New Database of Video Clips

Who says kids are visual learners? United Learning, a distributor of educational products, thinks so. The Evanston, IL-based company sells access to United Streaming (www.unitedstreaming.com), a library of more than 15,000 video clips on subjects such as social studies, science, language arts, and math. Geared to K–12 students, the videos match national and state curriculum standards and are accompanied by lesson plans and assessment tools that can be incorporated into students' classroom presentations.

The video clips, originally created as educational films by Weston Woods, Rainbow, CalTech, and United Learning, help educators teach hard-to-explain concepts. The company claims that viewing the clips enhances student achievement. "We offer real world examples, so, for example, the algebra concept of slopes is exemplified via skiing," says Beth Ida Stern, director of product development, who feels the database will be especially helpful for those students who have a hard time learning from textbooks. "We take you into a volcano, into an earthquake, and to the banks of the Nile."

Subscribing schools may access the streaming video clips on the Internet or download them from a CD-ROM or server. A site license for a K–8 school is $700 annually; for high schools, it's $2,200.