Resource Guides

Faculty Newsletters- Keeping Up!

I have been using Smore to create faculty newsletters for awhile now, but keeping up with gathering resources and sharing them is always a challenge.  Reading through the resources for this Thing made me connect the purposes of some tools that I use, but don't maximize for this purpose.  I use Feedly to organize my blogs, but I often neglect reading these, and then when I do read them there are so many that I get overwhelmed.  When I find something good to share I often forget to share it, because I'm not in "sharing mode" at that moment.  It seems so simple, but this Thing prompted me to schedule a time to read my Feedly each week, with a Smore open.
As I read through the blogs and explore new resources and ideas I create headings for anything that I think should be shared with our faculty.  I don't try to create the Smore at that time, but just gathering the ideas and resources.  Then, approximately once a month, I go back and write the full articles with links to resources, and share that with faculty.  This isn't a revolutionary idea, but it has allowed me to maximize the usefulness and efficiency of tools that I have been using.

Student Resource

This year I was looking for a solution to better support students with a research project in a class where it is difficult to schedule "in class" lesson time.  The teacher was willing to give me one day to launch the project with her, but I wanted to better support them with ongoing resources.  In order to do this I decided to use Google Sites to create a webpage of resources.  I wrote about using Google Sites in another blog post, but here I want to discuss how I gathered and organized resources.   I often organize and share resources with students through their classroom management site, Google Classroom, etc., but in this case I wanted to have a resource that was complete and could stand alone, and reflect the process and organization.  I created the I Search Project site with pages for each element of the paper and process.  This was a new type of project for them, but the elements drew on skills that I had worked on with them previously, so I wanted to make those connections.  I balanced new tools with familiar ones and packaged them in the language they would be using for this project.  It was a challenge to think about how they would be using these tools without direct instruction, but it made me really reflect on the usefulness and purpose of different tools.  I also tried to provide a variety of media types including videos, graphic organizers, and written explanation to benefit all student learning needs.  I really liked this process because of the reflective element, and the product feels like having a ready made tool kit.  I think that in the future I would like to create more of these resource sites, even when I will be more involved in the process, because it presents the resources in an easy to use and organized way.