Discover Learning

Parents got their first chance recently to take a look at Discovery Education, a classroom service that provides web-based resources like videos, interactive lessons, games and other digital learning tools.

About 30 parents from schools across the district gathered during a digital open house at Zuni Elementary School last month to peruse the variety of learning devices that Discovery Education offers kids there. The idea is for those parents to share their experiences with Discovery Education with their local PTAs and others.

Parents watched as students experimented with water, pretended to be Benjamin Franklin, made commercials, took grammar lessons on computers and otherwise sampled the Discovery Education curriculum.

	Tips for parents Even though students’ assignments are online, parents can still help. Ask your child’s teacher for a username and password to log into Discovery from home. You can: n Review completed assessments and assignments with your child. n Review science vocabulary using the interactive glossary with animations. n Connect to current events. You could search for an educational video on a newsworthy topic like extreme weather. n Read educational passages as part of nightly reading with your child. n Be a role model for lifelong learning by searching for information on a topic that interests you. n Ask your child to show you what he or she has learned in class with a virtual lab or exploration. n Bust myths with your child using the Mythbusters video segments and student review sheets. Source: Discovery Education

Earlier this year, the APS board approved an $11.3 million, seven-year contract with Discovery Education to provide digital resources and lessons across APS. District officials say that step is cheaper than buying new textbooks and will better prepare students for a changing world.

Stephanie Estes, a teacher at Zuni and mother of an APS student, said Discovery Education is helpful in feeding her 11-year-old daughter’s imagination and helping to solve problems with which her mother isn’t able to assist.

“As a parent, it really helps for her to get the info I’m not always able to help her with,” Estes said during the open house. “She has a wild imagination. She wants to learn so much.”

Estes also said that Discovery Education allows her daughter, Addison, to use the Internet for research while not exposing her to potentially harmful online content.

“She’s the first one on the computer to go and say, ‘Can I go on Discovery Ed?’” Estes said. “It’s right up her alley, and it’s fun and easy and safe.”

Jannita Damian, director of the Discovery Education Network, stressed that the digital curriculum focuses on more than just science. The service provides a “multimedia library for the 21st century,” she said.

Damian said Discovery Education has so far been artful in its integration of state standards into the services it offers, and she looks forward to expanding it to other schools.

She said it’s important to keep moving forward in education and focus on students’ futures rather than adults’ past when thinking about education. She noted that kids today spend as much as 7 1/2 hours a day with media.

“Our goal is to recognize that kids today learn differently,” she said. “…Media has been a passive learning experience. It’s not enough anymore to just play a video.”