Free VOD Continues for NY Educators

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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 7/20/2006

New York educators will continue receiving free video-on-demand (VOD) from their public television stations—as well as streaming access to more than 350 PBS programs—thanks to an 11th-hour deal hammered out on July 10.

The streaming and downloading service, however, will no longer be provided by unitedstreaming, a Web-based video library that has provided 700 school districts across the state with educational content for the last four years. Instead, the service will be provided by PowerMediaPlus, a company that was recently acquired by unitedstreaming's parent company, Discovery Education.

"It works the same way, except it will offer similar, but different titles and materials," says Robert Daino (right), president and CEO of WCNY in Syracuse, who negotiated the deal with Discovery Education on behalf of the state's nine public television stations. As part of its service to the community, New York Public Television (NYPT) has provided free VOD to schools through its Web sites.

PowerMediaPlus will offer all public and private K–12 schools in New York with 3,200 full-length videos, nearly 20,000 curriculum-related video clips, 6,000 audio files, 25,000 photographs, illustrations and clip art images, as well as podcasting. For the first time, students and teachers will also have streaming access to PBS programs such as The Civil War, Lewis & Clark, Jazz, Freedom: A History of US, American Experience, Cyberchase, and hundreds of other titles.

As part of the new contract, students with a user ID and password can now stream educational content from home, and teachers can remotely stream and download content to incorporate into lesson plans or PowerPoint presentations, Daino says. Home access was unavailable under NYPT's previous agreement with unitedstreaming. NYPT had threatened to terminate its agreement with Discovery on June 30 over pricing issues and the fact that it wanted to make PBS content available to schools.

To avoid any interruption of service, schools can continue streaming unitedstreaming content until October 31. Users can no longer download from the service, but they can continue using previously downloaded educational content until October 31, at which time they must delete the content from their computer files, Daino says. Those school districts that want to continue unitedstreaming must pay for the service by negotiating a separate deal with Discovery Education.

"We renegotiated the terms and worked out a deal that addressed all of our concerns," Daino says. School librarians and teachers will be trained in how to use the new service when they return to school in the fall.