Discovery Upgrades Digital Services, Expands Online Resources
Discovery Education is upgrading its digital services for educators and students. The company this week announced expanded offerings across its Science, Health, and MediaShare services, as well as Discovery Education streaming.
Across all of the services, Discovery has added new search functionality, which lets users find content from all of the different services through a single engine. In addition to the Science, Health, MediaShare, and streaming, the search also calls up content from the Discovery Educator Network (DEN), the company's educator portal and professional development resource. The search also includes filtering, recommendations, and related content and digital assets.
Beyond search, the media player has also been upgraded throughout all of the services. It now supports Flash video, which Discovery said will ease the "management of classroom technologies by supporting one type of video file for both Mac and Microsoft platforms."
Discovery has also added new content types to Discovery Education streaming Plus (the enhanced version of Discovery Education streaming), including:
- Skill Builders for helping students develop problem-solving skills through hands-on projects in core subject areas;
- A variety of games (more than 100) designed to support language arts and math; and
- Spanish-language content for ELL students to help with concepts in science.
Discovery has also added new content and tools for educators designed to "help educators easily assign digital quizzes, writing prompts, and assignments to either individual students or groups of students," according to the company.
Further information about the enhancements can be found here.