How to Add Interesting, Valuable Content to Your Teaching
Submitted by Dr. Jessie Voigts on Mon, 01/28/2019 - 23:00
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People learn in different ways now than in the past. With the advent of the internet–and the introduction of smartphones–how we view and learn about the world has rapidly changed. In fact, the world has moved quickly past the Industrial Age, and toward the Intelligence and Imagination Ages.
Part of that has been a change from rote, textbook learning to multimedia, creative, participatory learning. Another shift has been toward lifelong learning, as a result of globalization and the changing nature of work...and the necessity of keeping up with those changes.
As an educator, I am sure you are constantly looking for ways to increase student engagement and knowledge retention in your classes–as well as the need to prepare your students to participate in the changing global economy.
Who wants bored, distracted students? No educator, that’s for sure.
The most important way to do this is to supplement the supporting educational materials you use to teach your subject.
While pulling resources from across the internet is useful (C-SPAN Classroom, NYT Classroom, Youtube, etc.), albeit time-consuming, it is also handy to aggregate resources all in one location.
Enter Study.com’s Teacher Edition, with over 25,000 video lessons and resources. All lessons are in alignment with Common Core standards.
Want to brush up on old topics, learn new, or add in interdisciplinary knowledge around your topic? This is the perfect educational resource to supplement your own knowledge, and create interesting curriculum with a minimum of work for maximum impact.
Here’s how it works:
You delve into the enormous library of resources on the site, and then ascertain what you’d like to include. I suggest keeping those browser tabs open. Then, create a custom course on your topic. Add in the chapters you’d like in your custom course, so that you can easily add lessons to each chapter.
For this article, I created a custom course, entitled Anthropology: Language. Now, my lifelong interest in, and love for, anthropology led me to spend MORE than a few hours digging into the site and learning more myself. It was a joy to interact with the site, learn more myself, and figure out the best content to include in my teaching on the subject.
That said, I narrowed the course down to language within anthropology, because otherwise, my custom course would span years and years of student learning (entirely possible scenario: they would all have graduated from college and I’d still be excited about all the material I could teach and share).
On the site, there are videos, practice tests, flashcards, quizzes, and more. (Note: I'm still trying to figure out how to add flashcards to a custom course).
Take a look at my process…
Then I searched through a variety of subjects to find resources to include, for a high school level:
Teacher resources
World history High School search
HS Anthropology front page
How to add items to your custom course
Some of the fascinating elements I discovered and included in my custom course:
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic expansion
Cultural Anthropology
VIDEOS! Library of Alexandria
Some of the resources led me to learn more, and broaden my course in ways I hadn’t imagined.
Language and Communication
Development of writing
The beauty of this resource is that you can create a custom, multidisciplinary course, with excellent content from experts in the field.
Take a look at my custom course layout in the back office!
The level of customization for your needs is wide.
You can create a custom classroom, give assignments, track learning, create playlists, and more.
Note: Study.com also provides Professional Development for teachers, including Praxis prep resources (!!).
AND, student resources include courses for college credit, test prep, and homework help.
I love the wide range of opportunities that this site can fulfill–you’re only limited by the imagination. One can gather information quickly to lay out talking points for discussing current events, history as we live it, trends, holidays, or interdisciplinary contributions in your subject.
We’ve all got those students that learn quickly, deeply, and are eager for more. Here, you can research student interests to provide more in-depth learning on a specific topic, across disciplines.
Need a walk through? The help section is extensive. And, as I learned firsthand when not understanding something or running into a glitch, the support team is thorough and very kind.
There is also a helpful section with Free lesson plan resources.
By increasing the educational resources available to your students, and encouraging interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition, you’re truly bringing the world home.
Speaking of, I’m working on a custom course on study abroad…
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This collaboration is brought to you by Study.com and is based on my unbiased experience using the site.
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