This scenario was posted in my online course. "Susie spent hours collecting and curating resources for her upcoming unit on cells. She is able to successfully use much of what she has found when implementing her plans.The following year, when it is time to begin the unit on cells again, Susie forgets about the resources she curated. She essentially starts from scratch, performing the task of searching, saving, and sorting once again." This sounds like the story of my life every year since I have started teaching! I hate myself for not saving things from year to year. I always think back on things I've done in the past and wish I would've saved them. Well this year I am trying to get better about this. Especially since the module I'm currently working through in my online course focuses on curating digital resources. I've been challenged to create a plan with ways to make my curated resources a regular part of my planning. I have already professed my love for Symbaloo in a previous blog post, but I cannot stress enough how great it is for keeping resources organized and handy! I have found that it is best to use it for more generalized things, like links to the main page of a site. I have found other ways to curate resources that I will use to teach specific units. If I find a specific page within a site that I can use to teach a certain topic, I will save it differently than I do the main page. I started using Google Drive this year. At first I hated it, because I hate change and I'm so comfortable using Microsoft Word. Well I've figured out I can still upload things I've created in Word to my Drive, so now it suits me just fine. I love the collaboration aspect of it because now I have created a Google Spreadsheet that is shared with the teachers in my grade level. Every time we find a digital resource we can just quickly copy and paste the link onto the tab for the appropriate week. We decided to sort our reading resources into units and weeks. For example, if we find an awesome video about similes to show in unit 4 week 2, we could just paste the link under 4.2 and a quick description to serve as a reminder of what it is. We do the same thing for Math, only we sort the tabs by unit topics. So if we find a resource for teaching time, we just paste it under the "Time" tab. Now we don't have to worry about losing things anymore because they'll still be there ready to use next year! Now the worst thing that could happen is finding broken links when we try to use them next time. :( I hate when that happens! In summary, I've learned curating resources is the way to go! Don't be like me and think "I'll probably find something better the next year to use so I won't save this." Sometimes newer isn't always better, and sometimes you don't have time to find anything better the next year! I feel like next year will be my easiest year yet because I'm finally getting organized and saving things...in places where I can find them!
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