New Enhancements to Discovery Education’s Digital Services Boost Educators’ Ability to Connect with Peers and Differentiate Instruction Stephen Wakefield, Discovery Education240-662-5563, Stephen_Wakefield@discovery.com -Social Media Platform, Math Assessment Builder Added to Discovery Education’s Digital Services; Spanish Language Text and New Reading Level Coming Soon- Silver Spring, Md. (Mar. 20, 2016) – Discovery Education, the leading provider of digital content and professional development for K-12 classrooms, today unveiled two new enhancements to its award-winning digital services. These features added to Discovery Education’s Streaming and Techbook services, support educators’ efforts to network with their peers and differentiate instruction. Currently rolling out to users of Discovery Education Streaming, Streaming Plus, and the Discovery Education Techbook series is the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) Online Community. A new social media platform, embedded within Discovery Education’s services, the DEN Online Community enhances educators’ ability to connect with peers from around the world and personalize their own professional development. The DEN Online Community helps educators explore new instructional strategies and teacher-created resources, join or create discussion groups on topics of interest to them, inspire fellow educators with advice on best practices and new approaches to teaching, and even earn badges for active participation in the Discovery Education Community. A global community of education professionals, the Discovery Education Community connects members across school systems and around the world through social media, virtual conferences, and in-person events, fostering valuable networking, idea sharing, and inspiration. To further support educators’ efforts to differentiate math instruction, a Math Assessment Builder has also been added to the Discovery Education Math Techbook™. This enhancement gives teachers access to an additional 8,000 technology-enhanced items from which they can create their own standards-based assessments. The feedback from these teacher-created assessments can be aggregated with other data gathered from the daily use of Math Techbook to provide educators a complete picture of each student’s academic progress. Also, to better help educators assess students’ readiness to learn new mathematical concepts and ideas, Discovery Education’s team of curriculum experts have also added two “quick check” questions at the beginning of every concept explored in the Math Techbook. In the coming months, a Spanish text and a new Reading Level B complementing the challenging text available in Reading Level A is scheduled to be added to the Discovery Education Science Techbook for grades 3-8. Together, these two new resources will help teachers more easily differentiate instruction while empowering students at all levels of English-proficiency to deepen their exploration of the natural world and improve their scientific vocabulary. “Continuing my professional growth and differentiating instruction for my diverse learners are two of my biggest challenges,” said Michelle Joyce, Science Teacher at Palmetto Ridge High School from Collier County Public Schools. “The DEN Online Community, the Math Assessment Builder, as well as the new texts set to be added to the Science Techbook, are valuable tools that will help any educator address those issues.” Containing thousands of standards-aligned resources, Discovery Education Streaming and Streaming Plus help build students’ mastery in interpreting, understanding, and evaluating information across all subject areas. Teacher resources include lesson plans, instructional strategies, and content collections organized around themes. Students can access images, primary source documents, podcasts, oral interviews, books on tape, articles, and videos, and more. Discovery Education’s Techbooks, are breakthrough digital textbooks that are aligned to rigorous standards, support a comprehensive curriculum, and are updated regularly at no cost. The series encourages all learners through interactive features that change the reading level of text and enable text to be read aloud. The Techbook series saves teachers’ time with a comprehensive design that places model lessons, student activities and assessments at their fingertips. Techbooks are platform neutral and can be used in 1:1 or 1-to-many configurations and in any instructional environment. Currently, Discovery Education Techbooks are used by more than 3 million students in all 50 U.S. states and several Canadian provinces. “One of the tremendous benefits of using dynamic digital resources as a core instructional resource instead of hardcopy textbooks is that digital resources can continue growing and evolving to meet the changing needs of educators and students long after they are deployed,” said Kelli Campbell, Senior Vice President, Digital Learning Officer and Managing Director, International. “These latest enhancements demonstrate Discovery Education’s continued commitment to continuously improving the award-winning services used by the over 4.5 million educators and over 50 million students we serve each day.” For more information about the Discovery Education Streaming service, the Discovery Education Techbook series or other services and resources from Discovery Education, visit www.discoveryeducation.com. ####About Discovery EducationDiscovery Education is the global leader in standards-based digital content for K-12, transforming teaching and learning with award-winning digital textbooks, multimedia content, professional development, and the largest professional learning community of its kind. Serving 4.5 million educators and over 50 million students, Discovery Education’s services are in half of U.S. classrooms, 50 percent of all primary schools in the UK, and more than 50 countries. Discovery Education partners with districts, states, and like-minded organizations to captivate students, empower teachers, and transform classrooms with customized solutions that increase academic achievement. Discovery Education is powered by Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK), the number one nonfiction media company in the world. Explore the future of education at www.discoveryeducation.com.