Broadcasts

MPT's online guide to the K-12 Educational Video Service provides program descriptions and broadcast times for all of the instructional series offered. Teacher manuals are generally available for each series. They provide activities and information to help teachers reinforce and integrate the video into a total lesson plan.

MPT provides educational videos and teacher guides to 1200 schools throughout Maryland. Each year, we air more than 340 hours of instructional programming for teachers and media specialists to record and use in classrooms. The courses range from foreign languages to economics to cultural diversity.

This ten-part series is designed to help children develop number sense, a common-sense approach to using numbers. Content is based on the standards set forth by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. Each show models authentic mathematics situations that student can apply to their own lives. The series focuses on Beyond Zero, a high school rock band with an affinity for numbers. Whether they are touring the country or having fun closer to home, they use mathematics to solve the problems they encounter. They ponder probability while playing games at an amusement park; they work with statistics as they track their results in a "Battle of the Bands" contest; they deal with fractions and measurement as they frantically try to prepare food for a surprise party. Shot on location around the country, the band's "tour spots" include a ghost town in Montana, the Everglades, New York City, and an amusement park in Ohio. Each show ends with a music video that reinforces the mathematical content of the program.

This series explores the relationship between our health and the environment.  Students are introduced to environmental health concepts through the eyes of three high school journalists. As reporters for their high school environmental television program, they investigate the mystery surrounding an outbreak of an acute waterborne illness. Something has made members of their community sick, and all the clues lead to the local seafood served at a community fair. But are the clues misleading? Their exploration mirrors the scientific efforts of the local health department as they try to solve the mystery.

Online Fieldtrips

This online fieldtrip helps Maryland students in Grades 4 and 8 look more closely at Maryland’s people, stories, and events of that surrounded this important effort. The Underground Railroad was a highly secretive system. Yet, it had none of the organization you might expect. There were no rules or maps or lists of people involved. In fact, very few people knew all its details – the routes that were best to take, the houses where sympathetic people lived, even the language people used to talk about it. They learned it as they needed to – when their lives as slaves became too much to bear – or when their support was needed to help bring others out of bondage.

This was a unique collection of covert byways and secret hiding places – through which thousands of slaves in the south traveled to freedom. Maryland – because of its location at the boundary of slave and free states – and many of Maryland’s people – because of their bravery and commitment to liberty and civil rights for all – were an important part of this network.

This online fieldtrip offers a unique way to explore the bay's past, present, and future. Come for a virtual sail and discover the wonders of the Chesapeake. See why the watershed is a vital resource for the people, plants, and animals who live in and around it. Learn how your actions affect the bay ecosystem and investigate ways you and your family can promote its health.

The companion video, "Chesapeake: A Bay Trippers Adventure" takes a close look at the health of the Chesapeake Bay and explores innovative solutions for specific problem areas -- including dwindling underwater grasses and oysters -- from the perspective of those who are on the front lines of the battle to save the Bay.

Through the support of Verizon, Maryland Public Television (MPT) was able to bring students throughout the Mid-Atlantic region to the 1997 exhibition through an Electronic Fieldtrip. Students first met Picasso as an eleven-year-old with a talent for drawing, and watched him mature to a proud and confident artist on the cusp of his innovative work in cubism.

Interactive Resources

Sense and Dollars was designed to give kids in middle and high school a leg up on acquiring knowledge about money management. On the site, they can practice many effective ways of earning, spending, saving, and investing money in a safe interactive environment. They can explore budgets and credit cards and interest rates – among lots of other concepts surrounding economics and personal finance – using the best educational resources on the Internet. Then, they can apply that background to engage in some real-life money problems young people face now and in the future – planning for a dream prom, handling a family checkbook for a month, and seeing how credit cards can impact the actual price you pay for items.

A website was developed to help elementary school teachers fold the resources and ideas of the MPT documentary Frederick County: A Crossroads of History into their social studies/history curricula. All of the activities included here were developed to address MSPAP outcomes, as well as the critical thinking skills MSPAP fosters. The site includes a synopsis of the video, tips for using the video in class, links to related sites, and four activities for students, complete with background information and worksheets teachers can print and copy or modify as needed.

This interactive activity -- built to accompany MPT's production Anne Arundel's Legacy -- weaves together history and technology for Maryland or Colonial American history students in grades four through eight. Here, they tackle a real-life task: they have been selected as part of a committee that is planning a school field trip to Anne Arundel County. They have to collect the information they need to make their decisions, using the video and carefully-selected sites on the Internet focused on Anne Arundel County's rich history. Teachers who want to make this Internet investigation part of their curriculum will also find a review of the activity, practical suggestions about using it in their classroom, correlation to MSPAP Outcomes, a suggested schedule, and an assessment rubric they can adapt for their own uses. Extensive links to other web sites of historic places in the county featured in the video are also available here.

The Internet is a window to the world. This collection of Internet resources helps teachers to plan for utilizing Internet resources as a project-based learning tool. Internet projects give students the opportunity to take ownership over their own learning, emphasizing the nature of computers as interactive tools for human curiosity and connection.

The most exciting result of using Internet-based projects in the classroom is the inspiration and motivation the Internet can bring to learning, particularly in developing critical thinking skills. Students become more excited about and engaged in learning when they can immerse themselves in authentic research, accessing primary source documents, experts in the field, e-pals in other countries and more.