September 2020 Product Updates

Our powerful Studio tool has been completely rebuilt with features that continue helping educators engage students and add flexibility to remote, hybrid, and in-class teaching and learning. These updates to our in-product authoring tool let teachers and students build content Boards and new Studio Slideshows to create their own lessons and presentations, search and bring resources directly inline from across Discovery Education, and safely create and collaborate in one dynamic platform.

Explore new Studio Slideshows to save time with lesson planning and help students seamlessly navigate lessons in-class and remotely with a familiar presentation format and features such as:

• Teacher Notes*
• Skip Slides and Full Screen
• Concept Level Slides for Techbook Users
• Slide and Page Level Templates

*Teacher Notes will show in Presentation Mode in a future update coming soon.

New Studio Quizzes let educators easily check for understanding, increase differentiation, and monitor student progress. Quickly add options for short answer, multiple choice, checkbox answers, or student uploads—per class or per student. Student answer submissions link directly to assessments and can be easily tracked through your Assignment Manager.

Get started with new and improved templates tailored to Studio Boards and Studio Slideshows provide ready-to-use exemplars and strategies for out-of-the-box inspiration and an engaged, next generation classroom.

Create and edit faster with an updated drag-and-drop Board interface providing more stability, customization, and control.

Customize every detail in your Studio Boards with interactive, next generation Studio components that will keep students engaged and inspired to create, including gifs, emojis, and even citations for presentations.

Educators and students can now seamlessly search and add resources from across Discovery Education to Boards and Slides for improved productivity, and play uploaded audio and video within a Board or presentation instead of getting redirected to a new window or screen.

Additionally, easy migration of Studio Beta Boards lets users automatically convert all of their older Studio Boards to the updated Studio format, and an updated Studio homepage helps users filter, group, and sort the boards they use the most.

To continue building capacity and confidence for our educators, our Professional Learning Center has been reimagined with pathways for teachers and leaders that meet them wherever they are on their digital education journey.

We’ve taken the informative step-by-step guides, strategies, and Hot Topics resources our users need and brought them into the curated channel format educators have come to know and easily navigate.

Learn More

A section just for new users takes them through a proven 5-step journey to get up and running quickly and confidently, while on-demand professional learning modules and supports offer advanced tips and tricks for teachers who are already familiar with Discovery Education and digital content.

Administrators are given tools and strategies to help implement remote and hybrid instruction and continue improving equity efforts districtwide.

New adaptable SOS templates provide maximum flexibility with minimum effort by using the research-based instructional strategies (Spotlight on Strategies) that our teachers know and love as a ready-to-use basis for building digital lessons.

Teachers can pair content for any topic with these grab-and-go templates and find exactly what they need to support a variety of thinking skills and multiple media types, including video, images, audio, and text.

Only available to our Experience partners, the new English Language Learner (ELL) Center provides additional professional learning, resources, and instructional support for educators to differentiate learning for their ELL students in online, hybrid, and in-class environments.

Find ready-to-use instructional strategy templates and engaging, relevant content collections to incorporate into lessons, including Virtual Field Trips, podcasts, audiobooks, and native language support.

Learn More

Take advantage of additional personalization options on the MyDE Homepage giving users the ability to move entire rows and customize your view by simply clicking on the new "Customize Homepage" button. This update allows educators to move specific tiles and rearrange the Recommended, Curriculum Pack, and My Channels sections with the quick click of a button.