"For anybody who has a busy schedule, this is an easier way to take a class than going to a campus."

-- Gerald Friel of Atco,
NJ, Camden County College student and WHYY Home College Service participant

Providing a Lifetime of Learning

WHYY's commitment to support lifelong learning is another aspect that sets it apart. With the formation of an Educational Services Department under the leadership of Roger D. Mitchell, Ed.D., this first year has been spent reevaluating and expanding existing services. In addition, several new community partnerships are being forged to increase our services to the tri-state region in the years ahead.

To date:

• WHYY's preschool Ready To Learn Service, in its third year, has conducted a total of 82 workshops for preschool caregivers, reaching 2,000 parents, teachers and daycare providers in the tri-state region. The attendees in turn reached 30,000 children who benefited from advice on media usage and childcare tips. More than 100,000 copies of the WHYY Ready To Learn Family News have been distributed, benefiting thousands of area families.
• WHYY Home College Service (HCS), after two years, has nearly 14,000 cumulative enrollments in courses at the colleges that are WHYY's partners in the Delaware Valley Distance Learning Consortium. The WHYY HCS is the largest distance-learning start-up venture in PBS and is the system's fourth-largest distance-learning provider of college courses. More growth is on the horizon with the development of online courseware to enable college-credit classes over the Internet.
• WHYY continued its support of the School District of Philadelphia's Strawberry Mansion Cluster Project by providing Internet access and training for teachers.
• Students from the Strawberry Mansion Cluster Project participated in a project to research oceanography and contribute their findings to a page on the Web site of Lisbon World Expo '98.
• In its first implementation year, WHYY's Education Connection provided every student in two Wilmington classrooms with a computer, Internet access and e-mail accounts in their homes, linked to their classrooms.
• WHYY's Mathline project used PBS video lessons and on-line technology to connect 70 elementary and middle school math teachers across Delaware with each other and to further the teachers' professional development.

As a Ready To Learn Station, WHYY broadcasts more than 60 hours of outstanding children's educational programming each week on TV12, helping children enter school ready to learn. Core to the service are: SESAME STREET, PLAZA SESAMO, ARTHUR, BARNEY & FRIENDS, MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY, KRATTS' CREATURES, READING RAINBOW, WISHBONE and the newest hit, TELETUBBIES.

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