Educational Technology at IU13

Here are some fresh ideas and resources from Discovery Education to keep the momentum of the school year going. Be sure to log into your instance of Discovery Education before clicking on the links below.

Timely & Relevant Resources  

Did you hear the news? DE has launched an Activity Center for K-8 teachers with daily ready-to-use activities! Here, you can find a calendar of ready-to-use activities to engage students with a variety of science, social studies, math, and ELA content. DE will release a new calendar each month with timely and relevant content, so be sure to subscribe to the new Activity Center. 

The ready-to-use activities combine the best of the SOS Strategies with high-quality content, giving you that magic formula for constructive, engaging activities that save teachers time. 

• K-2 Activity Calendar: November 2021 
• 3-5 Activity Calendar: November 2021 
• 6-8 Activity Calendar: November 2021 

This Month at DE

Explore the full Discovery Education November 2021 Newsletter to learn about all the timely and relevant resources happening this month!

Extend Your Learning 

Grab "just-in-time" professional learning resources that are short, convenient, and relevant to teachers' day-to-day life. In our Professional Learning NOW collection, explore micro-learnings that cover topics such as remote teaching and learning, social-emotional learning, and culturally responsive teaching. Each micro-learning provides a 3-5 minute burst of personalized, guided learning that seamlessly fits into a busy schedule.

Stay Connected at VirtCon |  Tuesday, November 9, 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET 

Go hands-on with Discovery Education to build meaningful learning activities. From interactive slideshows, all new Activity Templates and real-time collaboration, there is a lot to explore! You will also participate in sessions hosted by DEN STAR Educators.

Learn More

Our Fall 2021 IMS Showcase series of 30 to 45-minute webinars kicks off this week for educators to learn more about the materials and resources that the Instructional Media Services (IMS) provides for all of IU13.

Here is the listing of our upcoming webinars:

• Discovery Education Experience on Wednesday, October 20 at 3:30 – 4:15 PM
• BrainPOP Combo on Wednesday, October 27 from 7:30 – 8:15 AM
• Gale Research Databases on Wednesday, November 3 from 3:30 – 4:15 PM
• IMS Lending Library Materials - StarLab, Telepresence and Mobile Device Kits on Wednesday, November 10 from 7:30 – 8:15 AM
• OverDrive & CultureGrams on Wednesday, November 10 from 3:30 – 4:15 PM

This flyer contains webinar descriptions and Frontline registration links. 

A recent announcement from OverDrive:

We are happy to announce that OverDrive has acquired TeachingBooks.net. TeachingBooks creates, acquires and maintains an expansive, exclusive collection of digital resources that deepen students' understanding of children's and young adult books. It is the best source of supplemental materials that enables you to support curriculum needs and enrich literacy instruction while enhancing students' engagement with books and reading. See press release.

TeachingBooks has been creating and maintaining enrichment content about children's and young adult books since 2001, and now offers more than 265,000 resources in their catalog to enrich how a book is taught in the classroom. They currently work with more than 50,000 schools and libraries, supporting students' and readers' appreciation and enjoyment of books.

As of September 30, 2021, the web certificate provider Let’s Encrypt no longer supports certain older operating systems. Certificates from Let’s Encrypt are relied on for secure connections for websites and apps including Sora and OverDrive. As a result of this change, the following is now in effect:

• Sora’s minimum iOS version is now iOS 10. To use Sora on an iOS device, users are required to update their device’s operating system to iOS 10 or newer. These are the steps to help iOS users update their operating system version.
• The legacy OverDrive for Mac desktop app is only supported on macOS versions 10.12.1 through 10.14.
• Users on legacy web browsers may experience issues loading sorapp.com and should upgrade to a newer browser version, if possible.

The expectation was that affected users would receive a security warning after the Let’s Encrypt change, but we’ve since learned that a warning is not always displayed. Users may experience issues with signing in, borrowing, loading the app’s content, etc.
For more information and troubleshooting tips, check out Sora Help and OverDrive Help. If you have any questions, please contact your Account Manager.

OverDrive recently redesigned and added new settings to Sora’s main menu, allowing students to further customize their reading experience. These settings include:

• Adjustable default lending periods: Students can select their preferred lending period for titles they check out in Sora. Once changed, this setting will apply to all future checkouts until changed again. Note: The options displayed are determined by the lending periods enabled in Marketplace settings.
  
  
• Continue Reading Orb: A new toggle allows students to show or hide the shortcut orb that takes them to their most recently read book.
  
  
• Tab Bar Labels: Students can now enable text icon labels for Sora’s four main tabs.
  
  
• Search All Libraries: We moved this setting to the main menu. When enabled, this setting shows search results from all libraries a student adds in Sora. To help students discover more books, we automatically enabled it for any student who hadn’t disabled it previously.
  
  

Additionally, students can now see their checkout and hold limits for their main Sora collection.