|
Our Philosophy
|
|
 |
30-Second Philosophy: Click the link to view a short movie that presents our company's philosophy.
|
At Five Star Educational, our philosophy is that learning should never be boring; but rather that it should be fun, entertaining and educational. Considering all the options available to an imaginative scriptwriter, we feel that there's no reason for VHS or DVD learning to be anything other than a thoroughly enjoyable experience for young people. Of course, it all starts with offering new titles that young people are genuinely enthusiastic about. For us, the litmus test in considering any new topic is, "What's in it for the young people?" For instance, it's fairly easy to see that young people would be naturally motivated to create computer art, arts and crafts projects or to learn how to perform magic. Even when we tackle subject matter in which young people may arguably have a limited interest -- our Study Skills video being our best example -- we'll go out of our way to try to convince young people that, in fact, all of their hopes and dreams are very much tied into their ability to study and learn new materials.
|
Besides producing topics that are of real interest to young people, we also strive to make our work original, creative and accessible. That means, whenever possible, adopting an innovative approach to the material. For Instance, Every Young Person Has Challenges and Every Teen Has Challenges are told entirely through the eyes of young people; Study Skills foregoes voiceover narration in favor of a story with true-to-life characters; and Computer Art for Young People offers an excellent range of computer art projects which can be accomplished using software that's already available on your computer, so there's no software to buy or install.
Finally, we think it's important to be realistic about human nature. Young people are interested in watching other people their own age. They want to see how other young people think, react, create, model new skills and respond to challenges. So we feel it's essential to feature young people in every one of our videos. Even when we feature presenters leading the way, you'll see young people creating their own masterpieces in the studio or on a computer screen, learning new magic tricks, or portraying the main characters in a story.
Making Education Fully Dimensional
Part of our role as educational producers is to complement and supplement what's being taught in the schools. Videos and DVDs offer a natural opportunity to explore subject matter that's sometimes overlooked or underrepresented in the classroom; for example, in encouraging young people to develop their creativity, and in exploring social, personal and ethical issues. We feel that if we can help teachers to round out the educational experience while making their jobs a little easier and more interesting, then that's what we're here for, too.
An essential component of our role in the classroom has been the development of teacher guides, each one of which includes ten teacher lesson plans. Our belief has always been that to create the best teacher's guide possible, the effort and creativity that go into writing the lesson plans should match the effort in creating the videos. We feel the guides should never parrot what is already shown, but rather that they should thoughtfully organize this information, bringing it all together in an easy-to-use resource, while at the same time taking the content to a deeper level.
We've produced teacher guides for the majority of our titles and will continue to do so with future releases. Although we could have developed these guides in-house, we felt that a better approach was to team up with top authors from around the country, teachers and educators who have a tremendous amount of expertise in each of the content areas presented. The result has been teacher guides that are educationally sound, which feature a generous variety of grade-appropriate activities, and are very easy to get plugged into and use.
Building a Chain of Trust
Just as a trust is placed in you to purchase media that is in the best interests of your children, your students or the public, we feel a responsibility to provide you with only the highest quality educational products that are truly in your best interests. Every title we release has been painstakingly produced to meet our high quality educational and entertainment standards, and to ensure that the program is ready for the home, public library and classroom setting. That's why we call our company, Five Star Educational. We want you to feel that if you're interested in a title's content, you can trust that the quality will be there.
Related Links:
How to Order
|
|
