This week PBS and WGBH unveiled the newly designed PBS LearningMedia website. The site makes thousands of digital resources more accessible to educators and students. New features include browsing by curriculum area, state standards and grades, improves search, a new look, and more.
“PBS engaged with about 1,200 educators to learn how best to support them. Educators told us how important it is to them to be able to easily find classroom-ready, standards-aligned resources, and so we revamped the platform with a particular emphasis on the search functionality and the browse pages,” says Sara Shapiro, Vice President of PBS Education.
Resource pages now make it easier to create assignments, find support materials, and navigate to other related content. This helps teachers save time, find quality resources, and engage their students. The redesigned site also improves the browse experience, so that teachers can discover new classroom resources, which are all aligned to a robust curriculum hierarchy. Previously, there was no way to dynamically browse the thousands of resources on the platform without using search.
“We have also significantly enhanced PBS LearningMedia’s search technology to help teachers find exactly what they need for their classrooms, by surfacing more relevant results,” says Shapiro.
All content has been rigorously reviewed to ensure that every resource is of the highest quality for the classroom. The dedicated PBS LearningMedia team will be making continuous improvements to streamline the platform and make it more intuitive for teachers and students, based on feedback.
PBS LearningMedia contains thousands of free high-quality videos, interactives, lesson plans, and many other resources curated and contextualized specifically to support teachers in engaging their students. This includes local, community-rooted content from PBS member stations across the country, such as WGBH in Boston with its Bringing the Universe to America’s Classroom K-12 Earth and Space Science collection, funded by NASA and WUCF in Orlando, who created a preK-3 collection called Meet the Helpers, featuring their community’s first responders, teachers and a meteorologist. Many PBS national broadcasts have also become LearningMedia classroom resources, such as the Dolores Huerta collection, based on a recent documentary, Dolores from Independent Lens.
“Americans have named PBS and stations the nation’s most trusted institution for 15 years running.* Teachers can depend on content from PBS and member stations in a way that is unrivaled by any other institution. A 2015 study found that when PBS LearningMedia resources were integrated into existing curriculum, students outperformed national assessment norms by 10 percentage points.** And support materials, standards alignment, and Google Classroom integration make it even easier for teachers to incorporate the breadth and depth of this trusted content into their classroom.”
Since launching in 2011, PBS LearningMedia, has evolved to meet the growing needs of teachers and students across the country, and with this latest redesign, it is more accessible and easier to use than ever before. Last year, PBS LearningMedia integrated with platforms such as Google Classroom, Clever and Remind, making the site compatible with the tools teachers use most. These integrations ensure resources are easily accessible and make the user experience seamless. Educators who create a free account on the site are able unlock all features, including a complete teacher dashboard, rostering and assignment functionality, and access to all interactive lessons.
Educators can explore the new design and thousands of high-quality public media resources at pbslearningmedia.org.
*Marketing & Research Resources, Inc. (M&RR), January 2018
**PBS LearningMedia Impact Study, conducted by Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology
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