Windows on Maine Partnership Launches Video-on-Demand Maine Public Television Programs to be Available
Contact: Marilyn Lutz at (207) 581-1658
ORONO — Video programs and clips about Maine’s history and environment are now universally accessible over the Internet. The University of Maine’s Fogler Library, Maine Public Broadcasting Network and the Maine State Museum have partnered to create a new Web-based archive of educational video and other multimedia resources including, maps, photographs, artifacts, datasets and the text of primary documents.
Designed primarily as a classroom resource for Maine teachers and students, the new website, “Windows on Maine,” features video from the historical series “HOME: the Story of Maine” and MPBN’s signature science series “QUEST: Investigating our World.”
Windows on Maine also offers supporting primary resources from distinguished Maine collections that enrich the broad themes that portray Maine’s history and the Gulf of Maine science: forestry and lumbering, fishing and fishermen, hunting and fur trading, shipping and ship building. Those elements include video, images, documents, sound files, interactive maps, animated simulations and other files that will assist in teaching and learning. The resource is available free via broadband and wireless connections.
Other collaborators in the project include members of the Digital Maine Learning Group — Maine State Archives, Northeast Historic Film, the Maine Historical Society, and the Maine Folklife Center.
“Windows on Maine will provide needed digital resources for the successful middle school laptop program and its extension to high schools,” says UMaine’s Marilyn Lutz, the project director. “It is a vehicle for advancing student information technology skills which have been linked to the needs of Maine’s (and the country’s) emerging economic and workforce development programs.”
The website offers K-12 teachers, and teacher education programs, online professional development programming through the Annenberg/CPB educational distribution network. Windows on Maine increases the speed of Internet streaming access to these video resources that support school-based and life-long learning, across the curriculum, by providing local storage for almost a terabyte of material.
Windows on Maine is designed to support the integration of technologies into classroom instruction and curricula. As the collection develops, advisors will help determine video clips and other resources that best serve educators’ needs in specific subjects. It is intended to support quality technology training, which focuses on instructional skills and classroom content, and to facilitate the use of technology in learning strategies.
Access to broadband availability in Maine continues to grow, and a program for its broader deployment is under study by the state Legislature. The word “broadband” encompasses technologies that carry voice and information, and means connections faster than a dial-up phone line. The most common broadband technologies are Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable modem service; fixed and WiFi wireless services are becoming more prevalent.
“The advent of statewide digital broadcasting creates an exceptional opportunity for the key organizations with digital resources to positively impact Maine’s 18,000 classroom teachers and, in turn, the 224,000 young people they reach each year,” says Mary Anne Alhadeff, president and CEO of MPBN. “Public television stations, with evolving multicasting and data-casting capabilities, and cultural organizations must begin to rely upon new partners to help develop meaningful resources for this increased distribution capacity.”
“One goal of Windows on Maine is to make digital collections in museums and libraries, available to teachers for incorporation into lesson plans and student work,” says J.R. Phillips, director of the Maine State Museum. “Technology is also being used to advance information literacy by providing students with access to primary and secondary resources essential to an understanding of our heritage.
The Windows on Maine project is supported in part with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). “The IMLS National Leadership Grants foster the best thinking in our fields about how museums and libraries can further enrich community, academic, family and individual lives across the country,” says Robert Martin, the institute’s director. “The grants we make today will help develop leading-edge technologies to expand access to collections and educational programs, support original research to improve professional practices, and form powerful partnerships between libraries and museums and other community organizations. It is our hope that today’s grants will provide models for libraries and museums throughout the nation to emulate tomorrow.”
IMLS is a federal grant making agency located in Washington D.C. that fosters leadership, innovation and a lifetime of learning by supporting museums and libraries.