Instructional Television

Over 140 instructional television (ITV) series, for all grade levels and in all curriculum areas, are broadcast statewide on Wisconsin Public Television for teachers to use in their classrooms. All series are correlated to the Wisconsin Academic Model Standards. Many have websites with teacher guides that can be downloaded as well as application software and CD-ROMs. NEWIST offers a variety of services to support the use of instructional television programming and technology in the classroom and special discounts are available to members.

Why ITV?

Instructional television is effective with students of both low and high ability, and both students and teachers agree that student learning improves when video is used in instruction. A special research project designed by the Teachers College at Columbia University examined the impact of instructional television (ITV) and led to findings that are significant and encouraging:

• On standardized tests, students in classes that are exposed to ITV outperformed peers in non-ITV classes that were taught by the same teacher.


• The ITV students scored higher on writing assignments and used more creative imagery and figurative language than those in the control group.


• ITV students displayed more innovation and ingenuity, and appeared more enthusiastic and confident in approaches to problem solving and hands-on experiments.


• Student learning improved in proportion to the number of days and the number of minutes in which ITV was used by the teachers.