Learning Apps & Tools
Discovery Ed Adds New Tools and Content to Learning Platform
Discovery
Education has released an update to its K–12 learning platform,
offering a range of new features, tools and integration with other
technologies.
Among the updates is an improved Studio Tool, which allows teacher
and students to create their own content. The update includes
research-based activity templates, real-time collaboration, student
presentation boards and slideshows and an embedded Microsoft
Immersive Reader. Studio also includes some 1,500 ready-made
activities that can be customized or used as-is.
The platform also adds a new interactive quiz tool, which offers
video-based quizzes, traditional quizzes (multiple choice,
open-ended, etc.) and a Live Quiz tool for asking questions through
online meeting platforms like Teams and Zoom. According to Discovery
Ed: "In all modes, Quiz results display in real-time, empowering
educators to gauge participation and correct responses, offer
just-in-time feedback, and identify remediation needs."
Other new features include:
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A redesigned UI;
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An updated video player, offering the ability to assign videos to
students directly, create video quizzes, use embedded language and
accessibility options and find supporting content to go along with
the video;
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Support for using QR codes to log in;
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Improved integration and interoperability with Canvas, Schoology,
D2L, Infinite Campus, Google technologies and Microsoft Teams.
“Integrating all the ed tech resources stood-up to maintain the
continuity of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is a major
challenge facing school leaders,” said Discovery Education CEO
Scott Kinney in a prepared statement. “The new features and
enhancements we are announcing today help solve that challenge. The
improved functionality of our flagship K-12 platform puts all the
tools needed to engage students with digital content at educators’
fingertips and the work to boost our service’s ability to easily
dovetail into school systems’ IT infrastructure makes it simple to
merge our content and resources into the learning environments school
systems already have in place. Taken together, these features and
enhancements will help school systems improve the return on the
edtech investment they made over the past year.”
The new version is available now. Further
details can be found on Discovery's site.