In an effort to constantly improve our product offering, we sent a staff member to attend the “AASL Top 25 Web Sites for Teaching and Learning” seminar which was held at the American Library Association (ALA) annual convention in New Orleans. The day long seminar demonstrated what school librarians need in the way of online resources and what features they considered best. The actual list of web sites reviewed can be found here.
In a nutshell, we discovered that schools are looking for ways to migrate away from the traditional “poster board” and instead use online tools that permit students to collaborate on projects and share them with other students in the classroom. The other interesting aspect was that most of the web sites discussed were not content providers, but use content in order to function. For example, a storyboard or timeline feature would need content to populate a given program.
This is where CountryReports comes into play. With over 35,000 pages of usable content, schools can insert our content into various web site tools as students generate reports and complete assigned projects. One popular feature we offer is for students to use country recipes and photos within their projects. While the Internet continues to create fun new ways of learning, content remains key to a students success.