Category Archives: Resources

Follett Learning!

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Big News! Over 1,000 Interactive Lightbox eBooks From Our Friends At Follett Learning!

Every day I am looking for the best resources and experiences to share with our students.  I was so excited to hear the announcements from Follett Learning how they are generously supporting all learners, teachers and families during this time.

Two of the resources I am most excited about are the interactive Lightbox eBooks and AV2 World Languages audio book program from our friends at Follett Learning.  As their press release stated, Follett has announced it is partnering with Weigl Publishers, Inc. to offer Lightbox, a PreK-12 interactive ebook platform, and AV2 World Languages, a K-3 ebook program, free of charge to schools worldwide through June 30.

Bringing learning to life, Lightbox uses video, audio, and text to explore content aligned with national and state standards and is ideal for student at-home use. With more than 1,000 high-interest titles in subjects such as science, language arts, and mathematics, Lightbox fills curriculum gaps while providing a fun, engaging, student-centered learning experience to improve comprehension, vocabulary, and engagement.

When I read this, I couldn’t wait to login and get out school signed up!

To get started, I went to the registration link Follett provided here.

With simple directions sent,  I logged into the Follett eLearning Lightbox site where over 1000 amazing interactive eBooks are waiting for our students and families to enjoy and for our teachers to pair with engaging and meaningful remote learning activities.

All students will find something for them in Lightbox as they can search various interest and reading levels, genres, subjects and more on the left hand side of the page.
Below are just some of the series available to engage students:
  •  Habitats (PreK-2 available in English and Spanish)
  •  Places in My Community (PreK-2 available in English and Spanish)
  •  Manners (PreK-2)
  •  Simple Machines (3-6)
  •  Our American States (3-6)
  •  The Solar System (6-8)
  •  World Cultures (6-8)
  •  World Geography (9-12)
  •  Literature Studies (9-12)

Once you are in the Follett eLearning platform, it is super simple to access any of the Lightbox books.  You will see a little Open at the bottom of each eBook cover image.

Just click on Open and…

…it will open up the menu to that Lightbox eBook.  You can view each page and use…

…the buttons at the bottom left to navigate all of the Lightbox Standard Features including Audio, Video, Activities, Weblinks, Slideshows, Transparencies, Google Maps, Quizzes and Key Words. 
At the bottom right of this menu, you will also see the Lightbox Supplementary Resources which include Curriculum, Destiny and….

…online Activities like this one.

It’s wonderful how all of these features support learning and make it easy for families to use at home with the online resources and materials you can print at home too.

I have always loved the beautiful and interesting images, videos, maps, audio and other features brought together in Lightbox to make these interactive eBook so unique.  These will appeal to all learners as learning comes to life online and throughout the other activities, conversations and interactions.

Here is the log in information.

  1. From Destiny Discover, in the School field, enter Follett eLearning, McHenry, IL. The Location field is pre-populated with Any Location (do not change this field).
  2. Click Go.
  3. Click Login on the top right.
  4. Enter guest in the Username field and follett in Password field.
  5. Press Enter
All of the amazing Lightbox eBooks will play an important part in the learning, reading and fun that our students will have during this time.  Thank you to our friends at Follett Learning for making these resources available to all of us.  
For more information and help navigating Lightbox resources, you can visit the Follett Community here. 
 
And remember, you can register for this free offer here. 

Looking for some reading and project selections to keep your children reading?

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We have been set up with free remote access to PebbleGo and Capstone Interactive eBooks. We hope these resources are helpful to your children during this sensitive time.

Student Access Instructions

PebbleGo: Visit www.pebblego.com and click “Sign In”

Username: engaged

Password: learning

Capstone Interactive eBooks: Visit www.mycapstonelibrary.com and click “Log In”

Username: continue

Password: reading

Don’t forget our public library system!  They have great fun for kids!


Snohomish County Library System:
https://www.sno-isle.org/kids/digital/

King County Library System:
https://kcls.org/kids-subject/databases/

I recommend :
BookFlix Video Storybooks
Tumblebook Library

Websites and apps for digital articles and books

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A question of the day blog that provides answers to frequently asked student questions. Includes texts with a read-to-me function and a paired video.

Story Time from Space is a project of the Global Space Education Foundation, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit education foundation.

We send children’s books to the International Space Station.

While in space, astronauts are videotaping themselves reading these books to the children of Earth. These videos are being edited and placed on this Story Time From Space website- look under the heading ” Story Time Videos”.

Storytime with Ryan and Craig

Storytime with Ryan & Craig is a free, short-form reading show for children, parents & educators.

 

Tech, Geography and Literacy Idea

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Does your child enjoy playing the video game Minecraft? This completely optional idea involves using Minecraft as a piece in a thinking project. Did you know that Minecraft can be used to create meaningful and engaging educational experiences? Consider this project that links Minecraft with literacy, geography, research, engineering and Math.

Using one of the CR databases, locate a famous landmark, city or event in the US or in the world. Learn about it and then re-create that landmark in Minecraft. This link will help you with more ideas.

Another Minecraft idea is to recreate a scene or location from a favorite book. Use what you know about the characters to build that world in Minecraft.

If you wonder if using Minecraft is truly educational, visit  John Miller’s website in California. In 2019 he was awarded the Fulbright Distinguished Teaching Award that took him to Singapore to study game-based learning. He has lessons and challenges available for using Minecraft as an educational tool.