Recently, some of our SLMCs and ITFs went to a PD day featuring resources on NC Wise Owl. Thanks to Rhonda Florence for this blog post recapping what they learned. If you haven’t spent any time on the new version of NCWISEOWL, take a moment to do some exploring. Username and password are both wiseowl17 There are some new and extremely exciting updates in the latest offerings by DPI. And the best part is…..it’s free!!!!
Visit www.ncwiseowl.org. Several Davidson County media and technology folks, including myself, Marley, Sue, Libby, Suzanne, Jill, Danielle and lead teacher Michelle Slate, attended PD provided by DPI in late January. There were lots of fabulous takeaways. Divided into 4 sections, the homepage of NCWISEOWL offers elementary, middle, high school and professional sections. Each is geared toward the knowledge level of users. In the Britannica section, there are colorful icons and letters to help with beginning researchers. The elementary level also includes a PreK-2nd grade learning zone. All researchers can create a MY CONTENT area where students can permanently file interesting findings (students must create a login in) Middle and high school levels include primary resources and detailed country comparisons. As the educator, you can create Resource Packs and get a permanent url to share assignments with your students. For each Britannica article, there are usually 3 reading levels. Just switch from level 1 to level 2 or 3 by clicking on an icon (no other searching required). This makes finding appropriate resources for struggling or advanced readers quite productive. READALOUD is available! Pop into the World Atlas section, and you can move your little yellow man straight to a spot on the map. I ended up in an building in Khartoum in the Sudan, able to see signs in Arabic, embellished carpets and men in traditional white outfits. Moving my man to Dubai, Saudi Arabia, I viewed a gorgeous blue-tiled fountain area. GEOGRAPHY BEE wannabes, take note. This can be lots of fun for your young geographers. Clicking in the NCWISEOWL logo will quickly return you to the main menu. Products from GALE include Kids InfoBits, Research in Context and Student Resources in Context. These are particularly exciting because you can assign articles through Google Classroom, login in through Google to add the information to your drive. When you’ve save it, you can edit it AS YOU WANT. There are great unlabeled diagrams you can get to verify student learning. This resource also has leveled articles. Green is the easiest, yellow is intermediate, and red are the more advanced. There is a readaloud option! You can search by state standards. Just pick out NC and you can find articles that readily work with specific essential standards. Citations are simple with both Gale and Britannica. Basically, they are already done for your students. During the DPI training, we could only go to 2 of the 3 information sessions, but several of our county’s attendees went to the EBSCO training. I am sure you will be learning more about that resource soon. These products offer the chance to create relevant and useful staff development for my staff!
1 Comment
Shanna Leonard
2/23/2018 07:51:24 pm
Wonderful post Rhonda!! Thanks for this update!
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