The things you discover by accident…
I was sitting at home watching late night TV tonight and there wasn’t much on that I thought was interesting, so I started flipping channels. We don’t have cable or satellite, just free-to-air TV, and to be honest I usually just stick to the handful of “standard” channels – 7, 9, 10, ABC and SBS. Since we got a digital TV, it’s been nice to get the High Def versions of these channels, but the other thing about free-to-air digital is that it also gives you a whole lot more free channels outside the standard ones.
Flipping through, I discovered a new channel I’d never seen before – Teacher TV. It had an interview with an Australian teacher talking about literacy strategies and how to give kids opportunities to express themselves in other ways than just traditional writing activities. She was talking about how important it was to offer ways to create and express, not just pass tests. This got my attention… I had no idea that there was a fulltime 24-hour-a-day channel dedicated to issues around education.
As I’ve been writing this, there has been a story about some strategies for dealing with homophobia in schools, including strategies, activities and suggestions. Right now there is an interview with a teacher in Perth talking about an effective writing activity for Year 1 students. Not exactly mainstream TV, but interesting to me.
It turns out there is also a website to support the channel, and you can find it at www.teacherstv.com.au. Who knew?
Reading through the About section on the website, it turns out that there has been a Teacher TV channel in the UK for a while now, and the Australian one is based on the UK one. In fact, during this first roll-out phase, some of the content has been repurposed from the UK version, but it will eventually be replaced with more and more Australian content. There is quite a bit of Australian content there already however… a quick browse through the rather significant collection of video content on the website reveals, among other things, stories about a Year 10 English teacher at Canberra Grammar School using wikis to study Macbeth, a story about teaching in remote schools by a PE teacher working on Thursday Island, a look at the Wiradjuri aboriginal language program at Forbes North Public School, and – in a complete surprise to me – a story about the art gallery and the artist-in-residence program at Presbyterian Ladies College Sydney, the school at which I currently teach!
The website says “Teachers TV content often features great teachers and teaching in action. Stories are focused on classroom and school observation to illustrate how different teachers deal with challenges, ideas, problems, innovation and systems.” What a great idea! … 24/7 teacher PD on TV!
Check it out, and if you like what you see, spread the word about it as they say they are still trialling the service. No doubt they would like to know that people watch the channel, so tell people about it and let the channel know you’re aware of it. Hopefully it will continue.
Teachers TV is available on Channel 47 on Broadcast Australia’s digital free-to-air television trial platform known as DIGITAL FORTY FOUR and can be received by any household who currently receives digital terrestrial Television signals (via a Digital TV or a set top box). Take a look… it’s not bad!
Teacher TV… who knew? by Chris Betcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
That’s pretty cool. I don’t suppose there’s an internet feed of it?
It would be nice to see this kind of thing catch on everywhere, surely there are enough teachers/parents interested in this rather than the garbage that is usually on the tube.
And.. according to Google, it’s only accessible from with Aus networks. Bummer. At least to a Canuck.
Even that’s not necessarily true – I’m trying to access it from Canberra and, according to Google, I’m not on an Australian network. Clearly Optus are sending me via routers all over the world, and I have no doubt I’m not the only Australian that is going to stumble on this problem.
Also, I can’t seem to find the channel on my TV – again, perhaps it’s because I’m in Canberra? Ahhh… the outdated Australian telecommunications infrastructure is such a wonderful thing…
I’m with 3 mobile and I can’t get to the website… will have to wait until I get back to school to try it from there!
According to http://teacherstv.com.au/Article/155/ the service can only be seen on television in the Sydney metropolitan area at this stage, so I guess those of us not there will have to wait a while.
So. it seems from the feedback I’ve received that Teachers TV is only available on the TV if you live in Sydney, and only available online in certain areas (Australia only?)
I think that’s a real shame, and don’t really understand why a broadcaster would want to limit their audience size. There may be valid reasons for the TV restrictions, but why the web?
Bizarre.
I see I’m not the first to read about teacher tv here and discover that I can’t get it because I’m not in Sydney. I guess the best thing that could happen is for all of us outside Sydney to start demanding access, and for those of you in Sydney to use the service and let them know so they’ll keep doing it!
I was reading this in google reader and thinking what great potential this has school staff in uk and Australian schools to work together and learn from each other.
But looks like this will not happen unless the site is opened up.
Russ
It is such great news to me when I started reading this article but I got disappointed when I ran through the comments and learned that it’s available in Sydney only. I’ll will check it out when I get there next week. Hope then give it a wider telecast so that we can watch it over here in Perth as well.
Chris
I had a bit to do with Teachers TV some months ago when they approached DET for funding. Its a trial service trying to getup as a broader service. The producer is actually the producer of Crocodile Dundee (insert variety of jokes here). Teachers TV did some work for SkillsOne and the recent Inernational Skills Olympics (thinks thats what they call it).
They are trying to get more Oz content to match all the UK content. But becuase its a user pays system its mostly extremely remote schools (I like the pacific Island stufff some really interesting views on cultral connections) and Private Schools. I find the UK Primary school stuff very interesting and have picked up some neet little management strategies from them. Its best stufff is the SKillsOne material for Vet course very well done short videos, I used alot when Careers was forced into PDHPE at school.
Ben 🙂