An American president, up close.

Nick Sheldon's seventh graders got to meet Teddy Roosevelt this year. Well, a Roosevelt re-enactor anyway. Through a Web cam, the students from Schenectady City (N.Y.) School District's Mont Pleasant Middle School asked the former president about his life and leadership role.

Checking out 20,000 hours of C-SPAN video archives came next---only they got a little help on that assignment. With a mouseclick, any student or teacher can view short video clips hand-selected by Sheldon's Points of VIEW project team, which consists of eight teachers, two administrators and some tech pro's from four local districts.

Using interactive video conferencing and a grant from the cable industry's Cable in the Classroom initiative, the team has spent two years developing a POV Roosevelt curriculum. It's designed as a week-long mini-unit for middle and high school classrooms. Teachers can use the existing curriculum or build off the model by choosing another president or even an author, Sheldon notes.

The aim is to engage students--and teachers. "As opposed to someone at the other end saying, 'This is a good document or footage to use,' [teachers are] directly seeing and fitting. It makes a big difference," says John Falco, Schenectady's superintendent.

Whether educators chalk it up to the technology, the content or the cross-district collaboration, POV students are absorbing the material better. Sheldon and a colleague (with nearly identical background) tested that theory with two units on presidential roles. He used POV materials with 120 students, and she taught 150 students using his former, more traditional lesson plans. Then came the test. Sheldon reports, "Her students did well but mine did noticeably better,"--5 percent to 8 percent better. A high school study had similar results.

And students give POV a thumbs-up. More than three of four say they learned more than they would have from an ordinary class.

www.c-span.org/classroom/pov