ISTELive Content5 MINUTES: Introduction. Identify the situation: teachers are strapped for time. They want to include high-quality, standards-aligned resources. Sometimes, the textbook resources aren't engaging or relevant. They want something better. Thankfully, there are great resources out there -- and they don't have to shop at Teachers Pay Teachers to get there. (Identify some of the problems with collecting teaching resources from TPT.)
50 MINUTES: Survey of available pre-made standards-aligned teaching resources. Encourage participants to browse and interact with highlighted resources on their own devices while presenter demonstrates.
PBS LearningMedia: Highlight the variety of subjects and the varied types of resources. Focus on the interactives, demonstrating the MRI brain simulation.
Google Arts and Culture: Highlight the variety of art exhibits available but also the exhibitions on different topics that might be covered in non-art classes, too. Focus on interactives again, demonstrating the pottery wheel simulation.
The Achievery: Showcase the variety of pre-made standards-aligned video activities (with pre-written lesson plans). Emphasize the intellectual property rights that teachers get to show the video clips from TV shows and movies. Focus on computer vision and NBA data tracking lesson.
Teachflix: Educator-vetted videos recommended by teachers. Demonstrate the site and the pre-created activities available.
Google Applied Digital Skills: Pre-made, standards-aligned on a variety of topics, from history to computer science to English/language arts and beyond. Focus on student instruction videos, making them easier to assign to students.
CK-12 Flexbooks: Free online textbooks that can be customized as necessary by the teacher. Focus on using these as a supplement to instructional materials, assigning sections out of these textbooks (and related activities) to engage students.
OER Commons: OER Commons houses lessons created by educators. OER Commons digital librarians have also curated collections of professional learning resources like game-based learning, arts integration and building text-dependent questions.
Commonlit: CommonLit has over 2000 leveled reading passages for grades 3-12. You can download the passages as PDF or assign them directly to students. Browse by content type, grade level, lexile range, genre, theme and more. Demo the free digital library and CommonLit 360 curriculum.
Library of Congress: The Library of Congress offers reliable classroom materials to help teachers use primary sources in their classrooms. Emphasize the getting started with primary sources resource for teachers.
Smithsonian: The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a free, platform with millions of vetted digital resources and collections. You can search resources by type or search collections by topic. Demo how you can gather resources throughout the Smithsonian Learning Lab into one place. Add a title and description. Give students the link to access.
National Geographic: Tons of high-quality, standards-based, educational resources and activities. Resources include maps, lesson plans, interactive activities, and reference materials. Search the resource collection by resource type, subject area or grade level. Demo the interactive lesson: Hot Numbers.
5 MINUTES: Ask participants to share their best sources of free standards-aligned resources. Answer questions.
EfficienTeach: http://efficienteach.com
Ditch That Textbook: http://ditchthattextbook.com
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