June 28, 2010– Discovery Education announced last week new agreements with BBC, Espresso Education/Channel 4, CBS News, Smarterville/Reading Rainbow, Visual Classroom and North Carolina State University’s Dr. Lodge McCammon, adding robust educational media to its digital content services.

McCammon, a curriculum and contemporary media specialist in the Friday Institute for Education Innovation, brings 21st century tools into the classroom to better engage students. Songs by McCammon, are now featured in Discovery Education’s digital service’s content library, Discovery Streaming. These engaging standards-based songs provide an opportunity for students to learn challenging new concepts in science, social studies and mathematics through music. The songs can also be used to encourage students to create digital stories and music videos.

Digital stories and videos based on these songs are part of a program called FIZZ. This originally began as a secure web site that allowed teachers and students to upload educational videos they make in the classroom. However, the program has evolved, and now FIZZ is considered a new way of teaching. Discovery Education has also contracted McCammon to help teach their 30,000+ group of tech-savvy teachers – called the Discovery Educator Network – how to incorporate FIZZ into the classroom.

“It really boils down to three things – engagement, content knowledge and classroom transparency,” McCammon explains. “We’re inspiring teachers to use technology in the classroom in a practical and functional way.”

Traveling all over the country in 2010, McCammon will meet with large groups of educators to inspire them using lesson simulations, showing them what a day at school with FIZZ would be like.

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