Houghton Mifflin Harcourt continues effort to sell Channel One News repackaged curriculum.
Is this the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt sales rep assigned to sell Channel One’s repackaged curriculum?
From Jim Metrock: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt made a bad decision when they took over Channel One News.HMH evidently thought they could convert Channel One’s old videos and transcripts into a product that schools would not only desire, but would actually buy (with real money). It hasn’t happened. It won’t happen.
Houghton Mifflin acquired a dead brand. Houghton Mifflin sales reps would have to be magicians to generate any substantial revenue from Channel One News.
Since 1989 when Channel One was created, the vast majority of American public schools have rejected the company. Those schools that did sign up with Channel One did so because there was no cash outlay.
Previously Channel One loaned schools TV equipment that the schools could use for any purpose as long as students were forced to watch the daily Channel One News show at least 90% of school days. Now that Channel One has donated all its antiquated equipment to schools, there is no need for schools to show any of Channel One’s daily shows.
With more and more schools removing Channel One News from their daily schedule, more and more advertisers are removing Channel One News from their marketing mix. Advertisers won’t pay Channel One anymore for commercials that schoolchildren never view.
That’s why Houghton Mifflin is trying desperately to replace Channel One’s lost ad revenue with the “curriculum” described below. Quite a concept: schools paying for Channel One News.
Taken from Houghton Mifflin’s Channel One website:
Curriculum in Your School
We’re excited to offer educators daily, standards-aligned curriculum activities tied to each day’s show and a user-friendly, searchable library of Channel One News’ award-winning video segments and activities. Channel One News Curriculum, winner of Tech & Learning’s 2014 Award of Excellence, offers the daily newscast along with a three-part instructional routine that uses nonfiction video and text as a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary teaching resource. Student-centered activities integrate ELA with core subject areas, such as science, math, social studies and geography, and are supplemented with vocabulary, discussion questions, quiz questions and information about the standards that align to the activities. The instructional routine includes:
- Extend: Engaging timelines and slideshows extend the concepts introduced in the video segment and support differentiated instruction using images and text.
- Write: The writing prompts are focused on nonfiction and expository writing, which helps students practice a variety of nonfiction writing types such as lists, informational text, persuasive arguments and captions.
- Assess: Students are asked to complete short, formative assessments to showcase their understanding and to help inform teachers’ ongoing instruction.
As educators increasingly look to customize their own lesson plans, the Channel One News Video Library is a comprehensive resource of Channel One News’ video segments and activities created with one goal in mind: to help students interpret the news and spark important conversations around current events.
The Channel One News Video Library includes:
- 2,200 Channel One News video segments, searchable by grade, subject area and keywords
- 1,200 video transcripts
- Interactive, standards-aligned content including slideshows, timelines, discussion questions, writing prompts and quizzes tied to specific video segment
To subscribe, or for more information on Channel One News Curriculum & Video Library, please contact your HMH Representative.
