District Administration - September 2007 - (Page 26)

AdministratorProﬁle use Safari Montage. All 115 high schools have access to the video-on-demand system. District administrators hope all of its schools will be able to use the system in the future, McGuire says. Enhancing Lesson Plans With Safari Montage, “teachers only have to show students what they want to support the instruction,” McGuire says. “Safari Montage lets them jump to the video segments that are most important.” For example, a teacher who plans to teach a lesson on hygiene can type the keyword “hygiene” into the database and ﬁnd not only which videos discuss hygiene but at what points in the videos. All of the videos are divided into chapters by topic. The teacher could then show a two-minute clip from Disney Educational and a ﬁve-minute clip from PBS. “Teachers don’t have to show a whole movie to get the point across,” Caudill says. Students learn best from short segments that are directly related to the lesson, Caudill adds. The video should not replace the lesson but enhance it. For instance, one Bell teacher requires students to read text and watch video clips about Ellis Island. Students then dress like immigrants and ﬁlm themselves with cameras. They learn history, practice reading and use technology. Another advantage to the video-ondemand system is that teachers can access the same video simultaneously, McGuire says. School libraries typically have two to three videos on a speciﬁc subject, and many times teachers want a particular video on the same day. Using the videos on demand, teachers don’t have to plan ahead to show students such clips. “A teacher can recognize that they need to support a lesson right now,” McGuire says. “They don’t have to wait for the VCR cart, for the video to be available, or to ﬁnd content that meets their needs. It’s on demand, and now teachers have access to thousands of videos daily, hourly, when they need them.” District Implementation The district paid to install Safari Montage through E-Rate, a discount that schools and libraries receive from the federal government. E-Rate is designed to give schools and libraries aﬀordable access to modern information services. The program provides discounts of 20 to 90 percent for telecommunication services, based on the percentage of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program. Some of Chicago’s public schools also opted to purchase Safari Montage with discretionary funds or money they raised from parent-teacher organizations. Most videos come with a quiz and teacher’s guide, which provides teachers with possible activities and questions for students before and after the video. Teachers can also create their own playlists within Safari Montage based on a topic, subject, grade level or state standard. A teacher might put together a list of video clips related to the civil rights movement for Black History Month. Once a teacher creates a playlist, other teachers can access it. At some schools, groups of teachers create playlists together. Teachers can also upload videos to Safari Montage. “Teachers love to collaborate in their grades,” McGuire says. “They share what they’ve created, what they’ve used. They are learning from each other’s success stories in the classroom.” The video-on-demand system has also made it easier to teach deaf children, Caudill says. In the past, teachers found it difﬁcult to ﬁnd closed-captioned programming, but all the videos in Safari Montage have closed-captioning. Some of the district’s teachers learned how to use Safari Montage by watching a video tutorial, which is available on the Safari login screen. McGuire also trained librarians and other media staﬀ so they could instruct teachers. In addition, he worked directly with teachers during professional development days. “It’s exciting, as a classroom teacher and administrator, to see how much technology has improved,” Caudill says. In the past, teachers wasted class time fastforwarding through videos to ﬁnd the segment they wanted to show. They also had limited access to videos. “Our teachers are really excited about using it,” Caudill says. DA Danielle Gillespie is a freelancer writer based in Los Angeles. IN-DEMAND EVENTS INNOVATIVE PUBLISHING 800.733.6786 w w w.so lution-t r ee.c om 26 September 2007 INSPIRED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT District Administration http://www.solution-tree.com

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Cover Contents Editor’s Letter Letters News Update Curriculum Update Inside the Law District Profile Administrator Profile District Buying Power 2007 X-Factor Student Achievement Awards 2007 We've Got Mail Supporting New Teachers How Well Does This Web Site Work? New Products Problem Solution Computer Literature Research Corner Online Edge Supervisor’s Opinion Speaking Out Calendar of Events Understanding the Times

District Administration - September 2007

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