To Stay VHS/DVD or Go Digital: The Audio-Visual Collection

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Denise Fischer on October 9, 2008 at 7:03pm

My district uses Discovery Education, formerly United Streaming for current videos. It's a digital subscription based service, standards based, which offers "videos" via the computer for pre-K to 12th grade students. When your district buys into the service, each teacher is given an account. There is staff training for at least one person to become the administrator of the account, professional development leader, as every staff member in your district will have access to the service once the district has signed up. There is a rep that will conference online with your staff, helping them understand the program and its features. The teachers are able to access the program from their homes, as well. Available to the staff are videos made by Discovery Education in all subject areas. There are also images and story starters, as well as assignments and tests that can be made in conjunction with the use of the program. The subscription has gone up this year for us, so one has to weigh the usage and benefits vs. the cost. As such, we don't purchase videos or DVD's unless it can't be found on Discovery Education and there is a curricular need.
We still have the VHS and DVD formats at all of our schools. We also have audio books on tape and CD, depending on which format they can be found. We prefer CD over cassette and DVD over video.

Permalink Reply by Dana Buchanan on September 26, 2009 at 7:05am

Our school uses all three. The teachers have slowly been introduced to streaming video's. So they are too busy, too scared or they don't have the smartboards and such to try the digital materials. Currently the teachers are using mainly the VHS/DVD collection. My teachers let me know what they want, and I purchase the video's for the library collection. I then look up those same items in the different digital collections that are out there. My goal is to work with the Science teachers first (they tend to purchase the most), and show them what is available. I have been sharing along with others, but I think it is time spend time with the teachers, where they have oppertunities to experiment while someone is around to answer questions.

Interesting comment made at the MASL (Mo. Association of School Librarians) : Your teachers still show full length movies? We are only show short clips to demonstrate a concept. Clips allow for more teaching time in the classroom.