SEL GOES DIGITAL INDUSTRY VOICES INTERVIEW WITH ROBIN PORTER AT DISCOVERY EDUCATION
Robin Porter is the Vice President of Digital Content at Discovery Education. She started her career more than 30 years ago as a middle school language arts teacher in Maryland. After a decade in the classroom, Robin moved to USA Today’s education department where she headed up product and curriculum development, teacher training and partnerships for the newspaper’s in-school education program. After leaving USA Today, she worked with several Ed Tech companies and media networks to create instructional resources, interactives, and digital content. Robin currently leads the team responsible for Discovery Education’s collection of more than 200,000 digital content resources. She evaluates, produces, and collaborates with trusted partners to add and curate high-quality digital content resources across Discovery Education’s services. She is passionate about the power of digital content to engage students and meaningfully influence instruction. On February 17, 2021, Larry Jacobs had an opportunity to sit down with Robin and learn about some exciting updates to the Discovery Education platform. Their conversation follows.
ROBIN, TELL US ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND AND CURRENT ROLE. Sure, Larry, and thanks for the opportunity to speak with you. I serve as Discovery Education’s Vice President of Digital Content. Along with my incredible team, we manage Discovery Education’s deep vault of more than 200,000 32
digital, multi-modal, content resources. Together, we evaluate and produce content, and work with trusted partners to add content to our digital services such as our flexible digital K-12 platform and digital textbooks, or Techbook. Then, within our services, we curate the content in creative and meaningful ways to make it easy for educators and students to integrate into instruction. But I am an educator at heart. I began my career as a middle school language arts teacher, and it was in the classroom that I became fascinated with the power of high-quality digital content to engage students in meaningful ways. Like many of my colleagues at Discovery Education whose experience includes time as a classroom teacher, I approach my work with the teacher (and of course the student) first and foremost in my mind. Together with my team, we work to create and provide to educators high-quality content and unforgettable digital learning experiences that are inspire student engagement, curiosity, and agency,
American Consortium for Equity in Education
