I often talk about how netTrekker is a collection of resources that have been teacher-reviewed, so teachers can feel comfortable sending students to netTrekker to do research.
Over the last several weeks, I have been working on gathering instructional resources to go along with a new curriculum. I was trying to work quickly to finish up the project this morning. I have a list of sites that I could go check for the needed resources, but I decided to go to netTrekker instead. In netTrekker, I can put in my search terms one time and search through all of the content partners and resources in netTrekker.
Since I was searching for resources an elementary school teacher could use, I made sure I logged in with my teacher account (different resources are available based on whether you are a teacher or a student). I made sure that I was on the Elementary Tab (there is also a Middle School, High School, and a Standards Tab as well). In the search box at the top, I typed in key words related to what I needed.
As soon as I hit enter after typing in my search terms, there were results at the bottom of the page. Depending on my needs as a teacher, I could use the options in the sidebar to limit my search results. I could choose to limit by readability levels, learning aid, multimedia, language, collection, and even subject.
I was searching for Science resources this morning, so when I searched for "water" I was very please to have various results from:
- Promethean
- SMART
- National Geographic
- NSTA Learning Center
- Teachology
- ClassBrain
- Discovery Education
- American Museum of Natural History
- Teachers Domain
- US Environmental Protection Agency
- ScienceBug
- BrainPop
- TeachEngineering
- CrickWeb
- Channel4Learning
- as well as many other government, state, and university sites ....
Now as a teacher, I did have to review the materials to make sure they met the needs for my class and instruction ... so that may take some time but look at all the time I saved pulling together possible resources using a netTrekker search!
I can even save the searches that I do and/or save certain results by simply clicking the box and putting the resources in my portfolio. When you are a registered user with netTrekker, you automatically have your own portfolio (or folder) to keep track of the resources you want to use.
I have written about netTrekker before on this blog but today I realized how much of a timesaver it is.
Other post on netTrekker:
- Things I Found on the netTrekker Blog
- Looking for Science?
- What Are You Doing This Month?
- netTrekker eBook series
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing this. I've thought about going through the new National Core Standards and looking for resources as we implement this year. The task can be daunting (I love that word), but you just showed how you can save time and gather a wealth of information and activities in one fell swoop!
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