Did you know that in addition to video-based content, the Learning Bird platform also includes hundred of printable resources for at-home packs?
Continue readingPrint-Based Resources for At-Home Learning Packs
Building In-Community Capacity with Our New Virtual Training Program
When creating school and community-based resources, we like to ensure that they are a true reflection of our partners’ local language and culture.
Continue readingReturning to Fall Learning with Course Packs
In the fall, there may be a bigger focus on at-home learning to help meet social distancing requirements in schools. Our new custom Course Packs are a great addition to help teachers support at-home instruction.
Continue readingProduction Services for Organizations
During our battle with COVID-19, organizations need new skills and support. This is why we are temporarily expanding our service offerings to help organizations adapt and address their content creation and production needs.
Continue readingOnsite Student Workshops
Did you know that in addition to our training and professional development workshops for teachers, we also offer student-facing workshops? Our team of teachers can come onsite to your school to lead a student-facing workshop on a variety of different topics.
Continue readingNavigating the New Learning Bird App
Fall is a beautiful season full of promise: new classes, new learners, fresh supplies, and a clean slate. As our Director of Product, Louis Beauregard, outlined in his post, we’ve spent the summer making some amazing changes to our app. We made so many great changes we thought you might benefit from a quick overview of navigating the app and preparing your class pages to share resources with your learners.
Most of you will have the opportunity to participate in a face-to-face onsite training session with your Learning Bird Education Account Lead. Until we are on-site to show you the app live, this article highlights some of the most common tasks.
Logging In
My first pointer is to update your bookmark for the Learning Bird login page. If your school uses the cloud version of Learning Bird, the login page is now app.learningbird.com/login/. This change comes as a result of our corporate website relaunch. Our website is now at www.learningbird.com, and our app is at app.learningbird.com. Splitting the website and the app makes it easier for our users to switch back and forth without logging in and out.
If you use the local server, Learning Bird Nest, your login URL remains the same (nest.learningbird.com/).
Introducing Class Pages
One of the biggest changes to our platform is the addition of class pages. These pages enable you to organize resources you want to share with your class on one page. You have control over categorization, organization, publication, and visibility. These pages provide easy resource sharing without requiring your learners to have individual student logins.
When you log in to your account for the first time, you will be asked to add a class. You can click on the Add class card on the homepage and follow the prompts to add a class.
It will guide you through a step-by-step process to choose your subject, select your grade, choose the course that’s part of your local curricula, and name your class.
Once you’ve set up your class page, you can navigate to the Search/Browse icon on your class page to find and add resources.
Resources and Resource Kits
To navigate the platform, it’s important to understand the difference between a resource and a resource kit. A resource is a video, audio file, presentation, or handout that you can use with your class. A resource kit is a collection of learning resources that follow a specific learning progression. Resource kits include a hook, one or more main learning activities, and a demonstration of learning.
Individual resources feature an icon on the card. In contrast, resource kits include a description, a list of resources, and icons to show the resource formats.
Finding Resources for Your Class
You can find resources for your class by browsing or searching. To browse for resources, use the Browse button at the top of the page. You can then select a subject area, like Math. You will then see all our resources and kits supporting that subject. You can open the Filter panel and specify the grade range, sub-topic, resource type, or collaborator to narrow down your results.
The other way to find resources is through searching. The search box is at the top of the app. Enter any term and hit Enter. This will display all resource kits and resources that match your search term. You can then further refine your search results by opening the Filter panel and making a selection.
Adding Resources to Your Class Page
Once you’ve found a resource that you would like to share with your class, hover over the resource to see the available actions. Click on “C” to add the resource to your class page. You then see the classes dialogue box and select the desired class page. Once you add the resource to the class page, you will see it under the Available items section. You can then move these resources into class page sections or create new ones.
Finding Local Resources
If we have already created resources in collaboration with your school or organization, you can access these by clicking the school or organization name in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
You can also find these by selecting your organization’s name from the Collaborators list in the filter panel. If your community is not currently listed under the Collaborators section and is interested in creating content together, please contact us.
Other Tasks
In addition to the basic tasks listed in this article, you can also:
- Add co-teachers to your class pages. This way, both you and any co-teachers or educational assistants can add resources to your class pages.
- Create sections in your class pages. That provides you with a way to organize your resources into units, weeks, or other groupings.
- Favourite resources and resource kits. Mark relevant resources as favourites and easily find them in the future.
- Edit your profile. That allows you to change your avatar, name, region and reset your password.
All of these tasks are outlined in our How-To videos within the application. You can always find help resources by clicking on the “?” within the app.
Have Questions? Just Ask!
This is just a quick snapshot of how to navigate the new app. For more information on completing specific tasks on the platform or other questions, please consult the How-To videos under the help section in the app or contact your Education Account Lead.
Itching to see our new app but don’t have an account? Sign up now for a free, 14-day trial account.
Reintroducing Learning Bird
As consumers, we gravitate toward applications that are simple to set up, easy to learn and work seamlessly on all our devices. We enjoy tools that empower us without getting in the way. Naturally, educators feel much the same way about digital tools they use in their classrooms. That is why we’ve completely redesigned the Learning Bird user experience, so you can more easily locate and use our great content in your classroom.
New search filters
We’ve redesigned how we categorize our content to make it easier to find exactly what you are looking for. Subjects are now part of the filter panel, so you can quickly get to classroom-ready resources.
New class pages
Create a custom class page to share specific Learning Bird resources with your learners. You can organize content inside your class page to match how you teach. Navigate the app for great content and send it to your class. Your learners can then easily navigate to your class without logging in. In fact, we removed the need for student credentials altogether!
Co-teachers
Work as a team to teach certain classes? You can now share class duties with a colleague by adding them as co-teachers.
Beautiful and easy to use on all devices
Learning Bird is fully responsive from tablet to desktop, providing a high-quality experience on all devices for both educators and learners. In addition, the class and viewing pages have been optimized to provide high contrast, which improves use with projectors, older displays, or situations where lighting is a challenge.
We are very excited to roll out the new Learning Bird platform. It is based on real-world feedback from our community partners across Canada in a spirit of partnership and collaboration. We look forward to your continued feedback and ideas about how we can make Learning Bird even better. Please reach out to me personally to share your ideas or comments. Let’s work together to bring classroom-ready content from Indigenous perspectives to classrooms from coast to coast!
Three Approaches to Content Collection
As Learning Bird’s Education Content Manager, one of my main responsibilities is conducting needs assessments with our school and community partners. Discussing the community’s academic and cultural needs helps us outline the resources we will create collaboratively. A resource could be a video, audio file, handout activity or project, or informational slideshow. During these conversations, communities provide materials that we can incorporate into their resources. These include photos, videos, educational resources, audio clips, and other materials that support learning. We incorporate these materials through our personalized approach to content creation.
Needs Assessments and Content Creation
One of the best parts of the needs assessment conversation is getting to know the community through the people. They share insights into teaching practices, learners, and content that best support the educators, learners, school, and community. Sometimes these are cultural resources to preserve language and traditions. Other times, they are academic resources to encourage student success in English language arts, math or science. It demonstrates that just as each community is different, so is its content needs.
These differences influence how I approach collaborative content creation. I visited three communities over the last few months to conduct onsite needs assessments: Treaty 4 in Saskatchewan, Gitsegukla in British Columbia, and Lac La Croix in Ontario. Each visit was radically different, from the landscapes to the meeting places and conversations. Yet they all resulted in the same outcome: an outline of the resource kits we would create for this project. Read on to learn more about each trip.
Treaty 4 Education Alliance
On a cold but sunny day at the end of February, I visited Treaty Education Alliance’s office in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, for a jam-packed day of needs assessment and content collection. My colleague Roxanne and I met with their team of Student Retention Facilitators. We discussed the needs of the five schools we would be working with. Before the meeting, the team had sent some curriculum documents and educational resources to us. We already understood their inquiry-based approach to learning.
We determined they wanted to create resource kits based on storybooks researched, written, and illustrated by several grade 5 classes. These books contained an abundance of information about the communities and their history. As a team, we pulled out the major themes from each book. These included land loss, displacement, colonization, and residential schooling. We decided that four resources would address each storybook and cover the major themes. That way, learners from different schools could learn about each other’s histories.
We also discussed the potential of creating language resources. The team shared a wealth of educational resources and textbooks used in their schools. That allowed us to see a sampling of materials successfully used with learners. We left with our arms full of materials and an agreed-upon topic outline we could develop and expand on.
Gitsegukla First Nation
My trip to Gitsegukla in British Columbia was quite different from Treaty 4. Instead of meeting a whole team of educators, my colleague Kelsey and I drove to Gitsegukla Elementary School to meet with Terri, their grade 7 educator. Before diving into our content conversation, we first discussed her classroom. We talked about her learners and their learning needs, her teaching strategies, and the resources she uses in her classroom. During the conversation, she also mentioned resources she wished she had. We discussed some of the challenges she was facing and brainstormed some ideas.
After I had a better idea of her classroom situation and what her learners were like, we discussed the learning objects she would like to collaborate on. Terri lacked science resources, so we decided to dedicate all but one resource kit to science. We would focus on sustainability, cooking, recycling, and ecosystems. We reserved the last resource kit for an English language arts lesson about Indigenous poetry in British Columbia.
The next day, we observed a visiting scientist teach the learners about insects, bees, and pollination. It was great to meet the learners and observe them interacting in the classroom. I also took photos and collected footage around Terri’s classroom, throughout the school, and the surrounding areas. Collecting visuals helps us personalize our content and make it relevant for the learners, who will recognize their community in content while they are learning. Before leaving, we reviewed the outline with Terri to ensure that the topics and activities would suit her learners and teaching strategies. Through speaking with Terri, it was easier to see the daily reality of her classroom and understand the challenges that her learners face. That helps us ensure the content we’re creating together impacts her classroom.
Lac La Croix First Nation
My latest content needs assessment trip took me to Lac La Croix First Nation in Ontario for a week-long visit with my colleague Charlie. We had already created an outline with this community during previous needs assessment phone calls. Our goal was to come in-community to gather as many materials as possible for the resources we’d agreed to build together. That included recording interviews with Elders and videotaping cultural activities. Once we arrived at the school, we met with the principal Debbie and the team we would be working with during the week. We discussed the schedule of events and activities. We rearranged topics in the outline to accommodate what we could document and gather during our time in the community.
Over the week, the community and activities at the school immersed us, including smoking sturgeon and beaver, a fish fry, maple syrup tapping, and a community meeting about land. We recorded four sessions with community Elders and other Knowledge Keepers. They came to the school and taught the learners various topics, like hunting, land loss, treaties, identity, and culture. The team also sifted through boxes of photos of land-based activities from Debbie and scanned them digitally. We photographed other aspects of the community, such as the lake, forest, and Pow Wow grounds. Our team left with over 200 GB of images and video recordings at the end of the week. We will use them to create resource kits to help preserve and share the culture, traditions, and community members of Lac La Croix.
Personalized Content Creation
As you’ve read, our collaborative approach to content creation is highly personalized and varied from community to community. It allows us to meet the community’s unique needs, and it certainly keeps my job interesting.
If you would like to talk with us about collaborating on content creation for your school or community, don’t hesitate to contact us at 1-888-844-9022 or achieve@learningbird.com.