January 2008 eSCHOOLNEWS • 25 1-800-323-9084 www.DiscoveryEducation.com This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Discovery Education. eSN Special Report VISUAL LEARNING By Robert L. Jacobson These are special times for visual learning. Spurred by dramatic advances in digital technology, the use of video as an instructional tool is finally coming into its own as a mainstream feature of American education. Today’s expanding access to top-drawer visual material has the ability to reinvigorate much of what goes on in our schools, advocates of video in the classroom say—prompting teachers to take a fresh look at what they teach, how they teach, and how their students learn. And as high-tech video begins to transform and enrich instruction from coast to coast, it also is opening a promising new chapter in the professional development of teachers and fostering closer working relationships between state education agencies and public television networks. Leaders in education and technology can barely contain their enthusiasm over such developments. The excitement reflects what Niki Davis, director of the Center for Technology in Learning & Teaching at Iowa State University, calls a “new energy” in education these days, as administrators and teachers increasingly come to recognize that technological breakthroughs have made longstanding goals for visual learning much more attainable than was previously possible. How the rise of digital video is transforming education See Visual Learning, page 26 Robert L. Jacobson is the senior editor of eSchool News.Davis stresses that educators should look beyond the tech side of things, as fascinating as that can be, because what matters most is what they are able to do because of the technology. Down the road, she says, teachers and administtrator might well look back at the current period and conclude: That was when education truly changed. The growing use of video in schools, along with the spread of online learning in general, is not simply promptiin teachers to “pick up the technology,” Davis explains; it’s actually beginning to change how teachers teach. “Once you use technology, the pedagogy changes,” she says. “It’s saying to teachers, ‘Think about the technologg and, while you’re doing that, think again about what it is you’re trying to teach—the content—and how you’re trying to teach it.’” Michael Simonson, a professor in instructional technollog and distance education at Nova Southeastern University, agrees. The main point to remember about visual learning, Simonson maintains, is that it can affect the substance of education. “The curriculum is the key—not the media,” he says. “We’ve fallen into this trap of considering that the use of technology is going to be an automatic silver bullet that’s going to make kids learn more, be more motivated. But we forget that it’s not the technology, not the media. It’s the content, and it’s the way those media are used. In other words, it’s the pedagogy, it’s the message, it’s the design—it’s the approach—that is the critical element.” To be sure, the conventional wisdom of 10, 20, or even 50 years ago about visual learning still holds: Most of us—students included—tend to learn and remember much more effectively when we can see and hear well-crafted videos on a given topic than when we can’t. In a report about video’s impact on learning a few years back, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting put it this way: “Humans intuitively grasp the power of images to convey meaning. … Viewing is an active process, perhaap best thought of as an interactive experience between viewer and medium. In addition to responding to what they observe from the screen, viewers bring their own experiience and expectations to their viewing.” It has become increasingly difficult to view instructioona video as an “isolated” medium, the report noted, “because video elements are so pervasively intertwined and interconnected with other communications media, from the latest computer technologies to print. These days, what was once a somewhat rigid, one-to-many broadcaas technology has increasingly become a flexible, usercontrrolled and interactive medium. Such malleability obvioousl enhances video’s instructional value.” Recently, a national survey by Advertising.com found that watching videos over the internet was “becoming a habit at all levels.” And analysts for the media research company eMarketer have projected that by 2011, while the number of TV viewers will show a five-year gain of about 5.3 percent, the number of online video viewers will rise about 60 percent. In other words: Online video is fast becoming a national phenomenon, and education is a big part of that picture. But while many teachers have long appreciated the capaccit of video to enhance learning and have tried valiantll to take advantage of it, in the past they often have been severely constrained and discouraged by technologgica limits. Filmstrips and hour-long videos in a darkenne classroom might have had their place—but how many teachers had the resources or the time to find, reviiew select, and effectively incorporate such “teaching aids” in their lessons on a day-to-day basis? Not many. In the last few years, however, that has begun to change—and in ways that signal a profound new directiio for teaching and learning: • Huge repositories of high-quality, well-organized video material have become available for teachers to tap into quickly and smartly whenever they think their lessons will benefit from it. •Millions of students—having been weaned on the interrnet camera phones, podcasts, and the likes of YouTube—are literally primed for a video diet in the classroom. In fact, they crave it and expect it. • High bandwidth for schools has increasingly become the norm, and super-slow downloads have thus receded as an impediment to accessing and adapting videos for instructional purposes, virtually on demand. • Ed-tech leaders and curriculum specialists are embraacin the enormous value of digital video—and its successful application—as an essential “field” to be included in teachers’ pre-service education and professsiona development during their careers. • Inspired by the power of video, public television netwoork and state departments of education have developpe stronger partnerships, pooling their resources and expertise to create vast digital libraries for local school districts, and enabling teachers to access videos easill and routinely for their classrooms. (See the accompannyin story, “Online media: Public television catchee a wave.”) All that has been occurring at a time when both consuume and educational technology are evolving and improovin at a breathtaking pace. Things are happening so quickly that it’s difficult even for the experts and crystal-ball gazers to know just where we’re headed. But in one sense, it almost doesn’t matter, because the technology is getting better all the time. Even major producers of cutting-edge technologies— for everything from high-speed internet, telephony, and television to digital cameras, recorders, and wireless deviccesare being forced to go back to the drawing board and refigure their business plans, often on a continuing basis. Will your computer become your TVset? Will your TV offer the web? Will everything become wireless and fit in your pocket? Yes, yes, and yes. To a great extent, we’re already there, as “convergence” continues to be one of the most enabling realities of our digital world. So with all the remarkable e-stuff that’s out there now, or coming soon to a classroom near you, educators and creators of educational video have come to a new understanndin about visual learning: Teachers no longer need to feel constrained by the old technological limits. Those barriers are disappearing. And now the focus can be on building better video libraries, tagging video content to make it readily searchable and “chunkable” (in brief clips, for example), linking videos to formal educational goals and standards, and helping teachers learn how best to work visual material into the curriculum. Digital video options A prominent leader in this realm is Discovery Education (DE), with its award-winning video-ondemman package, Discovery Education streaming. Still widely referred to by its original name, unitedstreaming, the product is said to reach more than a million users in “more than half of all U.S. schools.” DE, a division of Discovery Communications (the company behind The Discovery Channel, Discovery Health, The Science Channel, Animal Planet, etc.), says the package includes “4,000 full-length videos and 40,000 video clips, images, audio files, lesson plans, a quiz builder, an assignment builder, writing prompts, and oneeS Special Report 26 • eSCHOOLNEWS January 2008 Visual Learning... continued from page 25 See Visual Learning, page 30 “The curriculum is the key—not the media. We’ve fallen into this trap of considering that the use of technology is going to be an automatic silver bullet that’s going to make kids learn more, be more motivated. But we forget that it’s not the technology, not the media. It’s the content, and it’s the way those media are used. In other words, it’s the pedagogy, it’s the message, it’s the design—it’s the approach—that is the critical element.” —Michael Simonson, Professor, Instructional Technology and Distance Education, Nova Southeastern University 1-800-323-9084 www.DiscoveryEducation.com This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Discovery Education.1-800-323-9084 www.DiscoveryEducation.com This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Discovery Education. You’re visiting the home page of an Alabama-based web site, and the drop-down menu includes links to the kinds of items you might expect from a state departtmen of education. The links will take you to informmatio about early childhood education, adult educattion literacy, a calendar of events, and online learning resources for people of all ages. In this case, however, the web site belongs not to the state’s education department, but to APTV— Alabama Public Television—and therein lies a story. One of many, actually. Created decades ago, when television was much younger and the internet had yet to be born, public broadcasstin entities such as APTV lately have been riding a new digital wave. In close collaboration with curricullu specialists and other officials at state education agenciies they are moving to the forefront of online learning. Although their mission to serve the public interest has always had an educational core, the recent explosion of digital video as an instructional tool is prompting publli TV networks to move increasingly onto the internet as a means of distribution, and thus heavily into the onliin video worlds of teachers and students. After all, the networks have the media with which to do it. “Our business is education,” says Nancy Hill, direccto of educational services for Alabama Public Television. “So, given the fact that media is our vehiccl for delivery, it’s a logical progression for us” to take advantage of the internet, in addition to TVbroadcassts to enrich teaching and learning in the schools. APTV’s “big leap,” as Hill describes the change, came about four years ago, when it created a videooondemand service for educators, parents, and others who work with children. Overnight broadcasting to the schools, so videos could be recorded and shown during school hours, has been phased out, and today 95 percent of the network’s educational resources are provided online, Hill says. Alabama is one of eight states whose public broadcasstin stations and state education agencies are participattin together in e-Learning for Educators, a federally financed program that provides online professional develoopmen courses for teachers. The other states are Delaware, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Part of the reason for APTV’s online focus, Hill notes, is that it was having a hard time tracking the use of its broadcast material and began to notice, at the same time, that teachers were turning increasingll to the internet to find new educational resources. Now, like public TV networks in a number of othee states, APTV is meeting that demand with a wide selection of high-quality digital videos on thousands of topics. The heart of its service consists of searchabbl streaming videos, clips, and other online materiia from Discovery Education (DE). Eventually, individdua school districts will be able to upload content developed by their own teachers. Hill says she especially values DE streaming becaaus it provides “efficient, effective, and convenient” access over the internet, enabling teachers to choose from “a myriad of different types of resources—video, lesson plans, still images, text articles, quiz questioonsto put together their own lessons and learning activity plans.” Here’s some of what public TVbroadcasters and state education leaders in have been doing in other states: •Working with Arkansas’s state education departmeent the Arkansas Educational Television Network (AETN) brought a national expert on school mentorrin to its studios, recorded his presentation, and made it broadly available to teachers. Kathleen Stafford-Branton, AETN’s education director, says the network’s education portal offers a way to “bring equality [and] equity” to schools around the state. “We do a lot of training on how a teacher can best utilize video streaming,” she says. • In Arizona, an organization called ASSET—the acronym stands for Arizona School Services through Educational Technology—operates as a self-supported department of Eight/KAET public television, which is located at Arizona State University. Noting that ASSET has relied heavily on DE streaming for the past several years to proviid instructional tools, Debra Lorenzen, the group’s executive director, says its professionaldevellopmen content has been growing faster than its curricular materials—which, she adds, have been linked to state standards. • Schools across Iowa can take advantage of a voluntaar purchasing program that provides “volume” discouunt on many products—including DE streaming and other audiovisual material, online publications, technology supplies, and a multimedia archive— through the Iowa Educators Consortium (IEC). The indepenndent nonprofit organization was created by the state’s Area Education Agencies. Even in the video age, says Jerry Cochrane, an IEC coordinator, non-video items continue to be popular among teachers. • Nancy Pearson, director of educational technology at Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB), used to work on professional development activities at the state’s education department. Since transferring to MPB early last year, she’s been overseeing a “technollog integration” project to help several schools meet requirements for academic progress. She crediit collaboration between the two agencies for othee successes, including a dramatic increase in the number of teachers enrolling in online courses. • In central New York, the public broadcasting statiio WCNYtells people visiting its web site to expllor EdVideo Online, its version of DE streamiin and related content. Because of a partnership between public broadcasters and the state educatiio department, the service is available free to all K-12 and adult-literacy educators and their students throughout the state. WCNY’s president, Robert Daino, who also chairs an association of all nine PBS stations in the state, says PBS stations all over the country are constantly seeking new ways to share and improve their educational offerings. • StreamlineSC, South Carolina’s video-streaming service in education, is the result of cooperative effoort by the state’s educational television entity, known as SCETV, and the state education departmeent In addition to DE videos, the service includes material from SCETV productions and programs approved by the education department. All 85 school districts in the state use the service, which registered more than two million views in 2006-07. Dean Byrd, director of distance learning at SCETV, says he likes the fact that feedback from Discovery shows which programs are effective. One of the most ambitious efforts to upgrade educattio through technology and related in-service educaatio for teachers has taken place in Kentucky, where sweeping structural and curricular changes folloowe a 1989 State Supreme Court decision that invaliidate the state’s system for financing its schools. With a resulting new emphasis on educational equity, recalls Bill Wilson, deputy director for education and outreeac at Kentucky Educational Television (KET), officiial there and in the state education department needed to find effective ways to bring smaller and poorer school districts up to par. That background, Wilson says, has contribbute to an environment today in which the power of instructional video plays a critical role. At KET, Discovery Education streaming forms the backbone of what the network has dubbed EncyloMedia, which the state helps finance. Wilson says a guiding principle has been to focus on students as learners and on teachers as facilitators. “In the old days,” he explains, “we used to look at technology to help teachers teach. Today, it’s to help students learn.” Kentucky’s approach to professional development, Wilson adds, has involved asking teachers what they need, rather than telling them. A related aspect has been to illustrate good classroom practices by making “authentic” films, not set up in advance, showing “averrag teachers who are out there on a day-to-day basiis trying to do the job.” Collaborative work with teachers is important, says Kathy Quinn, herself a long-time teacher and former Kentucky education department administrator who has been KET’s education director for more than sevee years. And with digital video and other new technollogy today’s teachers have much easier access to resources. Quinn notes that EncycloMedia specialisst help with teacher training. Kentucky’s use of DE streaming, previously called unitedstreaming, originated in its Scott County Schools. Jeanne Biddle, the district’s technology director, works primarily on instructional issues. She says that about seven years ago, her predecessor, Leslie Flanders, was among the first to see the video service in action, and that Flanders spread the word. It caught on quickly throughout the state. Eventually, the popularity of streaming video contribbute to the state’s investment in providing higher bandwidth for schools, Biddle says. A current goal is to “push EncycloMedia into the hands of the students.” At the state education department, David Couch, associate commissioner for educational technology, is enthusiastic about the agency’s partnership with KET. He says EncyloMedia has connected better with teacheer “than most anything else I’ve seen” for daily use in the classroom.—R.L.J. Online media: Public television catches a wave “Our business is education. So, given the fact that media is our vehicle for delivery, it’s a logical progression for us” to take advantage of the internet to enrich teaching and learning in the schools. — Nancy Hill, Director of Educational Services, Alabama PublicTelevision January 2008 eSCHOOLNEWS • 27􀁋􀁘􀁢􀁜 􀀺􀁦􀁥􀁫􀁩􀁦􀁣 􀁦􀁝 􀁐􀁦􀁬􀁩􀀗 􀀻􀁠􀁞􀁠􀁫􀁘􀁣 􀁍􀁠􀁛􀁜􀁦 􀁮􀁠􀁫􀁟 􀁫􀁟􀁜􀀗 􀀻􀁠􀁪􀁚􀁦􀁭􀁜􀁩􀁰􀀗 􀁄􀁜􀁛􀁠􀁘 􀁊􀁜􀁩􀁭􀁜􀁩 􀀰􀁋􀀹 W W W. D I S C O V E R Y E D U C A T I O N . C O M /9 T B Introducing the Discovery Media Server 9TB. Let educators take control of the teachable moment through the unparalleled content library of Discovery Education™ streaming Plus, including PLANET EARTH and DiscoveryATLAS, combined with dependable DELL™ PowerEdge™ servers. This locally-hosted video-on-demand solution is network friendly and empowers educators to share theworld with their students.􀀻􀁠􀁪􀁚􀁦􀁭􀁜􀁩􀁰 􀀼􀁛􀁬􀁚􀁘􀁫􀁠􀁦􀁥􀂠 􀁪􀁫􀁩􀁜􀁘􀁤􀁠􀁥􀁞 􀁜􀁥􀁜􀁩􀁞􀁠􀁱􀁜􀁪 􀁙􀁦􀁫􀁟 􀁫􀁜􀁘􀁚􀁟􀁜􀁩􀁪 􀁘􀁥􀁛 􀁪􀁫􀁬􀁛􀁜􀁥􀁫􀁪􀀥􀀗 􀁆􀁭􀁜􀁩 􀁟􀁘􀁣􀁝 􀁦􀁝 􀁌􀀥􀁊􀀥 􀁪􀁚􀁟􀁦􀁦􀁣􀁪 􀁜􀁯􀁧􀁜􀁩􀁠􀁜􀁥􀁚􀁜 􀁫􀁟􀁜 􀁠􀁤􀁧􀁘􀁚􀁫 􀁦􀁝 􀀻􀁠􀁪􀁚􀁦􀁭􀁜􀁩􀁰 􀀼􀁛􀁬􀁚􀁘􀁫􀁠􀁦􀁥􀀗 􀁪􀁫􀁩􀁜􀁘􀁤􀁠􀁥􀁞 􀁜􀁭􀁜􀁩􀁰 􀁛􀁘􀁰􀀥 􀁄􀁦􀁩􀁜 􀁫􀁟􀁘􀁥 􀀫􀀧􀀣􀀧􀀧􀀧 􀁭􀁠􀁛􀁜􀁦 􀁪􀁜􀁞􀁤􀁜􀁥􀁫􀁪 􀁘􀁥􀁛 􀁫􀁟􀁦􀁬􀁪􀁘􀁥􀁛􀁪 􀁦􀁝􀀗 􀁘􀁩􀁫􀁠􀁚􀁣􀁜􀁪 􀁘􀁥􀁛 􀁠􀁤􀁘􀁞􀁜􀁪 􀁜􀁥􀁟􀁘􀁥􀁚􀁜 􀁠􀁥􀁪􀁫􀁩􀁬􀁚􀁫􀁠􀁦􀁥 􀁘􀁥􀁛 􀁙􀁦􀁦􀁪􀁫 􀁪􀁫􀁬􀁛􀁜􀁥􀁫 􀁣􀁜􀁘􀁩􀁥􀁠􀁥􀁞􀀥 W W W. D I S C O V E R Y E D U C A T I O N . C O M 􀀹􀁩􀁠􀁥􀁞 􀁫􀁟􀁜􀁎􀁦􀁩􀁣􀁛 􀁫􀁦 􀁋􀁟􀁜􀁠􀁩 􀁎􀁦􀁩􀁣􀁛30 • eSCHOOLNEWS January 2008 eSN Special Report line self-paced professional development.” For annual fees ranging from $1,495 to $2,995 per buildinng depending on the grade levels served, school districts can subscribe to a service that allows teachers to access and download Discovery’s streaming videos directly from the internet. An alternative product, launched this past fall, proviide “plug-and-play” servers holding nearly 8,000 videos from Discovery’s collection that users can obtain locally, without having to worry about internet speed. DE streaming contains videos and clips in major subjeec areas, including science, math, social studies, and languuag arts. Because of an elaborate tagging system in which full-length videos have also been divided into segmeent on specific topics, teachers can search according to terms that correspond with their lesson plans and quickll locate short to medium-length clips, along with articlles images, guides, and related items. For example, searching on the phrase “global warminng brings descriptions and links for 37 full-length videos—such as an hour-long 2005 PBS program, “Global Warming: The Signs and the Science,” for highschhoo students, and a 15-minute 2001 film called “Weather Smart: Climate” that is aimed at grades three to five. The PBS video has been divided into 14 segments, which last for as little as two minutes, 40 seconds, and up to more than 17 minutes. The “Weather Smart” film for the younger set has a dozen segments, nearly all of which are less than two minutes long. “It’s terrific,” says Iowa State’s Davis about DE streaming, underscoring the ease with which teachers can find what they’re looking for. “The teacher can actually say [to students]: ‘I don’t want you to go and look at that whole video over there; I want you to look at this particulla clip and think about this’—and maybe get them to make some hypotheses, and then go back and view it again. The way it’s organized is tremendous.” Meanwhile, teachers in search of good videos to show their students have a growing array of other resources to explore—largely through the internet, often free, and dealiin with a broad range of topics in many subjects, particuularl in the sciences and social studies. One such resource is Teachers’ Domain, a “curriculuumbased digital media service” offered over the web by WGBH, the Boston area’s public-broadcasting entity. Its library of videos, images, and other material can be downloaaded shared with others, and remixed without charge. In a partnership with PBS TeacherLine, WGBH also offeer online professional development courses for science teachers in elementary and secondary schools. Broad searches of the internet also will yield many potential films, clips, animations, and images—which, with an investment of extra time and creativity, teacheer might find useful, if only occasionally. A recent search on “global warming” within Google Video, for example, turned up more than 22,000 entries, many of them decidedly not for classroom use. But expanding the search term to include the word “science” reduced the number of hits to fewer than 1,200, and at least some of the entries seemed relevant. Performing similar searches on the web sites of news organizations or on other, specialized sites can be more fruitful. For instance, asking the New York Times’s search engine to find material on “global warming” will take you to “Times Topics: Global Warming,” and from there it’s a quick hop to an interactive graphic on “Sea Ice in Retreat” and an automated photo gallery, with audio narrattion titled “Global Warming: ALegacy Issue.” An exploration of National Geographic’s web site, meanwhiile eventually will bring you to some fine photos and a brief video—“courtesy of NASA”—about “the rapid retreat of north polar ice and its repercussions for the planet.” Huge challenges remain There’s another dimension to this story, however. For all the gains that new technology has brought to instructioona video, some experts see big challenges remaining before schools can claim to be taking full advantage of the opportunities. The heart of their concern, which education leaders in a number of states are working hard to address, is that many classroom teachers still are not up to speed—technicaally or even pedagogically—on how to make the most of resources for visual learning. Video’s extensive presennc on the internet, along with many students’ substantiia exposure to digital media, points more than ever to the need for top-flight teacher education and “in-service training,” experts say. To Donna Scribner, chief learning officer for The Virtual High School, a nonprofit organization that proviide online courses for credit to high school students in the United States and abroad, the issue is more educatioona than technological, and it confronts both teachers and school administrators. “We know our students are already connected to [the digital] environment,” says Scribner. “It’s the adults in the world who are not as well connected.” And how can schools make up for that? “How much time do we have?” Scribner asks. While there are a growing numbbe of internet sites with good instructional media, “it takes time to search them out.” A related concern is that, apart from the solid conteen and organization that teachers are likely to find in a service such as DE streaming, no one has yet to get a handle on structuring, analyzing, and vetting all the visual materials on the web that could well be used in the classroom. Because of such issues, Scribner notes, the importance of visual learning in teachers’ professional development has come to the forefront in education circles. “As teachers, we used to have to get professional develoopmen in order to maintain our licenses, and it realll didn’t matter at times what we got those credits in, as long as we got them and it fit our yearly plans,” Scribner says. “Now, I’m seeing more and more teacherrs educators, and administrators saying, you know, this is like the ‘brave new world’ for the adults, and you all need to know what your students know. You need to be part of the revolution by actually experiencing it through professional development opportunities.” Scribner advises school districts to facilitate professsiona development by “paying for the substitutes up front” and giving teachers time off from their classrooo responsibilities, so they can both attend “immersiion workshops in educational technology and follow up later on. “And you can’t just go to a workshop,” Scribner remarrks “You’ve got to get experiences where you actuaall participate in [teaching with video in a school setting]. Because teachers are human, and when they come to teaching something that is unfamiliar to them, if it reaches a point of anxiety or stress, they will go back to teaching the way they were taught.” Bandwidth, too, can still be an issue—especially for students who use the internet at home in connection with their schoolwork, says Nova Southeastern’s Simonson. “Even today, there are many who still use dial-up to access the internet, hard as that is to believe. And many of today’s DSL connections are still not realll very fast. So if we design a streaming video, for example, if it’s extremely graphical, a lot of people have a difficult time accessing that.” As a result, says Simonson, who is an expert in instrucctiona systems, people may “revert to the least commmo denominator when it comes to the technologies that we use. We see that happening.” And even when schools have sufficient network capaccit to download videos, they might not have “some of the basic technologies” to make proper use of them. Visual Learning... continued from page 26 See Visual Learning, page 31 “You’ve got to get experiences where you actually participate in [teaching with video in a school setting]. Because teachers are human, and when they come to teaching something that is unfamiliar to them, if it reaches a point of anxiety or stress, they will go back to teaching the way they were taught.” —Donna Scribner, Chief Learning Officer, The Virtual High School 1-800-323-9084 www.DiscoveryEducation.com This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Discovery Education.1-800-323-9084 www.DiscoveryEducation.com This eSchool News Special Report is made possible with financial support from Discovery Education. January 2008 eSCHOOLNEWS • 31 In many schools that Simonson has visited, people have “pulled the speakers out of the computer labs and the classrooms” because they consider the sound to be disruptive, he says. But if speakers are removed, video streaming ends up being “no good. You can see the visuaals but you can’t hear the sound. So teachers migrate away from the use of video streaming, because they can’t hear what the narrator is saying.” Simonson urges schools to instill a “systematic approoach to using video technology, including both hardwaar and software. Having a technology plan that administtrator and teachers buy into is essential, he says. And schools need a “step-by-step process by which you can incorpporat visual teaching to promote visual learning.” Media specialists are key For school districts to capitalize fully on the promise of visual learning, many experts suggest, they also need more media specialists. At a time when rich visual meddi are becoming plentiful, they say, many districts lack an adequate staff of librarians and media experts to suppoor their teachers. When enrollments drop and budgets get tight, meddi specialists often are among the first to go, Simonson observes: “A lot of folks say, ‘We don’t need a librariann.We have an athletic director for a school of 600 kids, but we don’t have a media specialist.” Librarians and media specialists should take part in planning for video streaming and other digital services in the schools, says Justin Wadland, chair-elect of the American Library Association’s Video Round Table. If a school is going to host a video server, he says, “then IT people would be needed to support that.” But for teacheer “who are actually going to be using it,” it’s also “imporrtan to have those librarians.” Wadland’s point might seem to be self-evident, but he says the reality is that librarians “sometimes get left out.” Some people mistakenly think, “Well, we’ll just make the service available, and teachers will use it,” says Wadland, who oversees video and media resources at the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus. “But the training part is just very important. It’s a lot to ask teachers to change the way they teach without giving them training in how to use the technology.” Wadland adds: “That’s a good role for a librarian or media specialist. I do this quite a bit in my job. I will go to a database and learn the quirks, and then I’ll share that information with my colleagues and students who ask me questions.” Wadland says one of his concerns about reliance on visual resources in education is that students might not always question where various material has come from. Just because they are proficient in using digital media “doesn’t necessarily mean they can think critically about the media,” he says. Students must learn how to assess the sources of videos, Wadland asserts, and they must ask, “What are the values that are put into this thing?” In Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn, a book published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Lynell Burmark, a consultaan on education video, writes: “The primary literacy of the 21st century will be visual: pictures, graphics, images of every kind … it’s no longer enough to be able to read and write. Our students must learn to process both words and pictures. They must be able to move gracefully and fluently between text and images, betwwee literal and figurative worlds.” According to Niki Davis, many students—includiin college undergraduates, let alone K-12 students— need “a fair amount of scaffolding” beneath them when they go online. Otherwise, she says, “they can get lost on the web and treat as authentic things that are not.” The internet’s wide-open nature is one reason for the appeal of video collections like those distributed through Discovery Education. The company has stressed that notion in its promotional literature, saying it offers “the very best in high-quality educational programming from some of the industry’s most trusted content providers.” Instructional video, both proprietary and open source, will “continue to leverage innovation” in the classroom, says Robert Daino, president of WCNY, a multimedia public broadcasting group in central New York state. But he says the number of educators who currently embrace visual content over the internet is still “fairly low.” Even today, some teachers might not be aware of the opportunities, Daino suggests, while others might simply be reluctant to change their methods. But he argues that, in the final analysis, the resisters will have to change— because their students will demand it. Visual Learning... continued from page 30 Alabama Public Television (video room) http://www.aptv.org/Videoroom/index.asp Annenberg Media http://www.learner.org Arizona School Services through Educational Technology (ASSET) http://www.asset.asu.edu Arkansas Educational Television Network (video archive) http://www.aetn.org/videolibrary.shtml Atomic Learning Inc. http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/home Britannica Online Features Archive: Science & Technology http://www.britannica.com/features/category?categoryId=31 Cable in the Classroom (online video) http://www.ciconline.org/video Center for Digital Storytelling http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html Center for Technology in Learning & Teaching, Iowa State University http://www.ctlt.iastate.edu Center for Technology and School Change, Teachers College, Columbia University http://www.tc.columbia.edu/academic/ctsc Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, Columbia University http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu Discovery Education streaming http://www.discoveryeducation.com/products.cfm e-Learning for Educators Initiative (Boston College site) http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/researchprojects/eLearning/efe.shtml Elluminate Inc. http://www.elluminate.com FMG on Demand (educational video) http://www.fmgondemand.com/PortalPreviewCenter.aspx?cid Google Video http://video.google.com Inspiration Software Inc. http://inspiration.com/productinfo/inspiration/index.cfm Iowa Educators Consortium http://www.iec-ia.org Kentucky Educational Television http://www.ket.org/education Library Video Co. http://www.libraryvideo.com Mississippi Public Broadcasting (education services) http://www.mpbonline.org/educators/EDUmain.htm National Geographic Channel Videos http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/video netTrekker (educational search engine) http://nettrekker.com/PBS Podcasts http://www.pbs.org/search/search_results.html?q=podcast &btnG.x=0&btnG.y=0&neighborhood=none PBS TeacherLine http://teacherline.pbs.org/teacherline SchoolMedia Inc. http://www.schoolvideos.com South Carolina Educational Television http://www.myetv.org/education/index.cfm Teachers’ Domain, WGBH http://www.teachersdomain.org Times Topics, The New York Times http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/index.html?8qa WCNY (interactive education) http://www.wcny.org/content/section/4/45 Visual learning: A potpourri of web resources, products Market leader: Discovery Education’s streaming video. eSN