Five Ways to Use PBS LearningMedia in Your Classroom

PBS LearningMedia is the next generation digital library from PBS and affiliates designed for educators to engage students in media-rich learning environments with videos, audio, and interactives. With over 20,000 resources, and more being added weekly, LearningMedia is the place to reimagine classroom learning, transform your teaching, and engage your students in new ways.

There are many ways to go about searching for different resources, but what are the most effective ways to use this library? Here are my top five favorites from a list of ten ways suggested by Iowa Public TV to incorporate PBS LearningMedia into teaching.

Watch video
Obvious right, but it’s all in how you present video. Do you use video as part of your entire lesson for a day or do you use short clips that supplement a lesson? Thinking about how and why you use video, will help make learning more meaningful to your students.

Innovate your curriculum and meet standards
PBS LearningMedia offers resources that are aligned to standards. This way you can use the material available to ensure your students grasp the big ideas or benchmarks.

Adapt Lesson Plans to Meet Your Style of Teaching
LearningMedia offers lesson plans that help you find innovative ways of using video, audio, or interactives in the classroom. There is no need to use resources exactly as suggested. Apply your best techniques. If, for example, you teach best by using small-group discussions, use the pause button. Have your students make predictions, form a connection to a larger idea, define a word, or highlight a point made in the video.

Get struggling students to speed up and push strong students ahead
Videos can help supplement in class teaching for struggling students. Likewise, students can review at home so you’re not forced to teach continually to the middle.

Create a video homework assignment
The chances are increasing that your students have access to the Internet outside of the classroom. If your students watch a video of a basic concept (like gravity) at home you then can focus on applying those concepts in class the next day.

Sign up for a free account to access PBS LearningMedia.