Schoolyard Films: New Beta Site in Progress
Schoolyard Films: New Beta Site in Progress
Welcome to our Frequently Asked Questions page! Here you’ll find quick answers about who we are, how our films are made, and how educators can use them in the classroom. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, please reach out — we’re always happy to help.
All Schoolyard Films media (films and study guides) are free to educators and students worldwide. There is no catch, and there is no advertising. (Really!) Because we are a 501(c)3 educational charity, we are able to solicit funds from foundations, corporations, and individuals. These grants fund our production budgets, and then we’re in the clear to give away our films and study guides for free, reaching, we hope, the largest viewership possible. So far it’s working well and we continue to build a community of like-minded people who want to help.
If you want to contribute, or know someone who does, please look for the Schoolyard Donate button here on our website… but no matter what, our work is available to everyone for free. We want teachers to use our resources and build on them for their own lesson plans and programs. Please share what you have done with Schoolyard Films resources in the Blog section so that others can benefit from your experiences. What we all do and share with our students in a classroom matters. You matter. Thank you !
It’s easy! Just find the film that you want to watch on our website and click on it. It streams directly from the website. You can also click on one of the links below it to access the films from our partner distributors: PBS Learning Media, Apple Podcasts, and the DCMP (Described and Captioned Media Program). There are download links included with every film from Vimeo, our hosting platform.
Please note: These links are currently (January, 2026) unusable while we meet new tech specs recently requested by both Apple and PBS. Please give us a month -thank you!
More downloading options for PCs and Android Mobile devices (with a simple web browser-based interface) is now available through PBS’s “Learning Media.”
Link to all of the Schoolyard Films resources on the PBS site here: PBS LearningMedia/SchoolyardFilms
It is an amazing site with lots of great resources and Schoolyard Films is glad to be a contributing partner!
That’s a great question! We have “day jobs”… We are producers, directors, photographers and educators who have worked in broadcast wildlife documentary films for prominent production companies (The BBC, NatGeo, Discovery, and many others…) for many years, and we still do. Schoolyard’s films are designed to work well in a classroom environment. They are short, but feature and content rich. They work well within the timeframe of a single classroom session… giving the instructor time to conduct the regular and necessary “business” of their class each day and allow for a full viewing of the film and then also to include time for study guide activities and meaningful classroom discussions about the topics presented in the films. These are not just rainy day or substitute supplements, but fully realized lessons that fit with your programs and fulfill State and National required Science Standards.
You’re welcome!
We have enjoyed a great relationship with the National Science Foundation’s Digital Library and “hosting/serving” all Schoolyard media from Apple Podcasts’s big, safe, and fast servers worldwide. We use Apple products in our personal and professional lives in everything from communications to film editing. That said, we also have other products and other devices. We want them all to work for you, the end user. We always want a safe and future-proof way to deliver Schoolyard Films’ media. Apple Podcasts is constantly updated (directly by Apple) and is free and available for both Apple and PC computers. (Really… it works on PC’s just fine!) All Apple mobile devices can access Schoolyard Films for free in a safe (virus and advertising free) way.
This is a big deal: none of us want uncontrolled advertising or other messaging finding its way to our students, even if it might bring in additional revenue. There are no click-throughs, ad placements, or revenue streams associated with the Schoolyard Films site or links to Schoolyard Media—none.
Linux computers and Android-compatible mobile devices can play the QuickTime files we deliver through iTunes, so it’s easy to stream or share these files between Apple and non-Apple users. Files can be moved around freely using simple drag-and-drop to a USB drive. We only ask one thing: please don’t try to sell them. They’re free, and meant to stay that way.
For non-Apple users—and for those who discover the rich educational resource that is PBS LearningMedia—Schoolyard Films is also available at PBSLearningMedia.org. It’s highly searchable and rich in metadata, making it especially helpful for teachers looking for specific topics and resources to support their lesson planning.