Shake Up Your Search
When I taught in SC, we had to go through Earthquake preparations with our students. They’d often grumble about they WHY. I can’t remember ever living through an Earthquake in the 20 years I lived in SC, so I understood their questions. Didn’t matter that Charleston, SC is on a major fault line that showed potential for a major earthquake, they hadn’t had an earthquake since 1886. What’s the big concern?
And while the earthquake on August 23 started just 40 miles of Richmond, VA – it was felt all the way up the east coast, including Pennsylvania and as far south as Georgia.
This map is from USGS and shows the intensity of the tremors as it was felt in yesterday’s earthquake.
So now both coasts have a need for resources on teaching what an earthquake is, how they are caused, why cell phones went out, and how to stay safe during one. You could use other public search engines to find these resources, but let me share something I found. When I typed in just earthquake, I found results for the movie and for a sound system on the first page, along with insurance information. Are these results because last night I was searching for information about upcoming movies, rental insurnace and how to hook up a sound system in the house? (I lost my instructions and the house isn’t pre-wired, so I tried finding the results online.)
If I do the search in netTrekker, not only will the results be first approved by other educators, aligned to state standards, and relevant to education – but I can use the refinement menu to find exactly the type of results I’m looking for. Do I need a lesson plans? Do I need an interactive media to show the students how an earthquake happens? Do I need a video to show the impact earthquakes have on buildings and surrounding area? With netTrekker, I don’t need to waste my time trying to weed out millions of resources I don’t need, I can focus on just the ones that make sense for me as an educator. netTrekker values the limited time I have, and my students have.
Because after all, we just lost a minimum of twenty minute this week as we go over earthquake safety in case another hits again soon. Time is too precious in education to spend sifting through erroneous results.
Learning 4 Today Webinar Series
Teachers are life long learners, that’s a given. Finding time to learn is another. netTrekker therefore has created a series of webinars to help you stay current with netTrekker and learn new ways to use it throughout the school year.
On the 25th of August we kick the learning off with a “Gearing Up for a New School Year.” In this session we will focus on how netTrekker can help you find lesson ideas, information on how to communicate with parents, classroom discipline ideas and more. And as an added bonus,Jessica Storer, BrainPOP’s Community Outreach Manager, will be joining us share some great back to school tips with you as well!
Then, the fourth Wednesday of every month at 4:30 PM EST we’ll continue the BrainPOP and netTrekker series. Stay tuned for more details and topics!
But that’s not all. On the second Wednesday of every month at 4 PM EST we’ll have a new line up for Learning 4 Today: nT & Me. This series will be hosted by Dawn Crawford and Melissa Knollman of netTrekker. They have some great topics planned to share with you how to maximize your use of netTrekker.
The first Tuesday of the month at 4:30 PM EST, Learning 4 Today will feature integration ideas. Have you ever tried to use netTrekker with some of the most popular products on the market today, such as Glogster EDU, Tech4Learning’s Wixie, VoiceThread, and the many others? Join us as we share a lesson idea and a how to integrate these tools with netTrekker.
But that’s not all! netTrekker is partnered with many other products. I mentioned BrainPOP and Tech4Learning’s Wixie. We also partner with eInstruction, ScanTron, Weekly Reader Express, Defined STEM, NSTA and many others. How? Well join us on the 4th Thursday of each month as we share this valuable information!
All of this information will be shared via the events page of netTrekker Village. And when possible, an archived copyof the session can be found on the Village as well. All sessions will require a phone to call in for the audio and a computer with Internet access. We use Webex for the platform. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact your account manager.