Educators - Welcome back to another exciting school year!

As we continue moving forward with the 2025–2030 iteration of the IU13 Instructional Media Services (IMS) program, we want to remind our IU13 school districts of the powerful products and services available at your fingertips. Built to be a highly cost-effective and convenient solution, the IMS provides K-12 educators with seamless access to top-tier digital media designed to complement daily classroom instruction. Our current iteration of the IU13 IMS provides educators and students access to Discovery Education Experience, BrainPop Combo, Sora, the Lending Library, and much more!

Discovery Education Experience

• Discovery Education Experience is bringing updates for the 2026–27 school year for students and educators from K-12, starting with a completely redesigned Teacher Homepage tailored specifically around how educators plan and teach. Get familiar with the new homepage with this interactive click-through!
• Experience combines ready-to-teach lessons, activities, and engaging content with research-backed instructional strategies and user-friendly tools. The newly designed DE Career Hub features career and workforce development resources, including Career Connect, which links K-12 classrooms with a growing of diverse industry professionals to build career readiness. Curriculum Aligned Resources includes targeted lessons, activities, and instructional strategies aligned to popular K–8 curricula. Additionally, a wealth of free, hand-picked civic and history resources are available to help classrooms honor 250 Years of United States History.
• The Discovery Education Network Summer Institute (DENSI) took place virtually in July 2026. Check out this one-page summary of titles, descriptions and links to the recordings of this year’s sessions. Each recorded session is approximately 30-45 minutes in length and can be a great professional learning experience for you and your district educators. To support professional growth year-round, teachers now have access to free credential courses focused on AI, cybersecurity, and digital literacy through the new IBM SkillsBuild program.

BrainPOP Combo

• BrainPOP Combo (which includes BrainPop for Grades 3-8, BrainPOP Jr. for Grades K-3 and BP Français, & BP Español) is introducing several exciting new updates for the 2026–27 school year to streamline lesson planning and enhance student learning. Teachers will now benefit from PA Standards alignment, customizable Teacher Data Reports, and unified topic searches that display simultaneous results across both BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr.
• The BP platform has new all-in-one, topic landing pages that organize concepts, standards, and related activities together.
• BrainPOP has added low-prep, offline "Unplugged Activities", alongside major upgrades to quizzes that include helpful student hints, answer rationales for better conceptual understanding, and a real-time collaborative "Live Mode" for whole-class instruction.
• Other updates include a new AI Literacy Collection, AI-provided text help to define words on the fly. And finally, a new "Bookmarks" feature is coming soon to let teachers easily save topics and activities directly to their dashboard.
• Check out the IU13 IMS BrainPOP (2026-2027) slide deck for more information on these updates and other BrainPOP features.

Sora

• For the 2026–27 school year, an extensive K-12 digital library continues to be offered through the IU13 Shared Collection, thoughtfully curated by a committee of local K-12 school district librarians. The collection currently boasts over 5,000 grade level appropriate ebook titles, complete with multiple copies of highly popular books, alongside 850+ audiobooks and 700+ magazines.
• A major highlight for classrooms this year continues to be the magazines with no circulation caps and allow for unlimited simultaneous use. This ensures that every student can enjoy issues of their favorite magazines at the same time, such as: Time for Kids, National Geographic Kids, Popular Mechanics, PC Gamer, and Discover, without any wait lists.
• Log into your district’s Sora library today to explore what’s available!

Lending Library

• You can view all the available items in the IU13 IMS Lending Library in the Lancaster-Lebanon IU13 IMS Catalog
• Upgraded Favorites:
• All Sphero Bolts have been upgraded to the new Sphero Bolt+, featuring high-resolution LCD screens and enhanced programming capabilities.
• We’re excited to now offer a new digital portable planetarium! The Digitalis Mu requires an in-person, hands-on certification training which is available for participants to sign up on Frontline.
• Transfer’s Career Exploration headsets have undergone an update over the summer and now have a variety of new career simulations. Join us on October 28th to learn more from the Transfr team!
• New Additions Ready to Borrow: Expand hands-on learning with brand-new tools, including the Forward Education Climate Action Kit, LEGO CS & AI Kits, LEGO Science Kits, and TinkrWorks STEM Kits.
• Upcoming Engineering Tools: Keep an eye out for tools coming soon to support Engineering byDesign (EbD), such as Sphero Blueprint Kits, Hex Bugs, Vex Robotics, Arduino, SparkFun Microbit, 3D cameras with tripods, and High School ATA resources (hand/submersible pumps and digital calipers).
• Important Borrowing Requirements: Before placing a reservation through the IMS Lending Library reservation site, borrowers must explore and complete the required prerequisite course and resources. You can visit our IMS YouTube channel for step-by-step video tutorials on completing the course, placing reservations, and submitting mandatory inventory check-in forms.

Don’t forget to come back to read our IMS Blog Updates throughout the school year and subscribe via email to get updates sent directly to your inbox. Contact us for assistance and with questions anytime!

Your IU13 EdTech and IMS Team

• Tim Leister - Timothy_Leister@iu13.org

• Keith Royer - Keith_Royer@iu13.org   

• Megan Smith - Megan_Smith@iu13.org

• Suzanne Kopp - Suzanne_Kopp@iu13.org

• Contact any or all of us at ims@iu13.org