New York’s East Irondequoit Central School District today announced the launch of a new partnership with Discovery Education, provider of digital content and professional development for K-12 classrooms.
As part of this collaboration, all K-12 classrooms across the district will have access to digital content through Discovery Education Streaming Plus, a comprehensive digital service supplementing instruction across all K-12 curricular areas. In addition, 25 educators and their administrators from all six district schools will participate in Discovery Education’s Digital Leader Corps. A comprehensive professional development system, Digital Leader Corps develops teacher-leaders to support the district's transition to modern digital learning environments. East Irondequoit Central School District’s professional development program will be supported by Monroe #1 BOCES. Instructional coaches from the Monroe #1 BOCES will also participate in the Digital Leader Corps initiative, as part of their mission to develop high-quality learning experiences for every student by impacting every teacher through leadership and innovative practices.
In 2013, under the leadership of New York State Superintendent of the Year Susan Allen, the district embarked on a 1:1 initiative to provide students with more personalized educational experiences that better maximize learning opportunities and stimulate creativity and imagination. This initiative enables students to strengthen their creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking skills through anywhere, anytime learning opportunities.
Supporting this initiative is a rigorous staff development effort which aims to help teachers integrate new educational technologies and digital media into classroom instruction and develop technology-enriched learning experiences for students.
“The East Irondequoit Central School District is committed to creating engaging digital learning environments where information and resources are available at students’ fingertips 24/7, and where learning is even more collaborative, inquiry-driven and personalized,” said Mary Grow, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, East Irondequoit Central School District. “The addition of Discovery Education’s dynamic digital resources and robust professional development will help our educators meet this goal and ensure a successful digital conversion.”
Discovery Education Streaming Plus’ digital resources are aligned to state standards, are searchable, and include videos, images, primary source documents, podcasts, oral interviews, audio books, articles and more. Teacher resources in Streaming Plus include lesson plans, instructional strategies and content collections organized around themes, as well as including instructional videos, skill builders, writing prompts, multimedia activities and articles. Through its popular Board Builder feature, students can create virtual project boards using multimedia and text to synthesize their thinking and provide evidence of their understanding of a concept or problem.
Featuring a combination of professional learning, pedagogy and tools, Discovery Education’s Digital Leader Corps helps school systems develop a network of teacher-leaders prepared to design and implement successful and innovative teaching strategies to be shared with their peers. Digital Leader Corps offers participating educators strategies for integrating educational technologies and digital media into classroom instruction including educator created, student-centered Learning Labs.
The Discovery Educator Network (DEN) will also support East Irondequoit Central School District’s educators in their efforts to transform students’ learning experiences with digital media.
