National award presented to Western Reserve Public Media

Staff report

KENT

An educational project about poetry created by Western Reserve Public Media has received a national award.

“More Than Rhyme: Poetry Fundamentals” was named best teacher resource in the Instructional Media category by National Educational Telecommunications Association. NETA presented 20 public broadcasters with awards last month at its annual conference in Dallas. There were nearly 300 entries in the competition.

“More Than Rhyme: Poetry Fundamentals” helps students in grades seven through 12 learn about the structure, usefulness and power of poetry. The multimedia project includes instructional videos, a website and a teacher guide. Judges praised the project for being well-organized, full of examples and easy to understand.

“It could expand the horizons of students and expose them to whole new ways to use language,” one judge wrote.

The project was funded through an annual subsidy from the Broadcast Educational Media Commission, an Ohio state agency charged with advancing education and accelerating the learning of Ohio citizens through public educational broadcasting services. It is now included with almost 50 other multimedia projects available for free on Western Reserve Public Media’s website.

Twenty-nine projects in program production, promotion, outreach and instructional media were honored. The NETA Awards are an annual recognition of member-created excellence in public broadcasting, a tradition established in the 1960s by the pioneering Southern Educational Communications Association from which NETA was formed.

NETA is a professional association founded in 1997 to serve public television licensees and affiliated educational organizations. The organization has members in 43 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. NETA is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina.

Western Reserve Public Media (formerly PBS 45 & 49) is owned and operated by Northeastern Educational Television of Ohio, Inc., a private, nonprofit corporation and consortium of Kent State University, The University of Akron and Youngstown State University. Western Reserve Public Media uses the power of commercial-free television and related services to enrich the lives of people through high-quality programming and educational services that teach, illuminate and inspire. It serves the largest population of Ohio’s eight PBS member stations.