There was a sign-up process where you could reach out to us and say “I want to play!” I mean, teachers are pretty familiar with the Reading Rainbow brand. Putting a tool in their hands that is something they would want to use, right? We wanted to make sure we were giving them something of value. They gave us feedback all through the building phase and certainly in the testing phase. Over 800 books, over 200 video field trips, lesson plans, an easy-to-use teacher dashboard, it’s pretty sweet.Īnd teachers had a hand in designing this? Teachers love Skybrary School it’s a pretty robust tool. Our product was built in partnership with teachers, so when we give a subscription away, we know what the response is going to be. What feedback have you heard from the 20 percent of teachers who have received Skybrary School? This is our first post-Kickstarter product, the school version of our digital library service. We’ve already completed 20 percent of our promise to give the product away to 10,000 classrooms. We are giving every registered teacher a one-year subscription to the service. We are officially launching Reading Rainbow Skybrary School at the Title I conference in Houston. How has progress toward fulfilling the promises of that Kickstarter gone? You launched your Kickstarter in May 2014, and raised several million dollars. We have a significant problem in the United States right now in terms of the quality of education we are giving our children, or the lack of a quality education that most of them are receiving. If we embed whatever content it is we want our children to learn embedded in storytelling, in the native storytelling idioms of the culture that that child is from, add in some rewards and gaming mechanics and we can teach our children anything. One of the points I would love for people to take away is that we can actually revolutionize the way we educate our children by using storytelling on these digital devices. It’s an elemental part of the human experience. And I think we have a real opportunity in this new digital era to revolutionize the way we teach our children-mostly because of the intrinsic nature of storytelling. I have, throughout my career, done my best to use the mediums for entertainment-television, film, storytelling in the entertainment realm-to do more than simply entertain. LeVar Burton: I’m planning on talking about storytelling in the digital age, and the power of storytelling especially when combined with technology. Here’s the transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity:Įducation Week Teacher: What are you highlighting at the Title I conference? In an interview with Education Week Teacher, Burton expanded on the impact of Kickstarter, the role of teachers in Skybrary’s design, and diversity in children’s literature. It’s clear from his campaign that Burton is investing heavily in the promise of technology as a means to get children to read and as a route to educational equity. Skybrary brings to the Web what Burton and his company, RRKIDZ, had already designed around mobile devices and tablets, since many more students have Internet access than tablet and smartphone access.
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