Digital Literacy in the Classroom

The Teaching Channel delivers videos for teachers over various platforms, including the Internet.  In addition to showcasing inspiring teachers, Teaching Channel hosts a community for educators to share ideas and best practices and to enhance their knowledge. For example, Teaching Channel Presents and PBS LearningMedia provide materials that can help teach students to become proactive digital citizens.

You can preview the Teaching Channel Presents episode Digital Literacy in the Classroom, which show students learning how to become proactive digital citizens.   From understanding safe behavior online to learning how to find reliable sources to seeing how online activity leaves a lasting identity trail — these lessons are designed to develop critical thinking skills.  You can search the Teaching Channel’s schedule and watch other full one-hour episodes such as Teaching Math to the Core, Connecting the Arts to Academics, Middle School and The New Teacher Experience.  Check out the preview below:

For additional digital literacy activities, check out other media-rich resources from PBS LearningMedia such as What Is Personal Information? for grades 3-6 and Cybersafe Your Teens  for grades 6-12.

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Shakespeare Uncovered: Education Resources

Recently, you might have seen  Shakespeare Uncovered take on Hamlet and The Tempest.  This  great series combines history, biography, iconic performances, new analysis, and the personal passions of celebrated hosts such as Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Irons and Joely Richardson to tell the stories behind the stories of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

We invite you to see Shakespeare Uncovered as a series of splendid “short courses” made easy with episodes available for streaming.  Designed for immediate use in high school classrooms, an educator site provides a robust collection of lesson plans and curricular materials — which adhere to national learning standards – and contain video segments, comprehensive instructions for classroom implementation, printable student handouts, links to online resources, and suggestions for extension activities to enhance students’ reading, viewing, and appreciation of Shakespeare’s works.

Just a few of the lessons for grades 9-12 are Talking to Myself:  Hamlet’s Soliloquies,  All the Globe’s a Stage:  Shakespeare’s Theatre and Women’s Roles in As You Like It.   PBS LearningMedia, a digital library for teachers, also has scores of classroom resources on Shakespeare for grades 6-13+.

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Video Lending Library Feature: Tour 36 Museums Without Leaving Classroom

Take a tour of 36 great museums across America without leaving your classroom! The tour includes museums that cover history and culture, fine arts, science and industry. Besides a look at the various displays, there is behind-the-scene footage of the men and women who makes our museums a national treasure. The video album is called Great Museums(I.D. 2329). Borrow this 2-DVD set for a month by clicking here.

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Teaching Channel Presents

Are you anxious to try some new and innovative techniques this year to engage your students and prepare them for the 21^st century?  In October, Teaching Channel Presents and PBS LearningMedia invite the educational community in our region to observe master teachers do just that.  You can learn how to incorporate digital literacy, the common core standards, the arts, and science technology into your classroom.  (Season 2 premieres on WGBY World on Sunday, September 23 at 5:00a.m.)

Now in its second season, Teaching Channel Presents is a groundbreaking series showcasing inspired teaching in America’s K-12 classrooms. Each weekly one-hour episode focuses on a compelling issue facing education today, a wide variety of topics including the New Teacher Experience, Bullying, The Common Core State Standards, Digital Literacy, and the Arts.  For more information and a free online library of more than 500 videos featuring real teachers in real classrooms,  please visit http://www/teachingchannel.org.

For now, check out one of their videos on teaching the Common Core Standards in Elementary School.

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Just for Your Relaxation and Enjoyment: Tony Bennett Duets II

Throughout the year we strive to provide the best resources for you and your students.  With the fast-approaching end of the school year, we’re aware that more than ever teachers will need some time to rest and renew.  Listening to Tony Bennett and some of today’s most accomplished singers in Great Performances’ Tony Bennett:  Duets II can be a great way for you to begin to relax and enjoy this time.

WGBY is rebroadcasting this production from Great Performances on Monday, June 11, at 8:00 pm when Tony Bennett is joined by contemporary artists Lady Gaga, John Mayer, Michael Buble, k.d. lang, Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson, Queen Latifah, Norah Jones, Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli, Faith Hill, Alejandro Sanz, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse.  If you’ve already seen their performances, they deserve a second viewing to hear the way they blend not only their voices but also their personalities in often unexpected ways.  You may even find yourself changing your mind about the talent of some of these younger songsters.

Inspiring, too, is how these performers reveal their admiration of the legendary Bennett, a performer who always “shows up” and never lets them or the audience down.  Bennett’s equally generous commentary about these singers also reveals his role as a mentor who knows what to look for in great performers.  You can watch a preview to see what we mean:

 

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Grant: P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children’s Education

The P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children’s Education makes grants for new or evolving programs that integrate the arts into educational programming. The purpose is to aid and support teachers who wish to establish an effective learning tool using the arts in teaching children who learn differently. 

Maximum award: $1,000

Eligibility: programs for children K-12

Deadline: September 30, 2012

Note: WGBY is not affiliated with this grant program.  Please contact the funder directly with questions.

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ART21: Teaching and Learning about the Creative Process

Beginning tonight at 9pm, WGBY will air Art21, which over the past decade has established itself as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary art and artists through its Peabody Award-winning biennial television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century.

Art21 serves educators and students by providing free materials and programs devoted to the exploration of contemporary art and artists, including the widely distributed Educators’ Guides. It recently launched Art21 Educators, a yearlong professional development initiative designed to cultivate and support K–12 educators interested in bringing contemporary art, artists, and ideas into their classrooms.  Art21 also maintains an extensive archive of all of the films and educational materials it produces.

Additional resources for educators explore ways to introduce and discuss contemporary art in classrooms using various media.  Included in the Art21 Teach section, you’ll find:

On Contemporary Art:  This section suggests ways to introduce some of the larger questions related to contemporary art, before starting to teach with a specific artist’s work, theme, or lesson idea.

Materials for Teaching: Gain access to downloadable materials for use in school and community settings to introduce individual artists, themes, or ideas—as well as ancillary resources to contextualize these materials and pursue further research. Educators’ Guides, Screening Guides, and extended lesson ideas suggest a wide range of ways to teach with Art21.

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Poems and Poets for All Times

Referenced in a recent post about GIFs (one of the web’s oldest image formats now widely used for its innovative potential),  PBS Arts is the core of an online strategy for strengthening arts awareness, appreciation and education in America.  To spark a resurgence of the visual, cultural and performing arts, this PBS Arts Online concept brings audiences directly into the creative process, fosters individual artistic expression and promotes experimentation.

You can browse a broad and diverse range of  genres such as dance, theater and film, and with April being poetry month, you might especially want to explore writing, where you’ll find these videos and more:

Five Good Answers from a Shakespeare Scholar, Dr. Gail Kern Paster, director of the Shakespeare Folger Library and renowned Shakespeare scholar who collaborated with PBS Teachers to help educators bring Shakespeare into the classroom.

Patrick Stewart:  What We Learn from the Bard , an interview of Emmy- and Grammy-nominated actor of “Star Trek” and “X-Men” fame, who explains what young people can learn from Shakespeare and why Shakespeare remains relevant.

“Mother’s Day” by Daisy Zamora, one of Nicaragua’s most distinguished poets, who eloquently expresses the dilemma of being a mother today, especially one who makes unconventional choices

“One Boy Told Me” by Arab-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye, who uses her unique perspective as his mother to transform a boy’s everyday chatter into a work of art that perfectly captures the magical thinking of children.

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OFF BOOK: “Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium”

Chances are, your students are on Tumblr right now looking at and creating animated GIFs. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then watch this:

GIFs are one of the oldest image formats used on the web. Throughout their history, they have served a huge variety of purposes, from functional to entertainment. Now, 25 years after the first GIF was created, they are experiencing an explosion of interest and innovation that is pushing them into the terrain of art. In this episode of Off Book, they chart their history, explore the hotbed of GIF creativity on Tumblr, and talk to two teams of GIF artists who are evolving the form into powerful new visual experiences.

Off Book is a great web series from PBS that explores the lesser known terrain of 21st century art.  You can follow Off Book on Tumblr or Twitter.  There’s also a great website to check out all this stuff: PBS Arts.

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MASTERPIECE provides Teacher’s Guides as companions to teaching the classics

Due to the recent success of Downton Abbey, Masterpiece has been in the news quite a bit.  But for 40 years, PBS’ Masterpiece has been known for high-quality adaptations of classics, mysteries, and contemporary literature. Browse more than 30 Teacher’s Guides that can help you enhance your teaching by using Masterpiece films in the classroom.  Here are just a few of their featured guides:

• Film in the Classroom, Revised
  This completely updated guide, created for Masterpiece’s 40th anniversary, offers fresh ideas and innovative activities for teaching film in today’s digital environment. Drawing on a treasure trove of 25 outstanding Masterpiece films, the guide will help you use film not just as an adjunct to literature, but as a tool that can improve students’ understanding of media literacy as well as literary elements.
• A Tale of Two Cities
  One of the most frequently-taught Dickens novels, A Tale of Two Cities explores issues also associated with other works of Charles Dickens: poverty, oppression, cruelty, social disruption, justice, personal redemption, and class struggle. Use this in-depth guide, along with the Masterpiece film, to help make this timeless tale come alive.

 

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