Our school utilizes a closed circuit cable system to distribute video productions throughout the school building. This system is rarely utilized for purposes other than the school news. The school news is not broadcasted live through this system. The CCTV broadcast includes students announcing upcoming school events and conducting the pledge of allegiance. Typically, the broadcast does not exceed a few minutes. Because this broadcast is recorded and not a live production, no last minute changes or additions can be part of the broadcast after it is filmed. The school uses the traditional PA system for this purpose. As the school news Bear Club only meets once a week, the student news program is only broadcast once a week over our school’s closed circuit video distribution system. This takes place on Friday mornings. The entire third grade and a few special education classrooms are housed in trailers; therefore, they do not have access to the closed circuit televisions that the school news is broadcasted through. However, to make the news available for the portable classrooms, a copy of the production is posted in a folder each week on our school’s shared drive. These classrooms are reminded to play the news on the shared drive through an additional announcement over the PA system on Friday mornings.
The GPB Education website is an excellent source for teachers and students to access. Teachers benefit from the diverse and appealing resources that allow them to quickly build lessons or supplement instruction. There are a variety of educational games, videos, and cartoons that address ESL students, foreign languages, math skills by grade level and many other academic areas. The resources are colorful and of high interest to elementary aged students as many familiar and popular cartoon characters present academic content in a fun audio-visual and interactive format. There are dozens of videos and games available that can be used to enrich instruction and appeal to a variety of learning styles.
The website also provides a “Read More” section that features audio and pictures of many great books for children. These stories could be shown on interactive white boards and are read by famous Georgians such as celebrities, athletes, and politicians. I was also pleased to see that these audio visual ebooks are all available in both Spanish and English languages since my school has a very large ESL student population. There are even music videos available that address social skills and responsibility. All together this is a resource that is too valuable to go unnoticed or unutilized.
Another extremely valuable resource includes the “Raising Readers” section of the site. This tool includes PBS Kids Island. It allows students to build a character, and he or she can play a variety of reading games with this character. The games are interactive and include rewards for success such as tickets to earn a free video or game. Parents and teachers can access this account and assess the progress of the student. There is also news available on the website regarding current events. This is a safe way for teachers to provide students with information about state, national, and world news. Finally, the announcement section provides great information regarding webinars and upcoming events that provide professional development and educational opportunities for students, teachers, and families.
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We have about the same situation you have with regards to the closed circuit system in our school, although at the moment we are not using it at all. it was being utilized at one time and the morning announcements were being broadcast. The media specialist who had been using the video distribution system retired and the media specialist who took over said she never used the system for announcements because the school had by then started using trailers and since the classes out in the trailers couldn’t get announcements, she never continued them. She said she has used the closed circuit system to show a video that needed to be shown throughout the school simultaneously. I am very glad to know we have a working, viable system because I have to use it to show a schoolwide video every morning during International Travelers Week in May. I also hope to create a proposal that will allow a school video program to be implemented in stages. To give you an idea how far we have to go in that area, today I had to bring my video camera from home just so I could videotape a French teacher put on a French play with her students in the media center. We have a LOOONG way to go.
ReplyDeletei appreciate all the specific suggestions you have about ways to use the GPB education website. Until this blogging assignment I had honestly forgotten about the GPS website. When I was a para in a Kindergarten class the kids could go on the GPS website and play some of the early literacy games on GPB Kids as one of their centers and I know they liked it very much, but I hadn’t really taken a look at all the website had to offer. When I was a media clerk, we had a professional development on United Streaming and United Streaming and I knew teachers like to use it and that we are encouraged as media specialists to have teachers use this instead of purchasing video materials. All of our classrooms are equipped with TVs and so GBP is available to them throughout the school day.
I was in a trailer when I was a third grader, so I know what that is like. I can’t believe in 2010 they don’t have it where the trailers can get the CCTV broadcast. I guess that would cost way too much. It sounds like you guys have a lot of announcements going on each day. I wonder how much time is wasted and information is lost since it comes in so many different ways.
ReplyDeleteI played around with the PBS Kids Island after reading your post. I was able to easily sign up and play around with it. It’s pretty easy to use and I think students would enjoy it!
I will really have to look around the GPB website some more, although I did take a look at the PBS kids' island and some other information geared toward teachers. The PBS Kids' Island might necessarily be another online resource that I would let parents know about, specifically because it has games and activities that support phonological awareness and development. My favorite find on this particular part of the website was the Reading Activity Calendar, which provides some sort of writing/reading/literary task or challenge for the day, such as writing a thank you note, making a poem from an acronym (like a name), and so forth. That would be wonderful to use in a classroom--but if a parent chose to do it at home, what an incredible and rich experience it would be for the student!!!
ReplyDeleteGreat review of GPB I may share it with the teachers at my school because I agree that it is too valuable to be "unnoticed and unutilized." I found the site to have a great deal of resources that would appeal to younger students. Before this course my only familarity with GPB was United Streaming and Dinosaur Train. Whenever I let students eat with me in the classroom this is what we watch and they love it. Even though they're big bad fourth graders. We even have great conversations about the content learned after the program. GPB has a wealth of information that we defninitely must take advantage of as teachers. I think the local appeal will also help to draw students' interest. You mentioned stories being read aloud by Georgians and there was also a section about high school students of the week. I think these would be very encouraging tools to use with students. I definitely look forward to making better use of this resource in my classroom and future media center.
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