At the start of this year, ETV launched V.5 of its platform, which includes a completely new build of the user interface and introduces Content Management Service ELINK.

ETV, ELINK and EVA (Enhanced Video Annotation) is an exciting triumvirate of services now available to schools for creating and sharing. The new-look V.5 of the ETV platform not only provides educators with a vast array of programmes (more than 100,000 videos) but now with ELINK also the ability to upload their own content – literally a ‘dot anything’ – and to share all of these riches with learners and colleagues alike.

Teachers can curate learning materials, which include both media files and related materials linked via URL, in Workspaces on ELINK. They are then able to share these with groups of users or make it available across the institution. By using ELINK in conjunction with EVA, teachers can manage the content that students are exposed to and ensure that they have what they need at their fingertips. This avoids information overload and facilitates students’ navigation of online information sources.

Introducing Gretchen Badenhorst 

The broadened focus of ETV, from being a repository of video content for educators to an innovative platform for creating and sharing user differentiated learning materials with EVA and ELINK, coincides with the arrival of Gretchen Badenhorst, ETV’s first Manager of Educational Services.

Her background is in language teaching, where she used a wide range of digital media to shrink the distance to the target culture. For her, ETV has always been an important partner in providing this, because it offers the facility to request both relevant programmes and capture online content, without having to worry about YouTube channels closing or exposing students to inappropriate content in this highly-distracting environment.

As an early-adopter and enthusiastic user of new technologies, Gretchen (pictured) is well placed to facilitate the student-centred, interactive learning and teaching approaches that ETV offers to all users.

In the EVA workshop (BYOD, please) at INTERFACEXpo19, she will focus on using Enhanced Video Annotation (EVA) in the context of teaching and learning, as well as provide a quick tour of refinements in the new version 5 User Interface of ETV and explore E LINK, a content management platform, which allows for storage and sharing of a wide range of file-types and resources.

For more about ETV’s new platform go to etv.org.nz