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K-12 Instructional Television Programs
Each year, KET provides nearly 170 instructional series (more than 1,800 broadcast hours) to
Kentucky’s elementary and secondary schools. These series provide students with standards-based
instruction in every major content area. Responses from more than 750 Kentucky schools in a recent survey
indicate that 76% of students and 63% of teachers used KET instructional programming in 1999-2000.
Nine out of 20 of the most watched programs were KET productions, including several
Electronic Field Trips to such diverse Kentucky locations as a
coal mine, the Kentucky Center for the Arts, a
horse farm, and a zoo.
Web Services and Classroom E-News
KET provides extensive online educational resources for most KET productions. These web pages often
include downloadable teacher’s guides and other materials, as well as links to other useful sites.
In February 2001, KET launched Classroom E-News, an e-mail news
service providing K-12 teachers up-to-date information about KET’s rich video and web-based resources.
Two to three times per month, subscribers receive brief announcements concerning new KET resources related
to their subject and/or grade level. More than 4,000 teachers have already subscribed to this service.
Interactive Distance Learning
In less than 12 years, KET Interactive Distance Learning has
become a nationwide service with more than 13,500 graduates in Kentucky alone. In 1996, KET introduced
Humanities Through the Arts, which has already
helped more than 8,000 Kentucky students satisfy new high school graduation requirements. Today’s
Interactive Distance Learning courses make substantial use of the Internet. Students explore its resources
as they gather data, conduct experiments, and use tools developed by the course instructors.
KET’s newest high school distance learning offerings include two on-line Latin courses and an
AP physics course taught primarily via Internet and CD-ROM.
The web pages that accompany KET’s Latin courses have been recognized as world-class by a leading
foreign language web site and as the official Ecce Romani site by Scott-Wesley/Longman Publishers.
KET College Courses
For 23 years, KET has been broadcasting telecourses throughout the state,
making college more accessible to Kentuckians. In that time, more than 100,000 students have enrolled to
earn college credit through the telecourse program. Currently, students can choose from 25 telecourses
each year, offered through 24 participating colleges and universities across Kentucky.
Professional Development
Since 1990, KET has produced more than 1,000 hours of professional development seminars
for educators—including more than 70 hours during the 2000/01 school year alone—all approved by
the Kentucky Department of Education for professional development credit. The seminars are aligned with
Kentucky’s Core Content and show exceptional teachers in their own classrooms facing typical challenges
and modeling good teaching.
Adult Education
Since its formal introduction 15 years ago, more than 87,000 adults have called KET’s GED ON TV
hotline. KET’s student services staff has pre-tested and enrolled more than 24,000 adults, and 64,000
others have been interviewed and given information and referrals to local adult education services.
Of those who enrolled in GED ON TV, more than 9,400 Kentucky adults now have diplomas. Each GED graduate
generates an estimated $7,592 in additional income per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That means that the 9,400-plus GED graduates from GED ON TV together earn more than $71.3 million in additional
income per year. In 2002, KET will launch GED Connection, a new GED series
compatible with the revised national GED exam.
KET also broadcasts Workplace Essential Skills—25 half-hour programs
designed to help adults use basic skills to find jobs and apply their skills successfully in workplace
settings. The award-winning series is airing on more than 185 public television stations nationwide and
is available to trainers and adult educators across the country to help solve some of America’s
workforce problems.
Child Care Training
From January 2000 through the middle of March 2001, approximately 5,800 Kentucky child care providers
and educators received child care training through programs broadcast on KET. More than 2,000 child care
centers have used KET’s training over the past decade.
Outreach
Since 1998, KET Community Outreach has collaborated with more than 160 local and statewide social,
educational, governmental, and civic organizations to educate Kentuckians about critical issues, organize
public forums, and provide resources to encourage community action. One recent, key project was
Outreach’s collaboration with Journey’s End: A Kentucky Partnership for End-of-Life Care,
the Kentucky Association of Hospice and Palliative Care, the Kentucky Medical Association, the Kentucky
Hospital Association, regional Kentucky Hospice organizations, the University of Louisville and University
of Kentucky medical schools, and the Kentucky Council on Churches to develop 20 leadership and discussion
forums on issues raised in the PBS series On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying.
Ready to Learn (RTL), an ongoing Outreach program in collaboration with the Kentucky Association for
Early Childhood Education, the Kentucky Reading Association, the Governor’s Office for Early
Childhood Development, the Kentucky Head Start Association, and many others, trains parents and
caregivers to use television as a tool for learning. Workshops stress making careful choices about
television viewing, co-viewing with children, incorporating hands-on activities to extend learning,
and reading books with children on a daily basis. Since its inception in 1997, RTL has presented 709
workshops in Kentucky, trained 557 professionals (caregivers and teachers) and 3,123 parents, reached
8,798 children, and—with the help of generous partners—distributed more than 9,400 books to
children who would not otherwise have had them.
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