Georgia's Forsyth County Brings Streaming Media to All Its Classrooms

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 09/03/13

Forsyth County Schools in Georgia will be delivering streaming media to all of its classrooms in the new school year. Delivered by Discovery Education, the media will be used by teachers as part of the district's bring-your-own-technology program. Forsyth County began BYOT several years ago in a pilot program involving 40 teachers in seven schools.

This year, the district will run Discovery Education Streaming Plus, which provides teachers with access to a repository of 155,000 digital "learning objects," including videos, exercises, games, audio files, images, writing prompts, and encyclopedia articles. The service, which works on PCs, laptops, tablets, and smart phones, also offers assessments that can be customized and "hundreds" of model lessons and instructional examples.

Forsyth County also uses digital materials through Safari Montage, Knovation netTrekker, and other sources.

"We are pleased to expand our relationship with Discovery Education," said Superintendent L.C. "Buster" Evans. "While the device is an important component of our effort, it is world-class teaching and high-quality content that really engages students and facilitates the growth of the critical skills we know they need for college, careers, and citizenship. We will continue to look to Discovery Education to provide the videos, games, text, and more that, when integrated effectively into instruction by great teachers, bring key ideas and concepts to life."

Discovery Education also provides a network to help educators gain professional development in making the transition to the use of digital curriculum in their classes.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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