LibGuides: Professional Resources: Cross-Discipline Resources

Albert Camus (1913-1960), French novelist, essayist, and playwright - Britannica ImageQuest I don’t make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil.

Albert Camus (1913-1960), in a November 19, 1957 letter to Louis Germaine, his childhood teacher, a few days after Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

On this page:

Assessment
Do Your Students Know How to Evaluate a Website?
Global Oneness Project
HOTS - Higher Order Thinking Skills
Khan Academy
The Open Syllabus Project
Rigor
Screencast-o-matic (Use to embed text within YouTube videos)
Teaching Strategies
Teach With Movies
Websites - Miscellaneous Teaching Resources

Assessment

When Grading Harms Student Learning
This article gives examples of uses of grading that can actually harm student learning by creating anxiety and fear of failure, instead of providing hope. Author: Andrew Miller, Instructional Coach at Shanghai American School.
Do No Harm: Flexible and Smart Grading Practices
Follow-up article to 'When Grading Harms Student Learning.' The article discusses specific strategies for dealing with concerns around redoes, zeroes, and homework,, including: addressing behavioral issues affecting academic achievement, requesting to retest, redoing parts of an assessment, and reflecting on assessments. The author recommends that teachers "pick their battles" and concludes with a reminder that "it's about hope." Author: Andrew Miller, Instructional Coach at Shanghai American School.

Global Oneness Project

Global Oneness Project
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
A pedagogical tool for bringing the world’s cultures alive in the classroom. Committed to the exploration of cultural, environmental, and social issues, this website offers a rich library of multimedia stories comprised of award-winning films, photo essays, and essays. Companion curriculum and discussion guides are also available. This is an initiative of the Kalliopeia Foundation.

HOTS - Higher Order Thinking Skills

Question Stems - Critical Thinking / HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills)
Questions for critical thinking following Bloom's Taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, application). Adapted from Quick Flip Questions for Critical Thinking on edupressinc.com.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy
Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard to allow learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. Subjects covered include math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more. Parents and teachers can use the coach dashboard to get a summary of class performance as a whole as well as detailed student profiles.

The Open Syllabus Project

Open Syllabus Explorer
The Open Syllabus Project (based at the American Assembly at Columbia University) has collected more than a million syllabi from university websites and made them searchable through Open Syllabus Explorer.

Rigor

Using Webb's Depth of Knowledge to Increase Rigor
Edutopia article on how teachers can use Norman Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels to "create rich environments where all students learn at a high level." Tasks are categorized according to the depth of knowledge required to complete them: Level 1: Recall and Reproduction; Level 2: Skills and Concepts; Level 3: Strategic Thinking; Level 4: Extended Thinking. Author: Gerald Aungst, Supervisor of Gifted and Elementary Math, Cheltenham School District, Pennsylvania.

In this video from ACSD (a professional learning community for educators) Robyn Jackson introduces what rigorous instruction requires students to do.

Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist who writes about human behavior and public policy. For Time Magazine and the Atlantic, she has chronicled the stories of American kids and teachers alongside groundbreaking new research into education reform. "Kids have strong opinions about school. We forget as adults how much time they sit there contemplating their situation."

Screencast-o-matic

Screencast-o-matic
Use to embed text within YouTube videos or to record on-screen activity for short tutorials and visual presentations. The free version allows making screen and webcam recordings up to 15 minutes long, publishing to YouTube, and saving recordings as video files.

Teach With Movies

Teach With Movies
Lesson Plans and Learning Guides based on feature films & movies, (full length and snippets (video clips)), for classes in English, Social Studies, Health, Science and the Arts.

Do Your Students Know How to Evaluate a Website?

Most students are really not sure how to tell if a website is trustworthy. Many may think, "All I need is Google to do my paper." How savvy are YOUR students? Here are 14 resources on website evaluation, adapted from A Media Specialist's Guide to the Internet.

WEBSITES

Authenticating Information - Media Smarts
A guide for parents for how to guide their children when they're doing online research. The Media Smarts website also has lesson plans for teachers to use when covering this topic in their classes. Presented by Media Smarts, Canada's Centre for Digital and Media Literacy
Checklist for Evaluating Web Resources
Provides a checklist of questions to ask when determining the value of websites, in the areas of authority, scope, format and presentation, and cost and accessibility; also gives other tips to help with the critical analysis of websites. Presented by University of Southern Maine Libraries.
Credible Sources Count!
An excellent 10-minute tutorial on how can we tell what's credible and what's not, when the amount of information we find can often be overwhelming. Published by: Vaughan Memorial Library, Acadia University
Critical Evaluation of Information - Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everythinng
The page includes forms for teaching the process, articles for learning about the aspect of literacy, and a list of bogus sites to use to showcase that all things on the Web are not real. The guide is organized by grade level, and covers elementary, middle school, and high school.
Evaluating Resources - Berkeley Library, University of California
Presents factors to consider when doing critical evaluation of websites, and answers the question "How do you make sense of the quality of resources and evaluate their authority and appropriateness for your research?"
Gallery of Hoax Websites
Links to hoax websites, organized in alphabetical order. The list has not been maintained since 2003, and since the lifespan of hoax websites tends to be rather brief, many of the links no longer work.
Using Critical Thinking to Find Trustworthy Websites (Educator Video)
Students learn how to evaluate the trustworthiness and usefulness of informational websites. Appropriate for grades 6-8. Presented by Common Sense Media.
Website Evaluation Guide (with examples)
Gives criteria for evaluating websites, and then provides examples of websites with those criteria applied. Websites are shown to be either 'Credible', 'Maybe Credible', or 'Not Credible'. Presented by EasyBib.com

HANDOUTS AND POSTERS

The 5 Ws of Website Evaluation - Kathy Schrock
Questions of ask when evaluating a website, organized under the headings Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
Critical Evaluation of a Website - Middle School Level
Form for middle school students to use when evaluating a website, with questions to answer on 'Looking At and Using the Page' and 'What's On the Page and Who Put It There'. From Kathy Schrock.
Critical Evaluation of a Website - Secondary Level
Form for high school students to use when evaluating a website, with questions to answer on 'Technical and Visual Aspects of the Page' , 'Content' and 'Authority'. From Kathy Schrock.
Fact vs. Fiction
A poster that explains common misconceptions about the Internet, defining what is, and is not, on the web, what students will, and will not expect to find there, and what they can, and cannot, do with the information. Presented by GCF Learnfree.org.
Website Evaluation Guide (with examples)
Gives criteria for evaluating websites, and then provides examples of websites with those criteria applied. Websites are shown to be either 'Credible', 'Maybe Credible', or 'Not Credible'. Presented by EasyBib.com

VIDEOS

Evaluating Resources, from the Baker University Library in Baldwin City, Kansas.

Evaluating Sources, from Western University Library in London, Ontario.

Evaluating Websites, from Gulf Coast State College Library in Panama City, Florida.

Research Therapy: Search Strategy, from Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge.

Teaching Strategies

How to Create Effective Homework
Article on KQED's Mind/Shift blog on the question of whether the homework teachers do give actually advances learning. The author reviews recent research and the strategies recommended by several education professionals.

Websites - Miscellaneous Resources

Crossword Puzzle Maker
Online form for generating custom-made crossword puzzles, with options for fonts, colors, illustrations. Presented by The Teacher's Corner.
Teaching Resource Portals
Links to over 70 websites with resources for teachers for all subjects and grade levels. Curated by Joyce Valenza, blogger for School Library Journal.

Professional Resources: Cross-Discipline Resources

On This Page