Social studies teacher Rich Rowley says he ‘couldn’t have managed’ without video service eTV and its easy access to New Zealand content.

What attracted you to eTV?

The main reason was easy access to New Zealand specific content. I’ve heard some teachers say: “why do we need eTV when everything is on YouTube?” Well, that’s simply not the case for a lot of local content. The other main factor was that there was no infrastructure requirement, other than a fat pipe, which we were fortunate to have.

How’s it used in the classroom?

In numerous ways. Some teachers simply show a class a show, like playing a DVD. Others have used it to ‘flip the classroom’, by embedding a clip on the LMS and asking students to watch it with focus questions. At Rosehill College, we’re developing curriculum sites for all subjects. The idea is to enable self-paced student learning, where they get a choice of tasks. Clips or shows are put on the sites together with focus questions for the students to think about as they watch and tasks to do afterwards.

What do you see as the benefits to teachers?

Easy access to lots of New Zealand content. It’s a great advantage to show students content that is local, not from the US or UK, as they can relate to it easily.

What would be your advice to teachers wanting to make best use of eTV?

Take some time to look through the curriculum collections for your subject. There’s fantastic content for everyone.

And to schools thinking about signing up?

Invest in some time for PD on basic operation, such as embedding clips, and once it’s up and running staff need to see examples of good practice. It’s important to work on ‘WSQ’ (Watch, Summarise, Question), which is a way to make sure that students are engaging with the content, not simply watching. It also needs to be continually promoted

Anything else you’d like to add?

It’s just a bloody great service. I found myself teaching junior social studies for a couple of terms last year and I really don’t know how I would have managed without eTV.

Rich Rowley used eTV at Rosehill College and Carmel College, in Auckland.

eTV is a video service offering more than 20,000 TV and library recordings to schools. For more go to etv.org.nz