Virtual Education Space Finding educational resources in VES

1. Virtual Education SpaceFinding educational resources in VES Matthew Maennling Department of Education The PreK-12 Educational Portal for Massachusetts

2. What kind of educational resources are in VES? • VES provides three ways to obtain high-quality educational resources: • Using the Quick Search Tool • Browsing the VHD folders • Searching with the Teaching and Learning Resources (TLR) database • The objective of this presentation is to explain how to use these three sources of high quality educational resources to support classroom instruction

3. 1. VES Quick Search: Four Searches in One

4. 1. VES Quick Search: 4 Searches in One 1 2 3 4 • The VES Quick Search tool brings together four types of information search, and makes it simple to conduct different types of searches without opening multiple browser windows and visiting multiple sites. • VES: Searches the contents of the Virtual Hard Drive • Web: Searches the World Wide Web using Google • URL: Enter a web address,click URL, directs you to a website • MarcoPolo: Searches a lesson plan database with 14,000 items • The Quick Search tool is simple to use: enter keywords for your search, and press the appropriate button to launch different searches. To visit a trusted website, enter a web address and click “URL”. All results display in the VES main frame. 1 2 3 4

5. 1. VES Quick Search: VHD 1 The Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) has many folders, some of which are public to all VES users, some of which are shared with particular workgroups (like schools or districts) and some are private (personal files folder). • To search the VHD, enter a keyword in the text box and click the “VES” button. Your search results will appear in the main frame. Click on any of the results to view the resource that has been returned. • TIP 1: This search is limited to the universe of folders to which you have access… Very specific searches may not yield results! • TIP 2: This is how, over time, you can quickly search archived materials and resources without navigating through the VHD

6. 1. VES Quick Search: Web 2 To conduct a search of the World Wide Web without opening a new browser window, enter your keywords in the text box and press the “Web” button. A Google search will run, and the results will appear in the VES main frame in the center of the screen. • TIP: Your search results are only as good as your search term… • Put “ “ around an exact phrase like “Library of Congress” • Use AND, OR and NOT to restrict searches (“English Language Arts” AND composition AND “Lesson Plans”) • Avoid single, broad terms like entering only “Education” - this can be misinterpreted and result in millions of “hits” • TIP: Your district content filter is the final arbiter of what web pages are accessible through VES… VES does not filter web searches.

7. 1. VES Quick Search: URL 3 When a teachable moment happens in class, and a student asks a fundamental question like “What is the Library of Congress?” – you can jump to a website within VES by entering the address in the quick search text box and clicking the “URL” button. • So, you can enter www.loc.gov, click “URL” and the Library of Congress site will appear within VES! • TIP: Some websites “break free of frames” and will take over the whole window. We can’t control this – to get back to VES, you may have to click the back button 2 times in quick succession. • TIP: Do not write the http:// before the address – the quick search tool assumes that for you…

8. 1. VES Quick Search: MarcoPolo 4 To conduct a search for unit/lesson plans, worksheets and classroom activities, enter a curriculum term in the text box and click “MarcoPolo.” Click on the title of a result to go directly to the lesson, or click “Display Full Record” to read an overview of the resource. • There are over 14,000 lessons and activities in MarcoPolo, authored by national organizations like Nasa, National Endowment for the Humanities, AAAS, National Geographic and more. Each lesson is extended for multiple grades, and has been juried and vetted by education professionals, researchers and government experts. • TIP: To conduct an advanced MarcoPolo search (narrowing by grade, subject, resource type), click on the “Advanced Search” link that appears on the top right of the MarcoPolo page.

9. 2: Virtual Hard Drive Resource Folders • Inside the Virtual Hard Drive, there are three folders in which to find educational materials. These are meant to provide teachers and students with timely information as a starting point for classroom research and planning. • Resources include: • Websites • Documents • Newsfeeds/Headlines These resources are public to all VES account holders, and are examples of how VES can be used to share materials. School and District folders are excellent share points for locally relevant resources.

10. 2: VHD: Curriculum Resources • The Curriculum Resources folder contains sub folders for each of the major teaching subjects. Each subject folder contains resources, and in many cases is sub-divided into topic folders. • The four main repositories on the Internet that we point to for educational resources include: • Federal Resources for Educational Excellence • MarcoPolo • EduRef (Formerly AskERIC) • PBS Teacher Source • TIP: Did you know that 35 Federal • Agencies publish K-12 lesson plans and primary resources? They can be accessed using the Federal Resources for Educational Excellence website

11. 2. VHD: Library and Research Resources • The Library and Research Info folder contains reference information, links to eBooks sites, online libraries and other interesting resources. • Did you know that classical literature older than 75 years is available, free of charge through “Project Guttenberg” and “The Perseus Project?” • Did you know that the VHD contains digital dictionaries, a thesaurus and links to book reviews? • Other materials available: • eBook resources • Calculators & conversion utilities • Online libraries like “Net Library” • Reference sites • Power search tools

12. 2. VHD: News & Current Events • The News & Current events folder points to real-time headlines from several major news sources and can be used as part of a current events or media component of a lesson or unit. • The headlines do not include any advertising • The headlines are “RSS” URL’s from several news services and newspapers • The folders are arranged by news provider and also by topic of interest (For example CNET – Wireless News) • Some Newsfeeds Include: • NY Times • Boston Globe • USA Today • NASA • Washington Post • BBC

13. 3. Teaching and Learning Resources (TLR) Teachers often find it frustrating to search for educational resources on the Internet, despite the existence of several excellent repositories of learning objects.

14. 3. TLR: Overview The Department of Education launched in VES a tool called Teaching and Learning Resources (TLR), to address this issue by bringing together these repositories in one search interface.

15. 3. TLR: Overview TLR is made available through a partnership between the Massachusetts Department of Education, Jes&Co and Align to Achieve courtesy of a grant by Dell and Intel Corporation • Intel and Dell contributed financial support and equipment to make this project possible • Jes&Co is an education non-profit based in Arizona, and is the creator of the underlying toolset • Align to Achieve (A2A) is a Cambridge, MA education non-profit corporation that maintains the standards alignment engine in TLR • As a result of this partnership, TLR is free of charge to all VES account holders

16. 3. TLR: What is it? Teaching and Learning Resources (TLR) is a searchable Web-based catalog of records that points to disparate repositories of lesson plans, activities, web sites and primary resources • Each record contains information about a learning object (can be lesson plans, activities, primary sources etc), and provides a direct link to that object • TLR is searchable by discipline, topic, keyword, grade and resource type • Resources are created by authoritative sources such as NCTM, AAAS, National Endowment for the Arts, Eisenhower National Clearinghouse, NASA and many others • TLR went ‘live’ in VES in April, 2004 (v1.0)

17. 2 1 3 TLR: How to Search for Educational Resources To search for educational resources, first click on the “TLR” icon at the bottom of the screen. Then, in the TLR tool, select “Resources” to begin your search. Using the drop down menus, select a discipline, then topic. Now click the grades for which you want results. Write in any keywords that help narrow your search and hit the “Submit” button to execute the search.

18. TLR: Search Results After you hit “submit,” the screen will redraw with results from the search. To view the results, scroll down past the search fields, then read the abstracts of the results. To view the record for one search result, click the “details” button. If you get too many results, scroll up and either change the search terms, or reset your search. If you get zero results, perhaps you have over-narrowed your search and you need to be more general. This happens more frequently when you pick a specific resource type and include a very specific keyword phrase. Next step: the “details” view of a record…

19. TLR: Details View In the details view, you will see the title, description, location, subjects, keywords and other related meta-data associated with the record. This is like you are looking at a card catalog in a library. First you read the cards, then you go retrieve the book. In this case, retrieving the book is as easy as one click – the Location is a web link that takes you to the lesson or resource. In this case, I have searched for Math, Geometry, grades 3-5 and with the keyword “Area.” This result is a lesson plan about area, and to visit the lesson plan, I just click the Location address. Next step: View the actual resource…

20. TLR: Actual Resource The resource will open in a new browser window, enabling you to have a full-screen view. At this point, you are outside VES and the content, look and feel, and pedagogical strategy of the external resource is outside VES’ control. To leave the lesson or learning object, simply close the browser window. To save the URL in your personal files folder, copy the address of the site, then publish a file in your VHD folder with that address in the title field. If you come across a resource that has moved or results in a dead page, please let us know so we can remove it from our database! There are 27,000 learning resources in TLR and growing!

21. TLR – What is it? Summary

22. TLR – Benefits to Massachusetts stakeholders TLR is an example of how centralizing IT solutions and developing partnerships can drive down costs of procuring new K-12 teaching and learning tools. • The TLR tool costs nothing, yet provides Massachusetts educators and students with access to over 30,000 high quality learning objects • Hosted and maintained at the Department of Education, TLR is an equitable service to all districts • TLR is securely located within the DOE Network, leveraging existing security measures while eliminating the risk of third party vendor hosting • TLR enables the Massachusetts Department of Education to catalog any teaching and learning resources procured for programs supporting teachers and students

23. Contact us with your questions or comments http://ves.mass.edu