The Best Kind Of Help

In 2009 the AASL awarded S. O. S. for Information Literacy a spot on their coveted Top 25 Web Sites for Teaching and Learning.  It falls under the Curriculum Sharing standard found in the Guidelines for School Library Programs:  Instructional Partner.

On site they define themselves as follows:  a dynamic, collaborative web-based multimedia resource that includes peer-reviewed lesson plans, handouts, presentations, videos, and other resources to enhance the teaching of information literacy. (K-16)

Following a tip given by the AASL, be sure to set up an account.  To do so enter in your first and last name, password, institution, city, state, country, institution profile (ranging from primary to 4-year college to technical/trade school to museum), workplace location (urban, suburban, rural), years in this type of position,  K-12 Teacher Librarians (certified, not certified, currently working on certification) and education levels taught.

When you log in you are taken to your workspace:  my Plans, my Units, my Ideas, my Builders and my Account.  There are templates that need to be completed in order to submit lesson plans or stand alone ideas for review prior to their posting on the site.  The tutorial for creating a lesson plans asks such questions as:  upon what do I base my lesson, how do I start the lesson, general information about the lesson, objectives and procedures, supporting files, and standards.  The templates (compare the screen shots above) are fairly similar. 

Units, collections of lessons, can be done alone or through collaboration.  Units can not be created unless at least two lessons have been previously selected for the site. 

When designing a Builder, a web based experience for mainly students, there are twenty-five templates from which to choose.  After a template is selected there are four different options for image placement.  From there you can begin to add elements (text, images, links, media and tables) to a web page.  This is a somewhat abbreviated view of that space.

There is a very thorough tutorial which defines a Builder and guides the user through its setup step by step. 

In addition to tutorials for making your own lesson plans, units, ideas and builders there is also a simple guide to using the search function at the site.  At the top enter in a keyword or topic, select a grade level, and choose whether you are looking for lesson plans, ideas or builders. 

The home page of the site will feature lesson plans, ideas and builders that you might want to try in your classroom or library media center.  After nearly thirty-four years as a certified library media specialist I just might be spending a few hours each day in my retirement entering in lessons and ideas for others to use.  What a great collaborative project spearheaded by the Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse University with major support from the national government, Institute of Museum and Library Services.