“When you think about the PBS library, documentaries from Ken Burns have become such a staple in social sciences classrooms, that I would guess that most social sciences teachers have used a Ken Burns documentary to bring American history to life in their lessons,” said Schlessinger. “Or Cyberchase, Between the Lions, or Liberty’s Kids for elementary education. These series tie very closely with the core curriculum and are used extensively in classrooms. We knew this from the sales of DVDs, and now from digital usage analyses. Not only are they well aligned to the core curriculum, but over 75 percent of the PBS series and programs we get are closed captioned.”
Schlessinger said it’s this kind of accessibility, pertinence, and quality that draws educators to these titles and makes the expansion of the company’s contract with PBS so noteworthy.
“My sense after being in this business for over 25 years is that PBS has about 20 percent of the most important K-12 series/programs available for today,” he said.
PBS noted that while SAFARI will become the only major national digital distributor of PBS’ library of full-length programs to K-12 schools nationwide as of July 1, the content is available from other sources, most notably from local PBS stations—many of which provide content to local schools in their communities.
“Discovery Education customers will continue to have access to PBS content as part of our ongoing agreement with PBS member stations such as WETA, SCETV, Louisiana Public Broadcasting, among others,” explained Kelli Campbell, senior vice president for Discovery Education. “Discovery Education also works with independent producers that provide PBS content aired on TV and will continue to offer many popular programs including Sid the Science Kid, Reading Rainbow, The PBS NewsHour and WordGirl, among others.”
Dicovery currently houses thousands of video clips from PBS member stations-independent producers that have aired on PBS and PBS National. These videos are part of Discovery Education’s paid subscription service.
“As we regularly seek to enhance and expand our content in order to ensure we have the most up-to-date resources available, we
work with our education partners to evaluate all of our content and tools,” said Campbell. “Based on that evaluation, among other things, we agreed we would not renew our partnership with PBS National, which represents a small fraction of our overall content.”
Learn360 did not responded to an eSchool News reporter’s requests for comment.
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