Searching billions of web pages for useful educational material may or may not be worth the effort, but it is definitely time-consuming with unpredictable results. Reliable network resource guides and webpage referrals from trusted sources are indispensable assets for a busy teacher looking for web resources.
This short video tutorial (courtesy of Common Craft Productions) explains how to use online bookmarks and tags. Click (or double click depending on your browser) the dark triangle button at the lower left to start the video. (Once the video starts, the triangle transforms into a pause/play button.)
Before I discuss the NewsHour Teacher Center’s collaborative guide to web resources, I want to emphasize two resource guides you probably already know. The PBS teacher page and the NewsHour/Extra teacher page are both excellent ways to locate high quality lesson plans and related resources, and are searchable by subject area and student age level. You are well served by these two reliable sites!
But now we are moving on to the next level. Using a social bookmarking strategy we will create a searchable guide to internet resources and lesson plans specifically for educators interested in teaching with news. I have posted a modest initial collection on our online social bookmarking site. It is ready to try now, but with your help, it will expand dramatically in the coming months.
We are using the social bookmarking website delicious to organize and “tag” web resources and lesson plans. You can search our shared collection with our tags to find matching resources. For example, use the tag LessonPlan to get a list of every NewsHourTeacherCenter resource tagged as a LessonPlan. But more likely you would use at least two tags, to limit the number of “hits” you get. For example, if you search for “LessonPlan +CurrentEvents” you would get only lesson plans based specifically on current events. Using delicious (aka del.icio.us, its official domain name) is probably new to many of you, but it is an extremely useful web searching tool and I urge you to spend just 5 or 10 minutes now to learn how to use it. You DO NOT need to register for a del.icio.us account to use NewsHour delicious bookmarks and tags, you just need to understand a bit about tags and how tag searching works. If you haven’t already, play the video near the beginning of this entry.
When you feel ready, go ahead and click on the Web Resources button in the right hand column, which brings you to our NewsHourTeacherCenter del.icio.us account, listing all current resources identified so far. Note the column of individual tags listed down the right hand side. Now, for example, click on the LessonPlan tag. You’ll then get a listing of all our current web resource links that have the LessonPlan tag. There will also be a new column of “related tags” each prefaced with a plus sign, such as + PBS or + CurrentEvents. Now click on the plus sign prefacing + CurrentEvents in the related links column. If you are following along my example, you will now see only the web resources for lesson plans and current events, a much shorter list. By continuing to click on plus signs you can easily limit your search further, say to PBS lesson plans and current events. Take some time to play around with tags and multiple tags until you get the hang of it. Note that when you click on any actual resource link you will be taken to that web location, and you will need use your browser navigation buttons or tabs to return to our page.
At this point if you are desperate for help, don’t give up! Email me, we can work it out. Or try the Delicious Help button, or our UsingDelicious tag for more explanations. Once you get the hang of del.icio.us, you’ll see it really works!
If you use a site that is not in our collection but possibly deserves to be, please share it in any of three ways. The first two ways are straight-forward: email me the url address (e.g. www.pbs.org/newshour/extra) or put it in a comment to this blog entry.
The third way of collaborating is more tricky but also more powerful,. It requires you to get a del.icio.us account and start tagging your own bookmarks. This third way may not be for everyone, but getting your own del.icio.us account is easy and free. It is covered in this full version of the earlier video tutorial from Common Craft Productions.
Once you have your own del.icio.us account with its appropriate tagging button installed in your particular browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari etc.), then you are ready to go. When you visit a web page you deem worthy of possible inclusion in our shared collection, simply tag it with “NewsHourTeachers.”
“NewsHourTeachers” is the unique tag we will use to link together delicious users collaborating with the NewsHour Teacher Center. Feel free to leave a comment to this entry or contact me directly for questions or clarifications. Note that delicious tags are separated by a space and are not case sensitive. I am using upper case to begin individual words just for readability.
No matter which collaboration method fits your style, please join in! More teacher involvement and feedback means a stronger collection of tagged resources and lesson plans for all of us. Visit often to check out new links and to cheer on our collaborative resource collection as it grows!
Melissa Lee [Terra Nova High School] : Here are two great resources I use. Constitutional Rights Foundation. http://www.crf-usa.org/lessons.html#BRIA The lessons are broken into world history, us history, and government. But they always have a contemporary issue embedded in the lesson. They also send the lessons to your house for free
World Savvy http://worldsavvy.org/programs/gep-educators-network.php
They also send out bi monthly newsletters to your e-mail that has links to using current events as reading material in your classroom. It has it broken down by reading level as well. This organization does workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area that are really nice.
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This is a list of links to sites recommended by our editors and by teachers. We're using Delicious to keep track of these links because it allows us to select and share sites that fit with NewsHour Extra's mission of finding and celebrating quality current events resources. Our Delicious bookmark list is named "NewsHour TeacherCenter", You will be able to click on the provided list of tags to find just the resources for your topic of interest.
For an excellent 2-minute tutorial on using Delicious, click here.
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