Streaming Video Taking Place of DVDs; Teachers May Keep DVDs for Their Classrooms

Technology is changing—again! 

Usage data are showing that educators in the Heartland AEA service area now rely on streaming video rather than DVDs. The Agency’s DVD usage has dropped from 7,927 checkouts in 2011-12 to 156 in 2020-21. The streaming video (from just Learn 360) usage ranges from 53,000 to 64,000 views each school year.

As a result, Heartland AEA is weeding its DVD collection. We are offering the DVDs to educators to use in their classrooms. Educators can go through the usual checkout process in the library catalog and just keep the DVDs once they’re delivered.

Share Our Online and Digital Resources with Students, Educators and Families

As students and teachers prepare for the new normal of learning and working from home, remember that Iowa’s AEAs provide a viable avenue for digital content for all Iowa students, teachers and families. Students and teachers are familiar with these vetted, age-appropriate and high-quality digital resources and use them in their daily work. These resources can be found in Library & Digital Resources on the Heartland AEA website. We are making changes to the website to make navigation easier for parents, yet familiar for students.

Use this link to the building-specific username/passwords to find your district’s username/password. You can copy/paste and share with educators and parents in your district. Please do not share the link.

Events are changing rapidly and some digital content vendors are allowing access without a username/password. As those changes are made the links to resources at the Heartland AEA pages will change on the backend. Students will click and be automatically connected. Link changes have been made to BookFLIX, TrueFLIX, ScienceFLIX, FreedomFLIX, NBC Learn, Culture Grams, Learn 360, TeachingBooks, SIRS, Tales 2 Go, Pebble Go, and Pebble Go Next. Not all vendors are willing, nor technically capable of changing their access at this time. We will continue to work with vendors to make access as easy as possible.

Additional information was sent to teacher librarians. They will be updated regularly on any changes.

*As a friendly reminder, do not publicly post or share usernames/passwords.

If you have any questions, contact Susan Schrader, Heartland AEA Director of Resources and Library Services.

MESSAGE FOR PARENTS
Here is some wording that you may want to share with parents. Add your school’s log in:

As students will be doing more learning and reading from home, there are abundant helpful resources for parents and students through your local Area Education Agency (AEA). Iowa’s AEAs provide a broad variety of digital content for students, teachers and families selected by Iowa educators. Students and teachers are familiar with these vetted, age-appropriate and high-quality digital resources and use them in their daily work. These resources can be found in the Library & Digital Resources on our website.

There are read-aloud ebooks, ebooks, digital audiobooks, videos, encyclopedias, articles, newspapers and more for our youngest and oldest learners.

The username/password that students use to access quality digital content at school <<insert building-specific username/password>>. Most require the username/password.

This just in! Some digital content vendors have waived the username/password so you may click on some resources and get right in.

*As a friendly reminder, do not publicly post or share usernames/passwords.

Hey Alexa. Hey Google.

Smart speakers such Echo Dot, Google Home, Alexa, Cortans and Siri were developed for personal home use. Some teachers are interested in bringing them into the classroom, which creates a new set of privacy issues that should be planned for and discussed. This AIME News article written by a copyright attorney provides one perspective and a host of questions. Thanks to Susan Schrader, Heartland AEA Director of Resources and Library Services, for providing this information to district and AEA staff. You can find articles like this one in Susan’s Library and Digital Resources e-newsletter. Subscribe and share it with colleagues. There's lots of good info here!