Educational Technology at IU13

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.

• Showcase your digital collection in high-traffic areas of your school
• Feature kid-friendly titles for elementary students
• Highlight nonfiction titles in the research section of your library
• And more!

Your school has unlimited access to the Sora Showcase software. Set up as many locations and devices as you like! Note: Your school is responsible for providing the hardware and internet access for Sora Showcase. You can review the Sora Showcase overview, setup guide, and video tutorial for staff to learn more.

Here are some exciting new resources and strategies to help teachers engage students every day, no matter the learning environment. Be sure to log into your instance of Discovery Education before clicking on the links below.

Share Timely & Relevant Resources  

DE has curated a full calendar of daily ready-to-use activities! 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: October 2021 
• 3-5 Activity Calendar: October 2021 
• 6-8 Activity Calendar: October 2021 

Extend Your Learning 

Get the most out of Discovery Education with our self-paced interactive eLearning courses. Educators can complete these courses on their own time and earn a completion certificate to submit for continuing education credits.  

This Month at DE

Explore the pages in this Studio Slideshow to learn about all the great resources and product enhancements happening in October!