netTrekker Blog

Customer Center – Ongoing Support for Your netTrekker Subscription

In the new My Community widget in netTrekker Search, you’ll find a quick link to the Customer Center.  The Customer Center is your online “survival kit” for getting started with your netTrekker subscription and for supporting ongoing usage in your school or district.

In the Get Started section, you’ll find the online Welcome Kit with information on setting up access to netTrekker, and checklists and resources for implementing netTrekker with your teachers, students, and parents.  The netTrekker Administrator at your school or district will also find all the info he or she will need to use netTrekker’s Admin Tools for ongoing administration of  your subscription.

Looking for information on netTrekker’s Professional Development options – check out the Learn section of the Customer Center.  You’ll also find downloadable PDF training resources and a new Online Video library with more than 35 short online training videos that you can use for introducing netTrekker’s features and tools to students and teachers.

And finally, visit our FAQs in the Support section for answers to the most common netTrekker support questions.  If you didn’t find the answers you’re looking for in the Customer Center, or have questions about netTrekker Professional Development, you’ll also find a map with the netTrekker contacts listed for each state in the Support area.

Online Learning for netTrekker Search

Are you looking for a convenient flexible option for learning how to get the most out of your netTrekker Search subscription …

Then be sure to check out Online Learning - your one stop shop for all online opportunities to learn about netTrekker Search.

Check out the FREE online videos, FREE webinars, FREE Moodle Class, and more extensive non-facilitated and graduate level Moodle Class.

Tip Tuesdays - Join us each Tuesday at 4:30 PM EST for a FREE 30 minute webinar as we share ideas on how to use netTrekker in your classroom

Connection Wednesdays – Join us each Wednesday at 4:30 PM EST for a FREE webinar co-hosted by netTrekker and one of our valued partners as we demonstrate the connection between our products including BrainPOP, NSTA, Weekly Reader Express, and Teachers Domain.

netTrekker TV (Tutorial Videos) – View netTrekker TV, our library of FREE Tutorial Videos for targeted training on netTrekker features. If you ever need that just-in-time learning, or if you are a visual learner, our set of FREE online video tutorials will help acquaint you with netTrekker features and tools.

FREE non-facilitated Online Courses (1.5 hours)
NT001 – Learn to Search and Differentiate digital resources using netTrekker features and tools
NT001S – NT001 with Scantron Integration

Advanced non-facilitated Online Courses (2 hours) – under construction
NT002 – Learn to Organize and Integrate digital resources using netTrekker features and tools
NT002S - NT002 with Scantron Integration

Graduate Level facilitated Online Course (30 hours with optional 3 graduate credits)
NT101 – Explore netTrekker features and tools, to share best practices for implementation into teaching and learning, and to create standards-based projects, all in the context of differentiated instruction. Discussion boards, an interactive webinar, and a variety of 21st Century Learning resources are included in this collaborative learning community.

Tags: Moodle, online learning, tutorials, videos

More Helpful Help

Not sure how to get a list of famous people? Uncertain about whether to use a keyword search or a subject search? Looking for a quick and easy answer? netTrekker SEARCH provides new ways to help users learn about all our features and tools. The revised Help section features an expandable table of contents, a searchable index and a keyword search that allows users to find answers quickly based on search terms rather than page titles.

When you access Help from your My Account widget, you’ll see a whole new look, but more importantly, you’ll see all the new functionality.

Opening each of the books in the Table of Contents will give users a menu of pages that is similar to the Help menu they have been used to in netTrekker.

Clicking on the Index will show users an alphabetized list of topics covered in Help. This index also has a keyword search box to make finding indexed items a snap.

I think the most dramatic and useful new feature of the Help section is the Search capability. Not only can users keyword search the index, but they can also click on the Search icon and do a keyword search of all the text in the entire Help database. This Search capability is available both from the left of the page, where it lives next to the Table of Contents and Index, and at the top right of the page, where it is always open.

Finally, when users access Help pages, they will often find, in addition to explanations and examples, links to to the same online video tutorials which readers of this blog are already familiar with from the nettrekker.com Customer Center.

netTrekker SEARCH offers many ways for users to personalize their experience with netTrekker and these new features extend that personalization to the Help section as well.

Sorting Your Search Results

Much like online shopping where you may search for a particular item by price, color, size, etc., the sorting feature in netTrekker SEARCH provides a similar approach to locating educational resources. Users may sort any search result in a particular order, according to a variety of criteria. The sorting options include:

• the name of the Educator / Evaluator who evaluated the resource
• the Readability level of the resource
• the Overall Rating of the site, as determined by the Educator / Evaluator
• the ranking of sites in that Search Result as recommended by student Voting
• the ranking of sites in that Search Result as recommended by teacher Voting
• the Title of the site

Click here to view a video tutorial about Sorting netTrekker Search Web Resources.

Tags: sorting

netTrekker Search – Customize Your Homepage

netTrekker Search now supports your ability to create a personalized search experience that is as unique as your students.

The new netTrekker Search homepage offers the same ease of use and overall structure, while supporting your need to add, remove, and reorder elements that are important to you. All of this is now possible in the “Customize My Homepage” section in the top right corner of your screen. When you select this link, you’ll notice that you can still easily set your default Academic Level and default Education Channel.  Beneath this section, you can now customize your homepage display by adding or removing subjects and Navigation Widgets.

Once you’re back on your homepage, subjects and navigation links that are important to you will appear based on your selections. What if you need to reorder or remove certain widgets? No problem. Simply drag and drop widgets to reorder, or select the close button on a specific widget to personalize your page even further. Homepage elements can always be restored by traveling to the “Customize My Homepage” section.

For more information about customizing your homepage, click here to view the Help page on this topic.

netTrekker Search Provides Role-Based Access to Content

One of the ways netTrekker Search helps users get information quickly and efficiently is by providing Role-Based Access to content. This personalized access structure takes students, teachers, and administrators, alike, directly to the specific resources that meet their personal needs.

Students are directed to standards-based resources, learning aids, and assessments, without having to sort through lesson plans or other teacher resources.

Teachers have a Standards tab with easy access to state standards information and lesson plans. The Teacher role also contains Teacher Tools under the My Tools widget, as well as, convenient access to netTrekker Village, netTrekker Blog, Online Learning and the netTrekker Customer Center in the My Communities widget.

netTrekker school Administrators receive exclusive access to tools that assist with managing users and reviewing school usage of the product.

For more information about Role-Based Access, click here to view the Help topic on User Roles. The default role for a netTrekker user is Student. To change your role to Teacher, you will need to get the Teacher Code from your school or district netTrekker SEARCH administrator. View netTrekker’s Guide to Getting Started for Teachers to learn how to register a teacher account and enjoy the teacher resources highlighted above. Your teacher role also enables you to save and share searches communally among netTrekker SEARCH users in your school and district, and to create classes within the My Portfolio feature for users with the Teacher role.

Tags: staff development, Teacher Role, Training

netTrekker Search – User Interface Changes

On August 13^th, we unveiled some exciting changes in netTrekker Search. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of the changes in more detail here in the netTrekker blog.  We’ll start with some of the user interface changes.

The Search box has moved to the top and you can easily use the drop down menu to switch between Web, Image, Famous Person, or Standards search.  You’ll no longer see orange for Elementary, purple for Middle, or blue for High to indicate which grade level you’re in, but you can still quickly switch between the 3 grade levels at any time by clicking any of the tabs.  This is especially helpful if you have students working above or below grade level and need to find resources that better meet their individual needs.

To provide more consistency and to make it easier to locate a few of the netTrekker features, a new blue bar now frames the top of the netTrekker Search interface. This frame contains the Read Aloud button, as well as your Profile and Preferences links.  The blue frame also carries through to any websites you find in netTrekker Search and gives easy access to the Read Aloud, Dictionary/Translation Hot Key, and the new Voting buttons in a consistent location at the top of your screen.

The Refine Search menus have undergone one of the biggest changes.  Instead of a series of individual drop down menus above the search results, the Refine Search feature has been moved to the right side of the page. You can now expand or collapse as many of the Refine Search menus as you’d like at the same time and you can select multiple refinement criteria within a single refinement to quickly narrow your search to find exactly the results you want to meet the individual needs of your students. Options to personalize your search include Learning Aids,  Multimedia, Readability, Language, Collections and Subject.  For instance, you can refine a search result for a learning game, that includes interactive media, is on a level 2 or level 3 readability level and is available in English or Spanish.

netTrekker Search – Explore a NEW World of Personalized Learning

At the ISTE 2010 conference in Denver in June, we announced that netTrekker would be undergoing some exciting changes for back-to-school.  The time has finally arrived, and the new enhancements have been unveiled in netTrekker Search.  (And yes, you’ll see that we’re now referring to the product as netTrekker Search.)  The changes are focused on making your search for the best educational digital resources even more personalized and more productive. Many of the changes have come about as a result of the valuable feedback and suggestions we’ve received from our subscribers.

When you log into netTrekker Search, you’ll notice both some improvements to the user interface design, as well as some new features, such as a customizable homepage and new voting options, that have been added to help you personalize your user experience and make it even easier for you to access the resources and tools that meet your (and your students’) individual needs.

Click here for an overview of all the changes and new features or attend one of our FREE 15-minute webinars on Getting to Know netTrekker Search.

Or watch this video to review how netTrekker Search can help you personalize learning.

We look forward to hearing what you think about the new enhancements. 
What’s your favorite new feature and how do you think it will help you personalize learning?

Promethean Planet

Promethean offers their engaging, interactive flipchart web content to nT users!   Logged in as a Teacher or Admin, enter your search term, such as “cells”, and check for Promethean resources under Collections in the right hand menu on the new netTrekker interface!

The resources on the flipcharts are produced by teachers for their pupils, but they are enabled to share through the Promethean Planet.  Since not every school owns whiteboards, teachers are very creative in utilizing good resources when they are pinching pennies.   Teachers can use the charts with other whiteboards or with a classroom projector and a $150.00 slate they pass around the room for student input.  Even though the students may not be getting their time at the front of the class, the slate enables them to circle, connect lines and click ahead through the charts.  

Many of the flipcharts are hands-on activities such as the one chart called “Rounding” and the one called, “Money”.  There are charts that address holidays with some great activities such as, “St. Patrick’s Day”.   The “Holidays Chronological Order” flip chart is a great way to introduce timelines.  Polygon Review is another flipchart which sums up information for the students.

Become an avid Promethean Planet user:

•  Selecting a Planet resource as a link in netTrekker will open a secondary browser window and send a netTrekker user to the landing page for the resource on the Planet website.  First time users who do NOT have Promethean’s software installed will need to download ActivInspire in order to open the flipchart.  There will be a link on the landing page to download the software.
•  Users who have installed previous versions of the software including Promethean’s ‘Flipchart Viewer’ or ‘ActivStudio/ActivPrimary’ (.flp) will be able to open files that were created using older versions of the software.  However, files that have been created using ActivInspire (.flipchart) can only be opened using ActivInspire.

  Put simply, ActivInspire will open any/all Promethean file types, whereas ActivStudio/ActivPrimary/Viewer will not open ActivInspire files.

  netTrekker users that subsequently arrive on Planet will be recognized as being referred from netTrekker and will be able download the first resource without having to login or sign-up for Planet membership.

• Subsequent navigation to other pages on the site that result in the user wanting to download additional resources will require Planet login or sign-up in order to complete the download process.

The Promethean resource is a valuable tool in today’s classrooms and is available to netTrekker users!

Back to School Tips

Summertime is coming to an end with the start of the school year. Excited chatter about setting up classrooms, finalizing lessons, and attending many back to school professional development opportunities are all a buzz in the stores, on Twitter, on Facebook and netTrekker Village. In other words, anywhere teachers congregate.

Hopefully some of your back to school plans include netTrekker. After all, we are releasing some great new features this new school year. To help you with your back to school professional development, here is a video from our Spring Scholarship for Personalizing Learning and some tips from netTrekker users and employees.

Leslie Peterson, netTrekker Account Manager

To help increase your usage in netTrekker, and really make the new admin features POP, consider promoting netTrekker on your school website with these easy to follow directions, found at the Customer Center. Also, send home one of our parent letters, in English or Spanish, to parents reminding them that you are providing access to netTrekker with great tools for research and homework help. Remind your staff to take advantage of the Promethean and SMART resources in netTrekker by using the Collections Refinement Menu or by doing a keyword search for “Promethean” or “SMART”. With the downloadable viewers, you can use them even if you do not have a white board.

David Candelaria, Technology Coordinator/CTE Department Chair Del Norte HS Albuquerque, NM

David is currently working on the technology plan for his school. He encourages his teachers to think beyond the term, “technology”. He starts by questioning, “what is technology? Many people hear the term and think “computers”, but to me technology, educational technology, is anything that will stimulate students to be productive, innovative and enterprising. These are important 21st Century Skills, whether teaching core standards, STEM, ELL, or Special Education curriculum. ”

David just finished the netTrekker 101 course and says, “I can honestly say in taking the netTrekker course I can see the ‘plan’ and how netTrekker will engage and stimulate the 21 Century Skills aspect of my school.”

Angie Maccani, netTrekker Account Manager

When training faculty and staff on netTrekker, model how the My Portfolio system can be used for paper free communication with students and parents. Upload your documents, such as permission slips, course syllabus, field trip information, and rubrics for projects, to an Online Office or Storage Location and use the ADD A WEBSITE feature in My Portfolio. This is a great way to organize and share resources for classroom procedures, lessons, and assessments.

Sandra Doran, M. Ed. Educator, Jennings County MS, Jennings County Schools, IN

To help spread the word in my building I will be offering a one hour hands -on training workshop in our computer lab one day after school. I believe one hour is a nice amount of time for teachers and their busy schedules. I will spend the hour doing an orientation of the netTrekker site, search tips, and benefits for all learners. Before I dismiss attendees I will tell them that in two weeks I will be in the lab again to discuss: Advanced My Portfolio, English Language Learners, and 21st Century Learning.

To help introduce families I will be creating a short video tutorial to post on our school website. The link will be next to the link that parents go to for viewing students’ grades so it will be easy for them to locate.

I will also be giving a short demo to our guidance counselors. I believe that they are a vital link between parents and the school.

Danielle Abernethy, netTrekker Professional Development Solutions Team

Make sure you are familiar with the various tools on netTrekker Customer Center. Great resources to be used in your training can be found there, including videos, letters, quick reference guides, scavenger hunts, and other handouts. Aside from the Customer Center, keep an eye on the netTrekker Village. Join in on discussions about the new enhancements; participate in the netTrekker Tip Tuesday webinars and other learning possibilities. Another great tip, if your school uses agenda/homework books, consider making labels that have the URL for netTrekker and then the Student Universal Username and Password for your school. Put this on the page dealing with Library Resources or in the front for a quick reminder of where students can go for research and homework help.

Tom Turner, Network Manager for Lake Marion Creek School, Polk County Schools, FL

I am actively training teachers on how to use netTrekker, along with Weekly Reader Express, on their SMART Boards. One lesson I have learned is to make sure there is student buy-in, and excitement. This year, my television broadcast team will be showcasing their favorite sites found in netTrekker, tips for using netTrekker beyond a research tool, and other student friendly netTrekker tips. By showcasing the students using this fantastic tool, the teachers will be encouraged to explore the many possibilities to integrate netTrekker into their classroom curriculum.

If you have any favorite training tips, please feel free to share them with us here or on netTrekker Village.

Tags: My Portfolio, netTrekker, professional development

netTrekker Spotlight User: Sarah Poole Shares Experiences from netTrekker Training

netTrekker is excited to introduce this week’s Spotlight User. Sarah Poole is a 7th Grade Teacher at Jefferson County Middle School in Madras, Oregon. Sarah shares important lessons and specific netTrekker features she learned through training.

I learned so much in my netTrekker training. At first I was worried about being limited to only the websites within netTrekker, but now I know that I can add useful external websites to any folder. Students no longer have to waste time typing in long URLs and I don’t have a desk cluttered with sticky-notes! I am able to create a folder for a subject standard that I can use year after year.

Image, timeline, and famous person searches can be used to introduce new material to students. Lesson plans can be used in full or to inspire my own lesson plans. Finally, learning exercises and games help keep students interested and motivated.

The needs of my students will encourage me to further explore the English Learners and 21st Century Skills portions of netTrekker, but the most important part has been learning how to organize all important material in a student and teacher friendly portfolio.

ELL Channel Brings World Culture Experience to All Learners

Described in this article are two lesson plan ideas created by NT101 Summer Session participants, Ryan Cummings (Jennings, IN) and Rachel Erickson (Aurora, CO). Both educators used resources from netTrekker’s ELL Channel and the literary tales, The Bear Prince and Jack and the Beanstalk to design an interdisciplinary cultural exploration.

These lessons, through the use of resources from the ELL channel take students to China, France, Mexico, Spain and the United States to learn about mathematics, literature, people and the cultural traditions that surround these countries.

Rachel’s lesson is geared toward primary and elementary students. The lesson is centered around the Mexican folktale, The Bear Prince. Students explore the Sierra Madre Occidental region of Mexico through Google Earth and the eyes of Rosa, a Mexican girl who is forced to marry a mysterious bear. Using interactive websites, videos and images from netTrekker’s ELL channel students will sketch cultural items and work with a partner using Microsoft Paint to create a visual representation depicting the cultural items/traits they researched in My Portfolio folders Rachel compiled.

For secondary students, Ryan brings fun, practical application, and thorough understanding to the complex skills of calculating currency exchange and crop yields.

Students in Ryan’s class will research using netTrekker resources to decide what type of currency Jack takes from the giant depending upon a teacher-assigned geographic location of Jack’s origin. Students will research and decide during which season, in different countries Jack could have planted and grown the beans to yield the best monetary crop. Students will work in groups to design a graph of their choice and present a two-minute debate about where Jack should live to be most successful in his business.

Thanks to Ryan and Rachel for sharing these wonderful lesson ideas for all netTrekker learners. Enjoy reading reflections below from these NT101 Alumni and visit the ELL Channel to explore the amazing tools and resources in the ELL Skill Development and Multicultural Pavilion areas.

“I absolutely love using netTrekker. The different uses I can get out of netTrekker for my everyday lessons are remarkable. The ELL Channel is a feature that is going to help me enhance my students’ knowledge of world culture as I am teaching them mathematics. My students will have a more enriched learning environment because of the ELL Channel in netTrekker.

My Jack and the Beanstalk lesson is going to allow me, using features inside of the ELL Channel, to enrich my students’ understanding that the world we are apart of is much bigger than the town we live. It will allow them to research different areas of the world while sitting in their local classroom. They will be able to experience different cultures that they may not normally get to study. The more I can let my students see what similarities and differences there are in different parts of the world, the more I am going be able to prepare them for their future lives.

The ELL feature also allows them to get help with the understanding and meanings of different words and different languages. With the different options they can use in netTrekker, students will be able to learn at their own reading level and move at their own pace. The other thing I like about this feature is the read aloud button. If an article is a little too difficult for a student to read, then they can use this feature to help them get the understanding they need. What a great feature for all of our students. Each student now has the opportunity to push the limits of their own learning.

Net trekker is a tool that I am so glad our school has for me to use and the ELL Channel is just one part of it that will help me to diversify my students’ learning.”

Ryan Cummings
Secondary Teacher and Coach
Jennings, IN

“The increase in ethnic and language diversity of students in our schools requires educators to teach students to value diversity and understand cultural differences in order to be successful participants in a global society. People don’t often recognize the impact culture has on behavior until they interact with someone whose culture differs from their own. netTrekker’s Multicultural Pavilion within the English Learners’ channel gives both teachers and students a window into various cultures. The resources found provide a means to increase cross-cultural awareness, which will lead to a greater understanding of the world. I am grateful that netTrekker has included the Multicultural Pavilion as part of the English Learners channel so educators and students may benefit from the variety of resources that help us reflect on our own values, beliefs, and perceptions while gaining perspective on cultures that differ from our own.”

Rachel Erickson
Instructional Technology Coach
Aurora, CO

Tags: ELL, lesson plans, literature, math, NT101, staff development