United Streaming

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Teachers from the Trenches:
Does your school have United Streaming and if so how do you make use of it in your classroom? If not what do you use?

TECS 290: After exploring United Streaming, how do you think you might use United Streaming in your own classrooms. What did you find that would be useful. Give an example. (Assignment details are in Moodle Week 4)

[Cory Triplett]

United Streaming is a great website for videos. I did a search for videos on art and I received several on artists such as Frida Kahlo and Joseph Turner. I could use these videos in my class as examples for work as well as teaching art history. I think that the assignment builder and lesson plan sections would be very helpful. You can create your own assignments, which even includes a section that allows you to materials and material instructions. I also like this part because you can tell it to alert you when a student has finished the assignment. The lesson plan section is great because it allows you to view many previously created lessons that you might not have thought about. I would definitely use this section for ideas. It also has useful sections like a quiz builder which would come in handy quite often. Overall I could see myself using this website because it has so many options that would be helpful and timesaving in the classroom.

[Christy Buck]

I only have one word...WOW. This site is great. I could not believe all of the different lesson plans with videos. There are so many video clips and they all looked wonderful. I downloaded a few just to see what they were like and i love them. I think every school should use united streaming!

[Renee Nonamaker]

United streaming is just crazy....in a good way. This is a great resource for teachers and students. I can see my students learning a lot from different video clips. I can't wait to use this in the classroom. I just hope that whatever school I teach in has this!!

[Alice Mercer]

If you are using unitedstreaming, (and even if you aren't) there is a marvelous support resource in DEN (Discovery Educators Network). http://www.discoveryeducatornetwork.com/

If you aren't on us, like myself, I have ALWAYS found DEN educators to be helpful and a great resource. One of the folks who was very helpful to me when I started edublogging was a DEN educator.

In addition, their webinair trainings are open to the public, and feature a variety of topics, not just unitedstreaming. Check them out: http://www.denblogs.com/discovery_educator_networ/2007/06/you_want_...

[Sylvia Martinez]

One of our GenYES schools had a fifth grade student work with a third grade classroom teacher. They found clips on unitedstreaming about world explorers. Then they all made costumes and the third graders wrote scripts introducing the clips in character (Marco Polo, etc.) The fifth grader videotaped it, then edited all the video clips all together so the class had a video about explorers but with a personal touch. The classroom teacher said they watched it over and over again and made their parents watch it too!

[Bronwyn Smith]

Before now, I had heard of United Streaming, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. The teacher I interviewed for this class said that she uses it in her classroom. I think it's great! The calendar was a great way to integrate history into every lesson. I plan on teaching math and I hope that I can use this calendar to give the kids a math history fact each day, week, or month. This site had some great lesson plans and the atlas would be really cool to use in a geography class. I really hope that the school I am teaching at has the benefit of Unitedstreaming.

[Sky Davis]

I thought that it was very helpful that you could look up state standards and choose videos accordingly. I am taking Health and Physical Education Methods and Curriculum for Elementary School Teachers this semester as well. There were several of the videos that would work for me to do a lesson on, then I can make assignments or create quizes on the material. I thought the site was really user friendly.

[Lucas Moll]

As a first year teacher in the T2T program I have used United Streaming quite a bit. One of my fellow teachers informed me of the site and I began using it on the 30 day trial mode, giving a new email every 30 days in order to be able to access the streaming videos. There are lots of useful videos for Biology and Chemistry. The most useful thing about the videos for the sciences are the animations and visual examples they show. Cellular activities like mitosis, meiosis, and protein synthesis can be very hard to explain. A visual representation of the process works very well to either reinforce a lesson, or introduce a lesson. I was especially surprised that United Streaming had videos that covered some of the complex material we were going over in Advanced Chemistry class. Probably the only criticism I have of the site is the picture quality of the videos. They are small and look pretty distorted when projected full screen. Also, many of the videos are bit dated and not as visually captivating as what the kids are used to. I had a little trouble with kids not wanting to pay attention, but I always quizzed them at the end(using the teacher resources function of the site) and that usually kept them attentive. These videos saved my backside on more than a couple occasions when my preparation was lacking. I was able to pull up a video that covered the exact content we were going over in class. Imagine being able to do that 10 years ago.
United Streaming eventually caught on around the school (we have a lot of veteran teachers), and we convinced the administration to subscribe.

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Yeah, glad you are getting United Streaming legally next school year.

[Lyndi Wolf]

United Streaming is amazing! I am very surprised on how convient it really is. I can use the video library for my classes and then use their quizzes to see what they learned. There is really everything that a teacher would want on this site. I am sure I will use it all the time in my classroom.

[Nicole Reichert]

I think United Streaming is an awesome website with tons of videos that can be used in the classroom. The videos have good quality for the classroom and they are also very educational. The animal alphabet video was pretty interesting in that they incorporated the alphabet into the video describing all the animals in detail. I also love how everything is so organized on the website into categories for the grades and different types of categories. I would use this in the classroom as a way to engage my students in the lesson by watching the video for the lesson. The great thing about these videos is that they are easy to engage the students of any age and keep their attention on the video. The videos are not boring at all and they have good voice and picture. I discovered a whole other way of learning with United Streaming. This is something that teachers can definitely use in their classrooms and it is also something I believe the students would enjoy. One of my favorite videos was the language arts parts of speech one. Just how they created the video it just grabbed my attention and I like how they described the lesson in a way in which it makes it fun for the students to learn.

[Darla Schroeder]

My school district currently does not have United Streaming, but it should. What a neat and awesome resource!
I have found well thought out and fun lesson plans that will help reinforce content. I feel that if I try several different approaches to each section, surely one will stick. Videos and visual learning seem to be the most successful, they keep students motivated and engaged. I like how it is tied in with standards. I am always afraid that I'll miss something, this will help me keep track.