Tuesday, May 20, 2003

A Message from the Director of PeachStar Education Services

Dear Educators:

As the 2002-2003 school year comes to a close, Georgia Public Broadcasting and PeachStar commend you for the hard work you do each day to improve the education of Georgia students. For our part, we strive to provide you with the highest quality educational resources to assist you with enhancing teaching and learning across the state.

Since we launched the PeachStar Video Streaming site in August 2001, utilization by Georgia teachers and students has increased steadily as PeachStar staff have continued training educators statewide about the implementation of streaming resources into classroom instruction. To date, the site has logged 392,408 individual sessions where users have either streamed video live or downloaded it for later viewing.

This year PeachStar has transformed the face of science instruction in Georgia by piloting PeachStar Classroom, a cost-free initiative that brings credit-bearing courses in physics and chemistry to high schools that do not have certified science educators in these specialties on staff. Implemented in seven schools during the 2002-2003 school year, PeachStar Classroom will be available for widespread implementation in schools statewide during the 2003-2004 school year.

Please note that PeachStar will continue broadcasting quality programming during the summer months to allow media specialists to take advantage of the break to supplement your video repositories. See the listings from page 4 to 18 for airdates and times.


Sincerely,

C. Blaine Carpenter, Ph.D.
Director, Education Services