How can netTrekker help Michigan educators meet Michigan's Online Learning Requirement?

Since Michigan has become the first state in the nation to require students to have an online learning experience before they graduate Michigan educators are looking for online resources to help meet this requirement.
This requirement gives educators several different approaches they can take to meet the 20 hours of online learning experience. netTrekker can give Michigan educators the resources they need to work into the required curriculum - and even give them an efficient method of organizing and collaborating with these resources!

Let's look at the different parts of the online learning requirement and how netTrekker facilitates those specific approaches:

1. Email
Helping students and educators communicate, collaborate and share information is a MAJOR benefit of Email. ePals (a monitored email that classrooms can use to connect with other classrooms in other locations) is a classic example of the educational power of Email. netTrekker's My Portfolio gives educators the Email function to use with their own online resource collections - even giving users the ability to send resources to non-subscribers. Additionally, netTrekker provides hundreds of resources about how Email works, Email etiquette and other supporting information to help students and educators get the most out of using Email as a method of communication.

2. Online Research
Ok, this would seem like a no brainer! According to the curriculum guidelines educators should be guiding students in the different approaches to finding information online. So, netTrekker d.i., America's number ONE educational search engine (and SO much more!) would be a perfect fit for that approach. netTrekker uses a search engine "interface" that works within a collection of educator vetted resources - a win for both student and teacher! This saves both parties time in that they are only looking at educationally relevant information PLUS there is not the danger of material that is inappropriate showing up in a search result as it does in many other search engine approaches. Add to that benefit is the differentiated instruction focus netTrekker has built in to the search experience for users and you are also making sure that students are successful USING those fantastic resources.

3. WebLog/Blog
netTrekker again comes to the rescue by providing loads of resources that clarify what a WebLog or Blog or Podcast is, examples of educational Blogs and Podcasts as well as Integrated Lesson Models in our 21st Century Skills Channel that use Blogging and Podcasting approaches in real classroom ready lesson plans. These models also show educators just how they can successfully incorporate these types of activities into their existing curriculum.

4. WebQuests
What a better way to build these inquiry-oriented lessons where the information comes from the web than using My Portfolio? An educator can collect resources on their chosen topic, build a resource folder inside their Portfolio, Add sites that they might want to use in addition to netTrekker resources (like streaming video resource URLs or magazine database results URLs) and even edit the descriptions of each site to provide specific direction for others to follow upon arrival at those sites! What a quick and effective approach to building a Quest. Once a folder is complete, teachers can share it via Email, community Portfolio folders, adding a direct link to the resource outside of netTrekker or even using the HTML page generated from an Email to place it in their own web site structure.

So, what if an educator doesn’t necessarily want to build their own WebQuests? netTrekker steps up to the plate by providing WebQuests from a variety of sources for educators to use – you can even search for WebQuests by subject area (do a keyword search for web quest and then use the Subject refinement menu).

5. Online Simulations
Now we are really getting in to the good stuff! When I show some of the online simulations we have in netTrekker at training sessions I run the risk of losing any control I thought I had over the session itself. Some of these simulations are so real educators will choose not to go through them because they are squeamish (how cool is that??)! For starters, the Teacher’s Domain collection from WGBH offers quite a few – most noteworthy being the “Operation Heart Transplant” that lets you saw open a patient, take out their existing heart and replace it with a donor heart. There are other science simulations along with 1000’s of other highly interactive simulation sites – my nephew loves the EdHead site on predicting the weather. Try an online simulation in netTrekker today – easy lesson prep and NO CLEAN UP 

6. Educational Games
So, what do you think kids search for first when they go online? You got it – games! Wouldn’t it be nice to have a search interface that limits those games to ones that are educational in nature? netTrekker gives teachers and students the ability to focus on a topic (like geography) then refine search results and only look at learning games in that topic. Some of my favorite learning games in netTrekker are math related (Batter’s Up: Multiplication Baseball for one – kids love it when they hit the home run!), but you can find learning games in almost any topic area and use the refinement menu called “Learning Aides” and apply the “Learning Games” refinement to the search result.

7. ePortfolios
Truly harnessing all the fantastic resources in netTrekker is difficult to do….there is so much there! With all the different topics and learning styles that are addressed by the over 300,000 resources you could start to feel a little overwhelmed. Well, netTrekker has addressed that issue with the release last year of My Portfolio. This feature is jam-packed with functionality that will help you collect and organize resources in many different formats. You can collect resources from within netTrekker and outside. You can add your own content either tied to individual resources or associated with specific folders and portfolios. You can have static access to resources with a view only approach or create a collaborative environment by letting others modify and add resources to areas in the Portfolio. All of this can be done from a personal portfolio level all the way up to school or district portfolios – allowing levels of collaboration and sharing that could prove to be invaluable to teachers and students. My Portfolio can also be utilized in the typical “student work portfolio” type of approach as well – letting students create works online via wiki’s, blogs, Google Doc, etc. and having a centralized place to point to all works that are online via the “Add a Website” feature in My Portfolio.

netTrekker makes it so easy to integrate online learning into your regular classroom environment as well as any virtual or digital approach that your school or district might be involved in. With the ability to quickly find educational online resources in virtually any educational topic and the ability to present those resources in different ways to students and educators you will find that the real power of netTrekker is that it makes the “regular” classroom experience so much more powerful, engaging, relevant and dare we say “fun”?