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Every day, public service media delivers content and services that advance learning on-air, online, at home and in the classroom for Americans of all ages and aspirations.  Through the My Source Community Impact Awards for Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) honors stations for their innovative and committed response to the diverse educational needs of their communities.

 

This year, CPB recognized local public brodacasting stations who make an impact on the lives of students, parents, teachers and caregivers in their communities every day.  Below is a sample of this great work: 

 

2009 My Source Community Impact Awards for Education:

 

Alabama Public Television (Birmingham, AL) – APT serves nearly 48,000 classrooms with APTPLUS curriculum-correlated content, and their E-learning for Educators is used by 75% of Alabama’s teachers for professional development.

 

AETN (Conway, AR) – AETN created a spring break family day designed to encourage children to learn and be physically active through PBS characters, educational games, crafts and contests. The event attracted 7,000 participants.

 

KCET (Los Angeles, CA) – KCET’s daily program A Place of Our Own/Los Niños en su Casa teaches caregivers of young children how to include learning in every day. To date, 7,000 parents and childcare providers have attended corresponding workshops.

 

KRCB (Rohnert Park, CA) – KRCB sponsored media training for youth, poetry slams, murals and other storytelling activities in their Tengo la Voz (I Have the Voice) project, to help Latino youth facing discrimination, poverty and high dropout rates.

 

KVIE (Sacramento, CA) – KVIE meets the educational needs of immigrant and migrant farm families in the Central Valley region through a traveling lending library, free books and PBS early literacy workshops. 

 

KQED (San Francisco, CA) – KQED partnered with the Unity Council and PBS Raising Readers to target high crime, high poverty Oakland neighborhoods with mobile learning labs, a literacy fair, literacy day camps, parent workshops and student murals.

 

WHUT (Washington, DC) – WHUT designed a Family Literacy Night for a local charter school to help parents in DC’s low-income Anacostia neighborhood keep their children healthy and on the path to literacy.

 

WSRE (Pensacola, FL) – WSRE partners with the Escambia County School District, local childcare providers, and the Pensacola Pelicans professional baseball team to engage thousands of the area’s children and parents in literacy challenges, events, training and workshops.

 

WFSU (Tallahassee, FL) – WFSU partnered with a university laboratory to develop a two-week, hands-on science camp for 80 seventh and eighth grade girls. The program ignites girls’ interest in science, and garnered participation and support from local engineering firms.

 

WPBA (Atlanta, GA) – WPBA works with the Atlanta Public Schools to manage the city’s My Homework Hotline program.  On-call teachers provide one-on-one assistance and easy-to-understand explanations to students struggling with math, science and other homework problems.

 

Iowa Public Television (Johnston, IA) – Through IPTV’s interactive online learning environment Iowa Pathways, students explore the history of their state. The project won the Iowa Distance Learning Association’s 2007 Innovator’s Award for excellence in K-12 education.

 

WSIU Public Broadcasting (Carbondale, IL) – WSIU helps children develop financial literacy skills through Biz Kid$ Bash. After learning basic business concepts, teams compete to create and market small businesses.  The SIU Credit Union was inspired to become a project funder.

 

WEIU (Charleston, IL) – WEIU serves students, teachers and parents through pre-school literacy workshops and teacher training, and has won awards for Newswatch, produced by Eastern Illinois University students.

 

WILL (Urbana, IL) – WILL convened town hall meetings for rural teens to address issues impacting their lives. The results: an in-school mentoring program, a mayor’s youth council and a new teen center.  WILL also provides media training to urban African Americans students.

 

PBS 39 (Fort Wayne, IN) – Facing soaring dropout rates, PBS 39 created a multi-platform project designed to motivate students to help each other stay in school and graduate. The project has garnered funding from local foundations and individuals.

 

Smoky Hills Public Television (Bunker Hill, KS) – Smoky Hills Public Television helps residents of southwest Kansas overcome poverty, limited English proficiency and rural isolation with Bright Beginnings, a series of bi-lingual workshops for Head Start families.

 

KET (Lexington, KY) – KET developed robust arts toolkits for teachers, comprising lesson plans, idea cards, glossaries and videos.  State art scores subsequently improved more than any other tested content area. KET’s online EncycloMedia has been used more than 2.3 million times since 2005.

 

Louisiana Public Broadcasting (Baton Rouge, LA) – LPB responded to low literacy rates with the PBS Raising Readers initiative, working closely with their education, non-profit, civic and corporate partners.  The station’s SuperWhy! camps delivered immediate, measurable results.

 

WGBH Boston (Boston, MA) – WGBH worked with the Perkins School for the Blind to make science curriculum resources accessible to blind and low-vision students, enabling them to learn abstract concepts and work independently.  WGBH also collaborates with MIT and other partners to annually present the nine-day, citywide Cambridge Science Festival. More than 25,000 people attended in 2008 and the festival is now replicated nationwide.

 

WGBY (Springfield, MA) – To engage a growing Hispanic community and to address a shortage of Spanish-speaking journalists, WGBY created media and journalism training for Latino students. They also spearheaded a multi-platform project examining the role of New England artists Currier & Ives in shaping the American identity. 

 

Maryland Public Television (Owings Mills, MD) – Through Thinkport.org, MPT develops and delivers cutting edge digital resources to K-12 students and teachers. The award-winning site has more than 20,000 registered users in Maryland and beyond, and logs more than one million page views per month.

 

WGVU (Grand Rapids, MI) – To address sinking reading scores in their community, WGVU offers an after-school program where students hear from local authors and performers, and develop their own poems, stories, comic books and journals. 

 

KSMQ (Austin, MN) – KSMQ promotes early literacy through PBS Kids Share a Story. Area parents and children are invited to read sections of a favorite book together on-air, and then to view their read-aloud online whenever they like.

 

KETC (St. Louis, MO) – KETC is leading ten stations documenting high school teams participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. The teens gain technical knowledge, along with self-confidence, communication skills, and leadership.

 

Mississippi Public Broadcasting (Jackson, MS) – To raise literacy rates, MPB developed an extensive pre-school literacy project using Between the Lions. After working with 61 economically-challenged child care centers, the result is 142% improvement in literacy performance.   

 

WTVI (Charlotte, NC) – Thirty percent of adults in the greater Charlotte area do not have a high school diploma. WTVI airs a GED Connect series each weekday and conducts workshops to help participants obtain employment.  In 2008, 56 individuals received their GED.

 

New Hampshire Public Television (Durham, NH) – NHPTV is partnering with Head Start and Child and Family Services to provide a 360-degree education intervention in its hardest hit communities.

 

NJN (Trenton, NJ) – Partnering with the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce, NJN provides hundreds of hours of on-air, online and in-person workforce training to more than 50 career centers and community sites. The statewide project has 1,700 active participants.

 

KNME (Albuquerque, NM) – KNME’s Science Central project includes a Science Crawl with the public schools and science museum in Albuquerque, Science Cafés throughout the state, and a comprehensive Web portal.  Corporate sponsorship is close to $100,000.

 

Vegas PBS (Las Vegas, NV) – Vegas PBS partnered with the Nevada Blind Children's Foundation and the Clark County School District to create learning kits for the parents of 350 blind and visually impaired children. Vegas PBS also provides PBS TeacherLine classes to more than 1,200 teachers.

 

KNPB (Reno, NV) – KNPB’s Family Storyteller project, developed in collaboration with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, promotes the benefits of parents reading to their children, especially English language learners. The project has been adopted by Extension systems in 29 states.

 

WNED (Buffalo, NY) – Located in a city of renowned architecture, WNED utilized its award-winning documentary Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo to develop a 66-page educator’s guide, distributed with a companion program DVD, to schools and libraries throughout the region.

 

Thirteen/WNET (New York, NY) – Thirteen created the nation’s largest annual conference for education professionals – the Celebration of Teaching and Learning. Eight thousand New York City teachers explore instructional technology, educational philosophy and classroom best practices.

 

Mountain Lake PBS (Plattsburgh, NY) – Mountain Lake PBS developed a literacy partnership with the Champlain Valley Transportation Museum, in which families use PBS programs, books and exhibits focused on transportation themes to improve reading skills.

 

Ohio Educational Television Stations (Athens, OH) – The eight public television stations in Ohio worked together to bring Governor Strickland’s 12 regional Conversations on Education to residents around the state, including on-air programs, community forums, Web content and promotional support.

 

WGTE 30 (Toledo, OH) – WGTE has expanded its literacy leadership role through Raising Readers.  New partnerships include local print and broadcast media and the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Team.  

 

WHYY (Philadelphia, PA) – WHYY partners with the Boys & Girls Clubs to provide young people with after-school digital technology training. Their Children’s Service workshops help parents and educators prepare children for school.

 

WVIA Public Media (Pittston, PA) – WVIA produces standards-based, instructional television programming for schools, provides Web-based teacher training, creates electronic field trips promoting local history, and conducts educational essay contests involving thousands of students.

 

Penn State Public Broadcasting (University Park, PA) – When public media, community engagement and higher education converge, you get Common Ground Lobby Talks. These current events conversations are produced in partnership with the university, broadcast on WPSU, and streamed on www.wpsu.org.

 

TUTV/WIPR (San Juan, PR) – An initiative created for at-risk communities, WIPR’s Communication Project offers skills training in theater, photography, graphic design, audio, video and film.  More than 6,000 have participated.

 

ETPtv (Knoxville, TN) – Over 4,000 East Tennessee residents have utilized ETPtv’s GED programming to obtain a high school equivalency diploma. The station works with social service agencies, local colleges and other community organizations.

 

HoustonPBS (Houston, TX) – With 42% of the local pre-school population at or below the poverty line, HoustonPBS conducts train-the-trainer workshops to reach parents and caregivers in low-income families. The focus is social/emotional development and early childhood literacy.  

Basin PBS (Midland, TX) – Basin PBS partners with the Permian Basin School District to produce a high school academic quiz show that is used by classroom teachers throughout the region, including rural and private schools. 

 

UEN-TV (Salt Lake City, UT) – UEN-TV’s my.uen Teacher Portal is an easy-to-use online tool that allows teachers to connect to parents about classroom events, assignments, student progress and class rules.  More than 38,000 teachers have a my.uen account.

 

WETA (Arlington, VA) – WETA launched four national Learning Media sites providing authoritative information for parents and teachers who are helping emerging readers. Nearly 500,000 unique visitors use the resources of these sites each month.

 

WHRO (Norfolk, VA) – WHRO creates and delivers content for the Hampton Roads Virtual Learning Center, an online regional high school offering full-year courses in Earth Science, English, Government and Survival Economics.

 

Vermont Public Television (Colchester, VT) – Using their monthly public affairs program VPT Public Square, VPT engages students at Harwood Union High School to create their own conversations and content.

 

KCTS 9 (Seattle, WA) – For 17 years, KCTS has sponsored the Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Education, recognizing innovative teaching models throughout the state. Winners are featured in primetime specials and online.

 

KSPS (Spokane, WA) – Owned and operated by the Spokane Public Schools, KSPS serves children and families with a Ready to Lead in Literacy project and the production of local history programming.

 

KBTC (Tacoma, WA) – KBTC was honored by the United Way of Pierce County with the Community Partner of the Year Award for their role in a county-wide effort to guarantee that children in low-income neighborhoods would begin kindergarten ready to learn.

 

Wyoming PBS (Riverton, WY) – Wyoming PBS partners with the Wyoming Early Childhood Association, Head Start and Even Start to offer hands-on Ready to Learn (RTL) workshops across the state for teachers and child care providers. 

 

   Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

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