching eighth-grade civics and economics, his students performed poorly on their state assessment. The next year, the Charlotte Court House, Virginia, county director of instruction asked Hamilton and another new teacher to participate in a study for unitedstreaming. "We embedded unitedstreaming video clips that went along with specific parts of lessons into our PowerPoint presentations, and before a test, we'd show the clips again to review." Throughout the year, the students' test scores improved steadily. Even better, the students' Standards of Leaming scores improved by 48 percentage points. Hamilton was thrilled: "I really enjoyed the unitedstreaming resources and the videos were easy to find."

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Ease Teachers' Lives

Librarian Sue Kettler of the Mehlville School District in St. Louis, Missouri, devised a terrific way to get her teachers to use unitedstreaming videos. Kettler found videos that correlated to state standards and matched teachers' lessons. In addition to burning the videos, she created a folder containing a copy of each, the Missouri correlations, the teacher's black-line masters, and the unitedstreaming supplemental teacher guides. Next, she cataloged the folders and bar-coded the items. Now the teachers can see what's available from their classroom computers and are thrilled with all of these extra resources. Best of all, many have begun downloading their own videos.

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Global Awareness

"I was looking for a way to make Egypt real to my third-grade students," explains teacher Carol Graseck of Murray Avenue School in Larchmont, New York. "That way was unitedstreaming." While her students learned about Egyptian life and practiced reading skills, Graseck also implemented mini-lessons on how to view the videos. They watched the video twice without sound and recorded what they noticed about Egyptian life. Then they watched the video for a third time--with sound--and recorded what they wondered about Egyptian life. Finally, they made connections between Egyptian and American cultures. "This unit was extremely meaningful," says Graseck, "and my students were so engaged." Next time around, she plans to focus on Kenya.

Lesson Retention

Most of teacher Jill Longman's English Language Learners have difficulty grasping math concepts. But now that Longman has integrated unitedstreaming videos into her teaching method, many of her students are able to create concrete visions of these complex theories. "After the state exam, my students said that they remembered things from the videos and were able to answer questions correctly," says Longman, a sixth-grade math and history teacher at Olive Vista Middle School in Los Angeles. "Using the videos brings my lessons to life and helps the students retain what they've learned."

Making Introductions

At the beginning of every school year, Jane Rothman, a 25-year teaching veteran, talks to her kindergartners about how they should interact with staff members. Then she takes them on a school tour. This year, she incorporated a unitedstreaming video into that discussion. The video, called Going to School is Your Job, showed kindergartners meeting neighborhood workers in the same way Rothman's students would be doing. "The children were very engaged while watching the video," says Rothman. "It fit right into the lesson, was short enough to hold their attention, gave the children a comfortable starting point, and prepared them for our tour."

Two more reasons to get unitedstreaming:

1) unitedstreaming content is correlated to state standards.

2) Using unitedstreaming videos have been scientifically proven to raise students' test scores.

Interested in a FREE 30-day trial?

1. Go to www.unitedstreaming.com

2. Create your account by entering this New User Passcode: 4C3C-E724

3. Once registered, log on using your unique username and password

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For more information visit www.unitedstreaming.com.

CIRCLE NO. 8 ON PRODUCT INFO CARD