This issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, explores glaciers, wind, water, and volcanoes and their role in shaping the landscape of the polar regions.

The purpose of the elevator pitch activity is to encourage graduate students to think clearly about how they communicate their professional identity. In this assignment, students are asked to identify: strengths and skills; areas of interest in their disclipline; and professional goals for the near term. Students work to develop a 30-40 second elevator pitch that they can use in networking scenarios and career events. Created by Steven Harris-Scott, Ph.D., Amy Lewis, Ed.D., and Emma Cutrufello, Ph.D., for INTO George Mason University with support from Mason 4-VA.

Archived session from the 2024 Arizona Regional OER Conference. Session Title: Emerging Technology Panel.  This resource includes the session abstract, presenters information, resources, and recording. 

Archived session from the 2024 Arizona Regional OER Conference. Session Title: The Energizing Power of Self-Care for Educators and Creators of OERs!  This resource includes the session abstract, presenter(s), resources, and recording. 

Are you ready to BUILD? Get ready to launch an engaging community-building Challenge."More than 90% of the students and teachers who have completed our challenge said they would recommend it to others."Watch your students embrace entrepreneurial thinking as they create real-world solutions to today’s challenges. BUILD's Thriving Communities Design Challenge invites youth to use Design Thinking to answer: How might we build powerful, thriving communities where everyone enjoys safety, wellness, and economic freedom.

Each issue of the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle explores an essential principle of climate science and climate literacy with background information, lessons, activities, original stories, and more for the K-5 classroom. This article shows the alignment of these materials with the content standards of the National Science Education Standards.

This article explores the alignment of the sixth essential principle of the climate sciences to national science education standards and its connections to the K-5 curriculum. The article also identifies some common misconceptions young students have about weather and climate. The free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle focuses on the topics that are appropriate for young learners and introduce them to climate literacy concepts.

El MOOC «Europeana en el aula: construyendo las competencias del siglo XXI con el patrimonio cultural digital» (repetición) ayudará a los profesores a conocer mejor el patrimonio cultural para así integrarlo de forma eficaz en sus clases, independientemente de la materia que suelan impartir.

La integración del patrimonio cultural digital en el aula adquiere cada vez más peso, ya que el siglo XXI abre numerosas posibilidades para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje digital. Aunque los currículos nacionales pueden variar de un país a otro, sigue existiendo una gran demanda por conocer nuestra historia europea común, nuestro patrimonio cultural y los retos de futuro. El patrimonio cultural digital puede utilizarse no solo para impartir Arte, Historia o Literatura, sino que también ofrece una excelente base para la enseñanza de Ciencias, Tecnología, Ingeniería y Matemáticas (CTIM).

El MOOC será la puerta de entrada a la plataforma Europeana, donde los participantes encontrarán diferentes recursos pedagógicos, como fotos, vídeos, textos y otras herramientas que pueden integrar fácilmente en sus clases. Asimismo, el curso ayudará a los profesores a crear escenarios pedagógicos gracias al patrimonio cultural digital, todo ello dentro de un marco de competencias del siglo XXI.

Además, ofrecerá una selección de actividades y recursos avalados para el aula de diferentes países europeos para que los profesores de primaria y secundaria puedan incorporar el patrimonio cultural en el aula y ayudarles a reflexionar sobre su propia docencia.

The “Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage (Rerun)” MOOC will improve teacher’s understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate this topic into their lessons and practices, regardless of the subject they usually teach.

The integration of digital cultural heritage in the classroom is increasingly important as the 21st century brings further opportunities for digital teaching and learning. While the national curriculum can differ from country to country, the demand to understand our common European history, cultural heritage and challenges for the future stays all-encompassing. Digital cultural heritage can be used not only while teaching Arts, History or Literature, but it also gives an excellent basis for teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

The MOOC will introduce participants to the Europeana platform, where they will find different resources for educators such as pictures, videos, texts and various tools that they can easily integrate in their lessons. Moreover, the course will help teachers to build learning scenarios using digital cultural heritage, in a framework of 21st-century skills.

Additionally, it will offer a selection of tested classroom activities and resources from different European countries to empower primary and secondary teachers in introducing cultural heritage in the classroom and help them reflect on their own practices.

This lesson talks about evaluating OER resources and the best methods for selecting content.

This rubric outlines a set of capabilities to do with the evidence-based practice of explicit instruction. It can help teachers and their teams implement explicit instruction by demonstrating a shared understanding of what it looks like in practice.

This rubric outlines a set of capabilities to do with the evidence-based practice of explicit instruction. It can help teachers and their teams implement explicit instruction by demonstrating a shared understanding of what it looks like in practice.

Exploring Climate Science With Virtual Reality, a Teacher/Scientist Partnership experience. High school teachers engage with working scientists and engineers to for content learning for climate science and virtual reality and engage in follow-up sessions with professional development facilitators to develop pedagogical expertise for use in creating formative classroom tasks that are formative and productive. It is a three day initial workshop with four follow-up days to
1) deepen teacher understanding by learning with climate scientists to understand climate science standards content knowledge
2) increase awareness and knowledge of the use of virtual reality devices in climate science learning
30 to co-develop a climate science simulation game for use on Oculus Go devices with teachers, their students and a virtual reality scientist/engineer team
4) to develop and implement embedded formative classroom tasks that
complement climate science learning by using a relevant, place based phenomena, and provide insights into student thinking and productive next steps in learning.

Creative Commons License CC BY
Exploring Climate Science With Virtual Reality Professional Learning Module by Georgia Boatman, ESD 123 and Peggy Willcuts PNNL is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

In 1989, Louise Derman-Sparks, Lousie Derman Sparks published her groundbreaking book on Anti-Bias Education: Tools for Empowering Young Children. Subsequently, she co-authored Anti-Bias Education for Young Children  and Ourselves and updated it in 2020 with Patricia Ramsey. The module is focused on the four main tenets of Anti-Bias Early Childhood Education, as set forth by Derman-Sparks and Ramsey. These are: a) Identity, b) Diversity, c) Justice, and d) Activism. The goal of this module is to provide a resource for early childhood teacher educators to facilitate their student’s exploration of Anti-Bias Education in Early Childhood Education. This curriculum may also be useful to early childhood professionals who provide professional development for in-service early childhood educators and caregivers (I.e. public and private early education and care providers including but not limited to Head Start teachers, home care providers, after school program instructors, etc.).  

This curriculum focuses on factors that may lead to differential placement outcomes for children who have become dependents of the court, as the result of abuse and neglect, and have been placed with kin rather than in traditional foster homes. It is intended for use by child welfare faculty in California’s schools of social work or social welfare in both BSW and MSW programs and may be used in direct practice or Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) classes. In addition, the curriculum, or parts from it, may be used in workshops provided to line workers, supervisors, and/or managers by any of the public child welfare training academies in California or public child welfare agencies. The intent of this curriculum is to provide students and child welfare professionals with (a) background information on kinship care as an alternative to traditional foster care, (b) a brief review of the literature pertaining to the characteristics of dependent children in kinship care and their care providers, (c) opportunities to discuss beliefs about why kinship care is valuable (or not) and why it may or may not be successful, (d) demographic data pertaining to selected characteristics of children in kinship care and their care providers derived from a sample of California child welfare cases, (e) factors which may or may not be related to premature termination of kinship care placements, (f) caregiver perceptions of differential placement outcomes, (g) social worker perceptions of differential placement outcomes, and (h) opportunities to discuss how students and/or child welfare workers can decrease premature termination of kinship care placements. The curriculum is accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation containing key points from each module followed by one or more slides presenting an “active learning experience.” (78 pages) Chang, J., Liles, R., & Hoang, T. (2006).

A class at Central High School in Louisville, Kentucky, becomes a production studio as students learn about filmmaking in Vanessa Miller’s yearlong film course.

An online, video-based methods course focusing on best practices for foreign language instruction at the high-school and college levels. It features 12 interactive media-rich modules taught by different professors from the University of Texas at Austin. Modules include Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar, Pragmatics, Culture, The Language Learner, Technology, Classroom Management, and Assessment.

This lesson has been developed to prepare leaders of K-12 education to engage in study and initial exploration of culturally responsive teaching, and using phonemena to increase student engagement. This is part of a larger equity-focused professional development program designed for K-12 facilitators of NGSS working in throughout the rural areas of Oregon.

This rubric outlines a set of capabilities to do with the evidence-based practice of formative assessment. It can help teachers and their teams implement formative assessment by demonstrating a shared understanding of what it looks like in practice.