Rediscovering Discovery Education

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By Kerri Lambert, Academic Specialist, Instructional Technology

Anne Arundel County Public Schools has partnered with Discovery Education for over 20 years, and for good reason. Beyond offering high-quality resources, Discovery Education continuously evolves, introducing new content and features that enhance its value for both teachers and students. The 2024-2025 school year is no exception, with the release of numerous, high interest new updates, channels, and series.

New Search

The big new feature in Discovery that rolled out in time for Back to School was a completely revamped search functionality. You currently have the choice to use the new format, and I highly encourage you to turn it on! The new search functionality highlights all of the best that Discovery has to offer, not just videos. When you do a search, the page is divided into Top Lessons & Activities, related images, channels, Top Videos, and even related keywords if the search didn’t return exactly what you were looking for. Search results will also include resources from our additional subscriptions: Mystery Science (elementary) and the Social Studies TechBook (high school). This new format makes it super easy to find the exact resource you are looking for to make your lesson more dynamic. For a more in-depth look at search, check out DE's step by step guide. 


Another fabulous new functionality is the built in standards search! While it’s always been possible to search DE by standards, it was in a separate part of the site, but no longer! With this new format, teachers and staff can very quickly select the “Filter by standards” found at the top of the search results, and select the applicable standards and grade level they wish to search by. [Include screenshot of Standards] Overall, the new search functionality makes finding the perfect resource that much easier. 

New and Updated Content

Over the last several years, DE has released numerous high-quality channels with in-house made videos and resources, and this year is no exception. Expanding its popularity, the “Need To Know” channel, which focuses on students building a foundational understanding of American government, dropped several new videos this fall. Of course, with a national election around the corner, they’ve also updated content on the DE Election Channel for all grade levels K-12. Reading passages, videos, podcasts, infographics and lesson activities make for a robust set of  differentiated resources focused on the process, history and importance of voting in this country. 

Finding age appropriate, current event resources has always been tricky, but DE has come up with the perfect solution. “The Week Junior” is a brand new channel that is for students in grades 3-8, that provides reading passages on a number of high interest topics including Science and Technology, national news and more. My personal favorite is the collection of “Big Debate“ topics. I know the “pizza vs pasta” discussion would have the Lambert household arguing for days! They’ve also paired these reading passages with optional, differentiated  instructional activities focused on key informational text reading skills such as identifying main idea, summarizing, and author’s purpose. 

If you’re an 80’s child like me, there’s a good chance you have fond memories of “The Electric Company” and their catchy songs in the “Short Circus” segment of the show. Well, did you know that Discovery Ed partnered with Sesame Workshop to bring the group to a whole new generation of students? As part of their partnership, two new channels featuring the electrifying tunes (see what I did there??) have been added this school year- Word Study and Text Tips. The videos make great, educational brain breaks, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when the songs get stuck in your head!

The last channel I’ll leave you with is the brand new, “3D Virtual Field Trips” channel. With the opportunity for students to explore flight simulators, the deep sea, Mars, and more, this channel is bound to get your students excited about solving problems and exploring careers. All the experiences can be done right from their browser- no need for special equipment!

For Teachers

So now that you’ve gone down the rabbit hole that is DE, you’re probably wondering how best to use it all with students. Well, DE has thought of that too. Explore their new Discovery Education Experience Toolkit to find getting started courses,  parent and family resources, and ideas for student engagement. Along with the information there, Discovery Education has also made assigning activities or resources to students even easier for those teachers who don’t have rostered courses. Now, you can simply create an assignment, grab the link and post it in Brightspace for your students to access. More information on using an Assignment Link can be found here. 

So that’s a wrap on some of the big updates from Discovery Education. If it’s been awhile since you explored all it has to offer, then I encourage you to hop in via Classlink and do some digging. Do you prefer to have some guidance? We offer a self-paced Discovery Education course that you can register for in Unified Talent. You’re bound to be surprised at what you discover! 

 

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