Is it supposed to work?

Posts: 4
Location:
Joined: 2008-01-01

Has Discovery Education ever showed an interest in solving problems with their product for you? I'm up at 1:50 in the morning trying to find videos for my lesson plans. No videos will stream from the website which makes the product totally useless. I've contacted DE twice about one video that won't play. It still doesn't. I got a response to one email stating my concerns about the product since it switched from unitedstreamiing to DEstreaming. A gentleman named Dale E. Fulton offered to talk to me on the phone about the poor keyword search results - like searching on the term "culture" gets you math videos. (Social studies is so passe a subject, I suppose.) Oddly enough, as a busy school teacher I just didn't feel spending my time talking to him about the shortcomings of his product was good use of my time, so I refused. I'm curious how he would have responded if I would have asked him to write my lesson plans?

I know without a doubt that this product was better when it was unitedstreaming. I used it often with great results. Now, I've seen one teacher who is new to the product simply refuse to use it, because full video segments appear out of order in lists making it impossible to know how topics are really addressed or what video segments are helpful or provide support for a topic. It's to the point I'm giving serious consideration to looking elsewhere for video resorces, maybe PBS dvd's that are reliable, even though I think it's wrong for my school district to have to pay double for resources because this one is so inefficient.

Given it's response to my concerns, I get the impression Discovery Education doesn't have any interest in restoring this product to the quality it was as unitedstreaming. So, I thought I'd ask this forum if you're finding segments listed out of order, videos that won't stream, keyword searches that provide illogical and impractical results, etc. to be a problem and how you're dealing with it? I feel as if I'm wasting hours of time I don't have trying to make this product useful.

Submitted by Modron on Fri, 11/07/2008 - 2:29am.

mpgarrity

Posts: 4
Location: Michigan
Joined: 2007-12-01

I was very excited about

I was very excited about sharing what I learned at a 2-day Discovery workshop held by our ISD. The teachers were not impressed when I could not get a single video to stream or demonstrate downloading. This happened on Monday Nov. 4th. I spoke with technical support and they told me they had no disruptions with their servers or anything of that nature on that day. I experienced difficulties the night before (Sunday) when I tried to prepare from home (Total different connection, total different software, hardware ... similar results). i have coworkers who question my preparedness and certainly arent ready to dive into more tech Professional Development with Discovery. I have also described the problem to my Tech department to determine if part of this problem occured through our district. (But it was acting up from my home) . Oh yeah, it is working fine now that the damage was done.

Sat, 11/08/2008 - 3:07pm

kristine.shih

Posts: 7
Location:
Joined: 2008-06-20

Modron – I am sorry that

Modron – I am sorry that you are having trouble using the search function within DE streaming. Over the past few years, we have added thousands of videos to the site. Discovery Education updates the content library each month to ensure that our customers have access to current materials and resources. However, these additions will affect your search results due to the vast amount of videos available, especially if you are using generic keywords. I suggest using specific keywords to help narrow the search results. The Advanced Search will allow you to search by subject and grade.

I understand that you are also having trouble playing the video titled: Liberty! The American Revolution: Are We to Be a Nation? We are aware of the video issue and sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused. In the meantime, we are going to remove this video from the site until the issue has been resolved to avoid further confusion. If you are having trouble streaming or downloading other videos, please contact the Customer & Technical Support Team so that we can help troubleshoot the issues you are experiencing.

Please note that Discovery Education periodically updates the site to enhance user experiences. These changes are in response to user feedback. Navigation of the site has improved over the past few years and we hope that you are able to see the benefits of the changes that we have made thus far.

* * *
Kristine Shih
Manager, Customer and Technical Support
Discovery Education
800-323-9084

Mon, 11/10/2008 - 11:20am