All the News that’s Fit to Stream: Unlocking a vast archive of topical content with NBC Learn
RSSNBC News can trace its roots to the late 1920s when it became America’s first major broadcast network. Though its famous chime is no longer with us, the updated peacock logo evokes a sense of history that makes newcomers like CNN look like the preteens of the news world. Now the network has wisely chosen to make its historical archives available to current and future generations. NBC Learn, the education arm of NBC News, offers a number of free resources as well as the subscription-based NBC News Archives on Demand (AOD). This review focuses on the K12 version of that product. AOD includes much of the NBC archive and a healthy selection of resources from partner organizations, as well as a substantial body of original, student-oriented content. An added bonus—most of this content is correlated to state learning standards.
NBC Learn
www.nbclearn.com/portal/site/learn
Grades Though advertised as a K–12 resource, AOD is probably most appropriate at the middle and high school levels.
Cost NBC News AOD is licensed as an annual site subscription. District and multi-year discounts are available. Contact NBC Learn for pricing for a school district, library, or classroom at (877) NBC-7502 or http://contactus.nbclearn.com. For a free 30-day trial, visit www.nbclearn.com/portal/site/learn.
The Big Picture NBC News Archives on Demand is a collection of NBC News videos, primary source documents, images, and resources specifically designed for use in the K–12 classroom. It contains 10,000 unique pieces of content across 23 collections and spans 90 years, starting with the 1920s. The collections are regularly updated with current events; three to five videos are added daily. In addition to hard news, features, and profiles, the product includes a number of niche collections such as African American Studies, American Indian Heritage, Women’s Studies, and Hispanic Heritage. Versions for K–12 as well as higher education can be licensed as standalone products; Blackboard versions are also available for both markets. In addition to the content from the NBC archives, the product includes content from such sources as the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the New York Times, Washington Post, the Library of Congress, Universal Film Reels, and AP Photos.
The AOD collection focus is on U. S. history, government and politics; economics; language arts; sciences; health and wellness; and business and financial literacy. The strongest content area is U. S. government and politics, a natural specialization for a news organization. Coverage of the 2008 election is particularly robust. But there’s plenty on earlier events. I found it fascinating to view political ads dating back to the Eisenhower administration, including the infamous “Daisy” ad that was aired just once on NBC in 1964 by the Lyndon Johnson campaign. The ad implied that a Barry Goldwater win would mean nuclear war; its broadcast marked a turning point in political advertising history. Other special features include: 400 reading and writing prompts in 40 topic categories; more than 200 photographs, cartoons and caricatures, charts and graphs; and short interviews with some of the most notable writers of the 20th century. I enjoyed a nearly 14-minute interview Tom Snyder conducted in 1979 with author Ayn Rand on her book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Much of the health and wellness content, and even the business and financial literacy content, is pitched to the interests of an older audience (“What Health Care Reform Means to Your Finances”), but the collections also include original material that targets students. Future plans include expanding the original video series on the science of sports from football and soccer to baseball and golf.
Look and Feel The home page of NBC News Archives on Demand is straightforward. From a horizontal toolbar at the top of the screen, a user can select from Collections, My Playlists, State Standards, and Help. A text search box is on the right side. The left column navigation area displays the default Browse search mode, with an option to click on the keyword-based Advanced Search. The browse search categories are: In the News, Social Studies, Language Arts, Science, Health and Wellness, Business and Financial Literacy, and Special Collections. Each category opens to a list of subcategories, which open to more subcategories, and so on. A “breadcrumb” trail allows the user to navigate back up the hierarchy.
Individual items are viewed in a “Cue Card”—called a “revolutionary flippable media player” by NBC Learn. When the Card is “flipped,” the back side displays the bibliographic information, including source, creator, air/publish date, event date, resource type, clip length, brief description, clickable keywords, and a persistent link. The front side of the Card includes options to save the clip to a playlist, print the content, download the clip for offline play, see state standards, and take notes. As the Card is flipped back and forth, it makes a satisfying page-turning sound. The printed version of the Cue Card includes a thumbnail photo, the bibliographic information, keywords, and a full transcript of the content.
I liked the playlist feature, which allows individual users to place Cue Cards into customized lists for later retrieval. I tested the media player on enough different machines, operating systems, and browsers to determine that it runs fairly predictably and smoothly. Videos can be viewed right within the (rather small) Cue Card or can be displayed in full screen mode. The Card can be moved around on the screen, but only one Card can be open at a time. Be aware that the media player runs on the Adobe Flash platform, not necessarily a standard installation on all computers and not available on Apple’s mobile products, the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone.
As slick as it is, AOD has a bit of a first-generation product feel to it, both in terms of its search modalities as well as the separate player content display concept. As an example, the one-filter-at-a-time function is more characteristic of an old-school look than the faceted category options that now commonly accompany results lists. Similarly, the information on the back of the Cue Card can only be seen one piece at a time. When the bibliographic information box is open, the description and keyword boxes are hidden; when the description box is open, the bibliographic information and keyword boxes cannot be seen.
How It Works Users can search by typing in keywords or by browsing collections. Results can be sorted by event date (default), title, air/publish date, type, and relevance. An advanced keyword search offers limited Boolean options (all, or, not) and allows users to specify a range of dates. Large results sets can be filtered by collection, source, or type (document, image, or video). Only one filter at a time can be used and the user must uncheck unwanted items one at a time and wait while the results set is recalibrated. I was surprised that filters couldn’t be selected up front, at the same time search terms are entered. I was pleased to note that the product doesn’t skimp on keywords. For example, the three-minute, 51-second video Newton’s Second Law of Motion in the Science of Football series has a whopping 26 keywords, covering not only football terminology (Field Goal, Kicker, Morten Andersen, NFL and National Football League), but also physics terms (Impulse, Force, F=MA, Phantom) and a few terms relating to the methodology used to understand the science (High Speed, Camera, Time).
Students are likely to stick with keyword searches. The search options are very basic, but are suited to the intended audience. However, AOD’s collection categories in the browse search are not particularly intuitive. Only teachers are likely to drill down through a collection category like Social Studies, then identify subcategories such as “Global Studies” or “Military History” as they search for material. The content that’s matched to some of the subcategories is hard to fathom. The only clip under “Language Arts > Writing Mechanics > Basic Writing > Endings” is a video commentary by veteran newsman John Chancellor on the botched path to the execution of murderer Robert Alton Harris. Nothing to do with writing technique, but everything to do with the ending of a life (yet I found no keyword or any other text using the word “endings”). My guess is that the clip exemplifies a good way to write an ending, but I can’t be sure.
One of my students gave the product a trial spin and wondered why he couldn’t open more than one Cue Card at a time so he could visually order and compare the clips. He concluded that the format was fun, but perhaps not so functional. He did appreciate the playlist feature and the ability to annotate, favorite, and otherwise manipulate the items.
For Students and Teachers Teachers will be happy to know that most of the content has been correlated to state learning standards by EdGate, a professional correlation services firm. Teacher consultants helped create the collection outlines. The collections themselves follow the “scope and sequence of textbooks,” though it’s not clear to me which textbooks these are. And, of course, all content is vetted for appropriateness (violence, sexuality, drug abuse). The product offers a nice gallery of widgets, which can be embedded in websites, social network services, and pathfinders. I know I would enjoy picking a widget that visually matches the needs of an assignment, such as women’s history or business and finance.
Subscribing schools can download and embed an unlimited number of videos. The downloaded content retains the Cue Card player format for offline playback. This feature is especially valuable in settings where bandwidth may not be adequate for reliable streaming, or where basic connectivity is problematic. Students and teachers can transfer content from one computer to another and embed the Cue Cards directly into presentations and projects.
Some of the contemporary feature stories are of less interest than the historical content. The brevity of the TV news feature format dictates that many topics (for example, consumer information on diet and exercise) are destined to receive superficial treatment. Unless there’s some particularly valuable visual information to be shared, I think students are better off seeking this content from standard periodical databases.
Students will need help in understanding context, as they would with any primary source collection. A student who watches the aforementioned “Daisy” ad may not get why it was so inflammatory in 1964. The descriptions on the backs of the Cue Cards fill in some of those blanks quite nicely. In the Christine O’Donnell “I’m Not a Witch” television spot for the 2010 Delaware Senate campaign, the description notes that the statement plays off of a 1999 admission that she dabbled in witchcraft as a teenager in high school. Years from now, users will appreciate the explanation. While contemporary coverage is plentiful, coverage of earlier years is spotty or comes in ways students might not predict. For instance, the clip “Observations of the 1906 (San Francisco) Earthquake” was created before the advent of consumer television, but was broadcast on NBC in 1957 as a retrospective historical piece. Students need to understand that they won’t find any genuine TV coverage from 1906.
The product supports IP-based authentication, batch upload of teacher and student accounts, and single sign-on accounts. Access by a school can be managed through a school registration code which is distributed upon activation. This code allows an unlimited number of individual teacher, student, and parent accounts which can also be used from home. The individual login also allows use of the personalized features such as playlists, sharing, and downloading.
Report Card Without a doubt, NBC News Archives on Demand provides access to a rich and varied cache of primary source material. The addition of original content and curriculum support seals the deal, making it a valuable tool for schools and libraries. It must be noted that a fair amount of the historical NBC content can be found elsewhere. I located a number of the more famous pieces on YouTube, though some were of extremely poor quality. But the sheer convenience of having the original work all in one place, coupled with the value-added elements and original content, make the database a resource worthy of acquisition for many libraries.
My primary hesitation, one which drives my decision to give AOD a B, is the manner of its execution. I have major concerns with a product that relies on a proprietary mode of delivery. The fits and starts we are seeing with ebook development have more than proven the necessity of a device- and platform-neutral approach, particularly in an age of cloud computing, mobile devices, and increasingly ubiquitous access. It makes sense that NBC wishes to monetize its content, but I would like to see them do so in a way that’s sustainable.
Frances Jacobson Harris is the librarian at University Laboratory High School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
