Information Services
Massachusetts Online Network for Education (MassONE)

MassONE Newsletter - June 2010

MassONE enhances partnership with WGBH

Educators who have MassONE accounts will now have instant access to Massachusetts Teachers' Domain, an online resource produced by WGBH. Massachusetts Teachers' Domain offers free access to more than 2,600 classroom-ready media tools, including video clips, interactive activities, and lesson plans--all aligned with the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks. This rich resource collection is pulled from a variety of sources, including public television programming, government agencies, museums, libraries, and academic institutions.

Teachers' Domain offers personalized features

A Teachers' Domain account offers some great features for its registered users. By signing up for a free account, you will be able to take advantage of these features as you plan your lessons:

• You can view correlations to Massachusetts curriculum frameworks for each resource.

• You can save and annotate resources for later use.

• You can set up your own folders to organize resources.

• You can upload your own resources to your folders.

• You can set up private groups to collaborate and share resources with colleagues.

• You can set up a class account, along with a folder that your students can access.

• You can review and rate resources, plus you can view other educators' ratings of resources.

Easy access to Teacher's Domain

MassONE now allows users to navigate directly from MassONE to Teachers' Domain, without needing to enter another password. To access Teachers' Domain, simply log onto MassONE and click the TD icon in the toolbar on the left. If you already have a Teachers' Domain account, you will be prompted to connect your accounts together by signing in to your TD account when you first access Teachers' Domain through MassONE. After doing that, you will be able to access your TD account simply by clicking the TD icon in MassONE.

If you do not have a TD account, you will need to register with Teachers' Domain in order to view the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks correlations and take advantage of the personalized features,. When you set up a new account, it will be automatically linked to MassONE so that you can access TD through MassONE from then on.

Finding resources in TD

TD videos include special features for schools

Teachers' Domain offers hundreds of video clips, each accompanied by background information, discussion questions, and correlations to the Massachusetts standards. In addition, most videos include captions that can be turned on or off with a click of the mouse. The use of captions has been found to be useful for students who are learning English, as well as for students who have hearing impairments.

Teachers' Domain will soon be implementing a new video player that will stream videos full screen. This transition will happen over the next few months. To play videos full screen, simply click on the rectangular "fullscreen" icon on the bottom right of the video player.

Using TD resources in the classroom

There are many ways you can use Teachers' Domain. If you have a single computer and projector, you can show the video clips to the whole class. Many of the videos are available for download in case you want to view them in a room that does not have an Internet connection.

If students are at individual computers, you can create a "generic" TD account for all of your students (i.e. StudentsofMrsSmith) so that they can access the TD resources. An unlimited number of students can all use the same login at the same time. You can create a folder where you put all of the resources for a particular class or a specific lesson. When you create a folder, you can determine who can access it, so students will only be able to access the folder that you specify for them. To learn more about setting up folders, you can view the video tutorials created by TD; just type "folders and groups" into the search box.

Using TD resources with MassONE tools

If you are using MassONE's tools to collaborate with colleagues or to engage your students, you may want to include links to resources from Teachers' Domain. For example, in an online discussion with colleagues about teaching science, you can share a video TD clip; just copy the URL from the selected clip and paste it into your post in the discussion forum. You can do the same thing in a discussion forum for students, except that students will need to sign into Teachers' Domain with a class account that you have created. (See "Using TD resources in the classroom" above.)

You can also include URLs for Teachers' Domain resources in lesson plans that you create using the MassONE Lesson Plan tool. You can then access the videos by clicking the URL while using the Lesson Plan tool.

Teachers' Domain Offers Workshops

TD staff members are available to present workshops at schools. A typical workshop is 90 minutes and provides a basic overview of Teachers' Domain. Longer workshops are also available. Teachers' Domain requires one month's notice for a basic workshop and two to three months for longer workshops. Schools must have at least 15 teacher participants in order to schedule a workshop.

Teachers' Domain has also produced materials for districts to facilitate their own workshops on Teachers' Domain. For more information about workshops or training materials, contact Daniella QuiÑones at daniella.quinones@wgbh.org or 617-300-3995.

Back issues of newsletters

If you missed any previous issues of the MassONE newsletter, you can now find them on the MassONE web site. To access them, click MassONE News Archives on the MassONE home page.