It’s important that teachers find a video streaming service fairly easy, even intuitive, to use. In fact, the overall design and user-friendliness of a computer-based service will determine whether it is ultimately embraced by busy teachers.
In the vendor-provided information, vendors explained which services allowed teachers to create playlists and outlined each service’s administrative tools and capabilities. They explained how teachers could organize student access to the content and showed each service’s professional development material and opportunities. Finally, they explained how teachers and students can access the services from school and from home.
In their review last fall, ERAC’s reviewers examined the ease of use of each service’s search engine. It also considered how easily users could find videos suitable to the teachers’ required topics and grade levels.
ERAC’s reviewers found that, with regard to functions, features, and ease of use, Discovery Education Streaming delivers solid results: however, the Learn360 search engine was deemed the best of all the services for its simplicity and effectiveness. MonD’s search engine, by contrast, was merely a very limiting Microsoft Access file. The reviewers found CCC!’s search engine to be easy to use and quite effective; they described the user interface as pleasing and easy to navigate through, unlike MonD’s, which they did not feel was user-friendly. Also, they appreciated that teacher resources were provided for all CCC! titles.
