Annenberg and CPB expand teacher education
Adapted from an article in Current, Nov. 15, 1999
The Annenberg Foundation and CPB announced this week a doubling of funding for their teacher-education channel, which will expand service from 60 hours a week to full-time in January.
The funding includes the third major funding commitment by billionaire publisher Walter H. Annenberg--$45 million over five years, $9 million a year. CPB will add $25 million over five years, or $5 million a year, the corporation announced Nov. 15. The commitment is renewable for an additional 15 years.
With $14 million a year, the project will have double its previous annual cash infusion, according to Director Scott Roberts.
Annenberg founded the Annenberg/CPB Project with a $150 million, 15-year pledge in 1981 to create video college-credit telecourses and expand post-secondary education opportunities, but he broke off funding in 1990 and switched the focus to teacher education for elementary/secondary math and science with a new $60 million, 12-year commitment in 1991.
Last fall the CPB Board committed $6 million over five years to expand teacher-education services to the humanities. That sum is included in CPB's new commitment, said Roberts. The channel will expand to cover all subjects taught in K-12 schools.
The project uses a combination of video instruction for teachers, carried on its own Annenberg/CPB Channel, and interactive services on its web site, www.learner.org.
The channel, riding on the GE-3 satellite, is now accessible to 43,000 of the nation's 106,000 schools, according to Roberts. That's a 70 percent gain over the 25,000 schools reached a year ago.
Many outlying schools receive the service directly with their own satellite dishes, and for some of these schools, the service amounts to most of the in-service education that teachers get, according to Roberts. Some pick it up through school system networks or educational access channels on cable systems. About 40 percent of the schools using the service receive it through public TV stations.
Stations serving as middlemen include those in Brooklyn, Atlanta, Twin Cities, Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City, Miami and Seattle, as well as statewide networks in South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas and Oregon, according to a listing from Annenberg/CPB.
In Seattle, KCTS is using the channel as one of its digital multicasting channels--a practice that Annenberg/CPB would like to encourage.
"One of the reasons we think it can be successful in the long-term is that it would be a very good multicast service," said CPB President Bob Coonrod.
Teacher education has been identified as one of the nation's most pressing educational needs, Coonrod said. "We believe that education is a priority for public broadcasting, and here's a very constructive way to display that commitment."
What has attracted schools to sign up for the free service since the satellite channel started in 1996, said Roberts, is the eight-or-nine-week workshops on teaching techniques and curricular content, both live and taped, that Annenberg/CPB offers on its satellite channel. Teachers may take them for continuing education credit or get college credit through an arrangement with Colorado State University.
In addition to the workshop, the satellite channel and web site offer what Annenberg/CPB cals "libraries"--"today's version of a telecourse," said Roberts, curricular video/web coursework such as a new library on contemporary mathematics. The web site also includes extensive databases of teaching resources and offers teacher-to-teacher chat opportunities.
The service tries to break down the isolation of classroom teachers. "It's so important to teachers in their classrooms, where they go in and close the door, to see what is happening in other classrooms--what good teaching looks like, and what not-so-good teaching looks like," said Roberts.
Early next year, Annenberg/CPB will start rolling out a series of requests for proposals for production of new courseware, but will also commission some projects in "sole-source" deals--going directly to experienced producers who have proven they can deliver, Robert told Current. "Having been in the field 18 years, we know where to get the right thing done." He expects to spend $10 million a year or more on two to five video/web series a year, plus some web-only projects. The project's main operational partner is the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., which operates and uplinks the channel and produces some of the project's programs.
"Walter Annenberg is the greatest giving heart the world has produced," said Roberts, riding high on the funding agreement. Indeed, Annenberg has become one of the most generous philanthropists of all time, giving large sums to major urban school systems and to the historically black colleges. Roberts said Annenberg's interest has shifted toward K-12 education in recent years. "The ambassador made a decision in the early '90s that even more critical than higher education was K-12 education. He decided at that point that the foundation needed to focus on pre-collegiate education."
This does not mean that Annenberg/CPB's archive of about 60 college-level telecourses will be abandoned, Roberts said, but he hedged on the subject of Annenberg/CPB's role. "The resource is too valuable to waste," he said, and the PBS Adult Learning Service is making extensive use of it. PBS meanwhile is rushing to create an adult education channel for direct broadcast satellite, which will probably carry Annenberg/CPB telecourses.
Roberts noted that most of the new curricular course material for teachers on the Annenberg/CPB Channel will be perfectly suitable and accessible for the general audience, though it is currently marketed as a service for teachers. The project estimates that the channel already reaches 21.5 million homes by broadcast, cable or satellite.
Web page posted Nov. 29, 1999
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