PBS Teachers Connect connects to you

Do you ever feel isolated in your classroom? Do you feel that the time to communicate and collaborate with your colleagues is too limited? Do you long for the chance to share ideas and learn from others as part of your professional development? Would you like easily accessible and high quality multimedia resources to use in your classroom? PBS has a solution for you.

PBS has unveiled a new online community for preK-12 educators that supports the use of digital media content and technology integration in education. PBS Teachers Connect provides teachers, school library media specialists, technology coordinators, early childhood educators and other education professionals with opportunities to share ideas, collaborate and support the effective use of instructional technology and multimedia into the classroom with the enhancement of student learning and achievement as the ultimate goal.

This free collection of resources allow educators to search more than 3,000 standards-based classroom activities, lesson plans, interactive resources and other materials, then easily bookmark, annotate, share and manage their tagged content within the PBS Teachers Connect community. Many of the resources feature PBS’ award-winning programming and content, including on-demand streaming video from select PBS programs. Among the many high quality resources you’ll find are video and other materials created right here in Ohio. Educators here in Greater Cincinnati will be able to customize their homepages to receive information about CET programming and event schedules as well as have direct access to the many localized education resources created by CET’s Learning Services department.

PBS Teachers Connect will foster discussion and use of digital media content, and enable educators to form shared-interest groups online. The community features a personalized homepage for each user, enhanced user profiles, a searchable database of resources and community members, bookmarking tools and discussion threads. A key component is the PBS Teacher Leader program, which recognizes and rewards innovation in the use of digital media and technology in education. PBS Teacher Leaders will be an integral part of the online community’s continued development by fostering discussion, collaboration and contribution of teacher-created content.

With the vast majority of students using social networking sites on a weekly basis, more educators are incorporating social media tools in their professional lives to collaborate with and support each other. Community-building that once was confined to face-to-face encounters in school departments and association conferences, or informal contacts with like-minded staff members, is now increasingly happening online. PBS Teachers Connect is another tool that opens doors to an unprecedented array of learning opportunities in an environment where educators often feel freer to express themselves, share their ideas and be catalysts for change.