ISTE 2017: TeachersFirst: Free Reviewed Resources, Content and PD
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The information in these slides was shared by Melissa Henning, TeachersFirst Educational Content Manager, during ISTE 2017 in San Antonio, TX, June 25 - 28.
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ISTE 2017: TeachersFirst: Free Reviewed Resources, Content and PD
- 1. TeachersFirst: Free Reviewed Resources, Content, and PD PART 1 / What is TeachersFirst …………………………………… 2-4 PART 2 / Reviewed Resources …………………………………… 5-17 PART 3 / TeachersFirst Content ……………………………………. 18-26 PART 4 / Professional Learning ………………….………………... 27-31 PART 5 / Questions and Closing ………….……………………... 32-34 Prepared by Melissa Henning Educational Content Manager
- 9. Layout of a Review
- 21. Gettysburg By The Numbers • Designed for middle school and older, but adaptable to all levels • Use of infographics provides quick visual representation of information
- 22. • Create graphs or Venn Diagram comparisons • Plot Civil War battles on Google Maps • Create infographics using Easel.ly • Coordinate with other teachers - over 100 Civil War resources on TeachersFirst search Ideas for Classroom Use:
- 23. Help! I Lost My Media Specialist • Not just for those without a media specialist • Read-aloud and activity suggestions • Kid-friendly resources • Wide variety of topics
- 24. Further Classroom Ideas: • Use Throwww for quick persuasive writing activity on current events • Create a Thinglink including facts about a current topic • Use a timeline tool such as myHistro to follow the chronology of events
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to TeachersFirst. The QR code on this slide will take you to the TeachersFirst website. Today we are going to take you on a virtual tour of this FREE website and offer a quick snapshot of the MUST SEE areas. Please let me know if you have any questions during this session. TeachersFirst is a non-profit brought to you by The Source for Learning. My name is Melissa Henning and I am the Educational Content Manager for the Source For Learning/TeachersFirst. All resources shared today are FREE. All professional learning opportunities shared today are FREE also. Let’s get started with a poll.
- Click to join at bit.ly/TF_kahoot or use the QR to go directly to the poll. Let’s see how familiar you are with TeachersFirst.
- TOUR - SHARE MY SCREEN AND TAKE A TOUR IF WIFI IS WORKING! SLIDES ARE A BACKUP!!! This is the homepage for TeachersFirst. Here you will find a collection of over 15,000 reviewed resources. Tour PODS of homepage. Share all PODs briefly. Let’s talk about the box in blue. We also have a new pod, Special Topics. Our special topics curated lists include hot ed tech topics, pertinent content, and timely topics. The curated list is the editor’s choice of the best of the best. Some examples of special topics include Geography Awareness, National Robotics Week, Algebra for grades 6-8, and Coding.
- Since I showed you the Special Topics Pod, I wanted to delve a bit deeper into what this means. These curated lists of resources are all related to one specific topic. We have had our Editors choose the BEST 20-30 resources on various topics. We also include a link to ALL of our resources on each topic. So that way you don’t have to dig through 200 resources to find the top 20! We have special topics pages for Coding, Climate Change, Infographics, Writing Prompts, Earth Day, and literally nearly 100 other topics! We will be adding a lot more to this collection throughout 2017, so watch, learn, and explore with us. This collection is easily accessible from our Classroom Resources Tab.
- The homepage also includes the Classroom Planning Calendar (see the black arrow). Find resources based on celebrations and commemorations. You can also access the keyword search option on this page and every other page on TeachersFirst. We will talk more about keyword searching in a minute.
- The keyword search option is available on every page on TeachersFirst. You type in whatever you are searching for – for example civil war maps. If you click on Any word it will pull up any resource with the word civil or war or maps. If you click on All words, it will only show you results that include every word in your search within our review. Finally you can click phrase and that would only show you maps of the civil war. It searches for the specific phrase typed into the keyword search.
- Some of our features change on a weekly basis. Every week you will find a new weekly poll on our homepage. We also feature new sites nearly every week. Most of our weekly features have a theme: such as game based learning, financial literacy, PLNs and Social Media, and more.
- This is what a basic review looks like. It can be open in accordion style by clicking the “more” button to open up the review. You will see that our reviews also include grade level recommendations, links to share the site, and more. TeachersFirst members can also mark sites as favorites, add comments, and rate resources. Membership is FREE and available on the About Us page.
- This is the view of a review fully opened. You will notice the reviews include basic instructions and descriptions about the site. We also include warnings, as this one mentions that not all journals are kid friendly. You will notice that we include “tags” at the bottom of the description. This one for example is a Device Agnostic Tool (so there is both an app and a web tool), it is also useful for field trips and virtual fieldtrips. Some of our reviews have 2-3 tags, while other have over 10 tags. These tags help you find other similar resources. Simply click on the name of the tag to see the entire list tagged with that word or topic. At the bottom of the review, we also share any warnings – for example, this one requires both Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat. One thing that really sets us apart from others, is that we offer ways to use the tools in the classroom, saving you time! Our reviews share ways about 3-5 ways to use the tool in the classroom.
- Now let’s take a look at some of the tabs across the top. Under Classroom Resources, explore our reviewed sites, lesson plans, and more.
- The next tab, TeachersFirst Exclusives, offers some additional Treasures including our Ready to Go resources. These activities and units are ready for your 1-1 classroom or whiteboard.
- The Professional Resources tab ranges from “how to” guides for blogs, wikis, and rubrics to Free online web workshops, which could be Twitter Chats, OK2Ask online workshops, or more. To learn more about our FREE web workshops, attend one of our PD or OK2Ask Booth Demos. You can find those times listed on our schedule.
- The What’s Hot tab includes the most popular resources on TeachersFirst and our Edge.
- Don’t miss our TeachersFirst Blog, new for 2016, and directly accessible from the homepage tab.
- One of the tabs at the top that you will want to explore is the About Us. Learn how we are and stay free and learn how to become a member. Membership is FREE. The reason we recommend membership is because it enables you to mark resources as favorites, take notes about the resource, and tag resources with tags of your choice to find later. (If time permits, log-in and show mine). Membership is NOT necessary to explore TeachersFirst only to save favorites. Another cool feature of membership is once you register and tell us what you are looking for (such as geography resources for grade 5), each time resources come into our database that match your criteria they are automatically listed on your start page. This is also how you can find a print a member certificate if you wish.
- The homepage offers direct access to the TeachersFirst Edge. The Edge features cutting edge tools that create, differentiate, and more.
- One of the areas of TeachersFirst that we are most proud to share is our Edge section. These are safe web 2.0 tools. You can tell if a review is edge by noting the little green E next to the grade levels. The simple definition of an edge tool – is any tool that is used to create something. It could be something as simple as a mind map or a tool used for coding or animation. Our edge reviews currently include over 1200 resources! Our Edge reviews include an extra feature, called Edge Features where we provide a list of tips, warnings, and suggestions. Each tip is clickable and offers a solution to each of the warnings listed. We have many different Edge categories: Digital Storytelling, File Converters, Bookmarks, Animation, and countless others. To learn more about our Edge offerings, come and see one of our booth demos on strictly the Edge.
- Another area that we are VERY proud to share are our Dream Tools: Device Agnostic Tools. Every tool in this area is available as an app for both iOs and Android PLUS available on a web browser. This is truly a 1-1 or byod classroom DREAM tool, check it out. You will find resources for differentiation, assessment, organization, communication, classroom managements, and more. (IF TIME - create more ST pages to include on Dream Tools page).
- Next up is two of our most popular social studies content areas. The first one is called Dates that Matter. It is basically what happened today in history, but doesn’t just “give” the answers. Clues and thinking questions are provided along the way. Students learn about the connections of history to today and the long-term impact of the daily events shared. This is ideal for middle school and high school students, or more advanced 5th graders. Simply click the ? for more information and clues or click the ! to make a guess. Make this a daily challenge in your classroom.
- A treasure that you do NOT want to miss is our Gettysburg by the Numbers interactive. It is designed for middle school and older, but it could be adaptable to elementary school classrooms learning about the battle at Gettysburg.
- So we just shared our fabulous resource: Gettysburg by the Numbers. Now we are going to share some techy fresh ideas about how to use this in the classroom. Use one of our reviewed tools to create graphs or a Venn diagram. Or Plot Civil War battles using Google Maps. Have your students create infographics using a tool such as Easel.ly. There are an additional 100 resources on TeachersFirst related to the Civil War. Use the Keyword Search to find more Civil War resources to use with this resource.
- TeachersFirst also has countless reading resources, book lists, audio books, and more. But two content areas that are too good to miss include our Help! I Lost My Librarian/Media Specialist and our CurriConnects. Let’s take a look. Our Help! Articles were all written by an experienced librarian. The topics of the articles vary and the articles include activity ideas and tech tool integration. Many of the activities and topics correlate with Common Core Standards. Most of these articles are designed for elementary students or young middle school. Some sample topics include Colonial Times Read Alouds Plus Common Core, Figurative Language and the Common Core, and my personal favorite Summer Reading: Not just for Kids.
- Looking for even more ways to use the Help! Articles in your classroom? Use a tool such as Throwww to create simple blogs for writing activities on current events or any other topic that you were reading about. Maybe a Thinglink is more your style. My personal favorite is to create a timeline using a tool such as myHistro to follow events, such as the Revolutionary War.
- We also have our CurriConnects which offers booklists connected to various areas of the curriculum: social studies, math, science, and more. Books are included for preschool through high school. Some sample of specific topics include: USA Regional Books, The Artists Eye, Money, Living Green, Immigrants and Immigration, Award Winning Books, and countless others. These are perfect lists to find books for your reading groups or for individual students. Find books that relate to what your students are learning about in other subject areas - cross-curricular pollination at its best!
- I could share a lot more of our TeachersFirst content, but the final one that I have time for today is our brain twisters. We have a weekly set for both elementary and middle school. Check out these simple, yet difficult 10 question lists.
- The final area that I want to share is our Professional Learning Opportunities.
- One of the areas that we are the most proud is our OK2Ask free online web workshops. These started back in 2009 and have grown and evolved. These are not basic sit-n-get workshops, but rather hands on, task-driven learning opportunities. PDU credit is given upon completion of all required tasks. Our summer schedule starts the week after July 4th and is free to everyone. Most sessions are 90 minutes and begin at 6pm Eastern. But read carefully when you register as we do have a few 2-hour sessions. Join us for our special Google or Microsoft days, or catch one of our regular sessions.
- You can also find an #OK2Ask Twitter chat on 1-2 Thursdays each month. They are only once per month during the summer and twice per month during the school-year. Our next chat will be July 20 - Ideas for Infusing STEM at 8pm Eastern.
- Now that we took a little tour of some features of TeachersFirst, we are going to share our Hidden Treasures. One of our most recent treasures in our all-new Blog. Add this blog to your reading list. Come to the blog to read short, yet informative pieces about how to integrate various web-based resources into your classroom. The monthly Techbytes screencast is a must-see learning experience. Learn about ed tech buzzwords, new tech tools, and so much more. The blog is updated at least twice every week with new ed tech treasures.
- One other fabulous opportunity that SFL offers for Professional Learning is our book studies. Our summer book study begins next week and we aren’t taking any additional participants. However, we will do another book study in the fall. If you are interested in participating, be sure to signup to receive email notifications about the various PD opportunities.
- Does anyone have any questions about our free website?
- Keep connected with us on Twitter @TeachersFirst