CORE is back up and Operational

CORE is back up and operational again!
Thank you all for your patience.

CORE Having Technical Difficulties

We just want to let our user community know that CORE is experiencing technical difficulties this morning. Our technical team is working on it right now and we hope to have it up again asap. 

We will tweet @core4learning and will post a message here as soon as it is up again.

Thanks for your patience!

CORE is Back Online - Check it Out!

Great news! The technical difficulties that CORE was experiencing have been fully resolved. Thanks for your patience. Check out the wealth of digital learning resources at www.albertacore.ca

CORE Technical Difficulties

CORE has been experiencing technical difficulties preventing some users from accessing it. We hope to have the issue resolved as soon as possible. 

Please stay tuned here on the CORE blog or Twitter @core4learning for updates. 

Thanks for your patience!

Health and Wellness Resources

Students who are both physically and mentally healthy are better able to learn. A comprehensive approach to building a healthy school community is a positive and proactive way to promote health and wellness. To support schools in building healthy communities, a collection of resources to support "Comprehensive School Health" can now be found in CORE (http://albertacore.ca) by searching for the appropriate topic including (use quotation marks to find the exact phrase):  

• Comprehensive School Health
• Physical Activity, Physical Literacy
• DPA
• Healthy Eating
• Healthy Relationships, Positive Social Environments
• Positive Mental Health

Digital Citizenship Resources available for CBE Users

If you are working on your schools DC Plan and are part of the CBE, we have GREAT news for you: MediaSmarts' Digital Citizenship resources are now available again in CORE for all CBE users!

LearnAlberta stopped licensing MyWorld and Passport to the Internet back in June, so the CBE has negotiated a license for these resources and put them back into CORE.  In addition we have obtained a license for a new collection of Professional Development presentations from MediaSmarts called the Web Awareness Workshop Series. The series deals with everything from online safety to advertising on the internet and cyber-bullying. Be sure to check it out and spread the word! http://delivr.com/2nzs8

From Now Until December 17 - Show Your CORE And You Could Win!

The CORE teams at PHRD, RVS, GHRD, FFCA, CBE, and ADLC are joining forces to bring you a fun winter contest! Get involved and you could win prizes. All you have to do is show your CORE.

It’s simple! Here’s how it works:

Between now and Wednesday, Dec 17, 2014, select one or more of the following ways to Show Your CORE. For each way that you share, we’ll add your name to the draw for a prize!

• Log in to CORE and explore at least 2 resources 
• Leave a constructive comment and rating on a CORE resource 
• Tweet a comment, question, user tip, photo, or the CORE URL of a resource you are using to us @core4learning using the hashtag #showyourcore 
• Email a: photo of you using CORE, 20-word story, comment, or question to corecontest1@gmail.com 
• BONUS: Contribute a resource to CORE - a website or self-created resource, and receive two entries for your contribution! 

The Fine Print - It’s in regular sized font because it’s THIS IMPORTANT!

Please ensure that you follow your school district’s privacy policies when using Twitter, email, and posting photos. Do not Tweet or email a photo of a student unless you have the proper release form. (You can, however, photograph the back of a student’s head.)

Please be aware that any photos, words, or items that you email or Tweet to us may be used by the CORE team to share your brilliance in other ways, including on social media, via our CORE blog, and on Twitter.

Looking forward to seeing how you show your CORE!

Best wishes from the CORE Team: Salima, Shelley, Greg, Tammy, Cheryl, Nancy, Christine, Alex, Tannis, Arthur, Laurel, Jeff, Sue & Stephanie

CORE (Collaborative Online Resource Environment)

This fall we have an exciting new online resource that is available to all of our teachers in PHRD.

CORE is a resource repository that takes a lot of the resources many of us have already been using, and puts them together in one place.  No longer do I need to go to Learn Alberta and then Discovery Education and then 2Learn and do three separate searches to find learning resources.  CORE lets me run one search and find resources from all of these difference sources.   It brings all of my favourite resources together in one spot.  I can search Discovery Education, Learn Alberta, CBC Resources, MIT OpenCourseWare, Iris Resources, Pearson Resources, eTexts, Destination Imagination, and so much more!  Once I find what I’m looking for, I can save it to my favourites and it’s there for me to use in my classroom at any time.

To make it even easier to find what you are looking for, you can use the “PHRD Power Search” which lets you narrow your search parameters by subject, grade, resource format, resource provider, and language.  You can also use the “Browse by…” button to browse materials by grade, by subject and by format.  Enter your keyword, and CORE will find a wealth of information for you to look at.  Each resource comes with a brief description that will help you to decide if the resource is right for you and your students.

To get a brief overview of CORE and how you might consider using it, you can check out the video below.  It was created by CORE and CBE to help explain what CORE is and how teachers and students can make use of it.  Just click on the link below and it should take you to the video’s site in CORE.

Core 5 minute Video

Another feature of CORE is that it contains teacher made materials as well.  A bit like “Teachers pay Teachers” or “LessonPlans4Teachers.com,” CORE is a place where teachers can upload material and make it available to other teachers within the CORE community.  I can find lessons materials on a number of topics and course materials created by other teachers right here in Alberta.  For example, when I type “digital citizenship” into the search bar, I find an entire bundle of information for “Digital Citizenship Week” that was put together last year by teachers in Calgary along with the help of George Couros from Parkland School Division.  The bundle includes a recorded webinar aimed at junior high and high school students, student and teacher version of a passport to the internet, a planning template and an Ed Talk.  This material has already been used by other teachers, and it has been shared in CORE for me to use with my students.  In the future, as I develop some of my own learning materials, I will be able to upload them to CORE and share them with teachers in PHRD and in the other participating Alberta school jurisdictions.

Digital Citizenship Resources

One more way to use CORE, is as an online database.  All of the online reference center materials from Learn Alberta are available for use through CORE.  You can access Bookflix, World Book Kids,  Culturegrams, BrainPOP, Britannica School, Shakespeare in Bits, Lit2Go, Visual Dictionary Online, Art Encyclopedia, CN Images of Canada Gallery, The Atlas of Canada, Amazing Animal of the World, World Book Advanced, Visual Thesaurus, The Alberta Online Encyclopedia, CBC News in Review, Grolier Online Passport, and so much more.  It’s a great place to take your students using your SMART board and show them how to search for information.  I like to use World Book Kids when young kids are researching owls or penguins.  For older kids, you can get “Coles notes” type study guides and animated version of “Hamlet” through Shakespeare in Bits, and the CN Images of Canada Gallery would be great for Grade 7 or Grade 5 Social.   Eventually, the plan is to make CORE accessible to our students as well.  When this happens, you can set up a link to Grolier Online for your students to use when they need to do some research in class.  It’s great for younger kids who can get lost trying to do a Google search.

Online Databases

If you haven’t already had a chance to check out CORE, you might want to take a few minutes to run a search or two and see what you can find.  Just go to alberta.core.ca and login.   

Tammy Tkachuk

Collaborative Lead Teacher

Pembina Hills Regional School Division

Welcome to Your Destination for Learning Resources

This school year, we are excited to have six school districts using CORE to access, share, and comment using dynamic digital learning resources! Every student, teacher, and staff member in our CORE districts has the unique opportunity to explore and participate in the CORE learning community.

• Immediate access. You have anywhere, anytime use of 160,000+ educational videos, websites, images, podcasts, games, articles, simulations, experiments, lesson plans, and more.
• Comment and rate. Let your voice guide others in the CORE community by leaving comments and feedback on the many resources available. Tell the community how you used a resource, or how it could be improved.
• Contribute and share. Share the most valuable resources with your fellow colleagues and students. Contribute resources so that they can be searched, shared, and managed from one easy-to-find online location. (This feature is still being rolled out in specific school districts.)

3 Ways to Get Started

1. Try this 2-pager of 2-minute intro activities and get to know the CORE features including: saving favourites, searching, commenting, and rating resources.
2. Check out our 5-minute overview video and our 5-minute features demo to get an introduction to what CORE is all about.
3. Dive right in and explore! All students and staff can log in with your regular school district username and password at albertacore.ca and take a look around. Try the Power Search button out and start exploring resources!

Wishing all our CORE partners a great school year!

Upcoming CORE Professional Learning & Networking Events

The best professional learning opportunities include three key elements:

1. Time
2. Collaborative space
3. Opportunities to experiment and learn with colleagues

So we're providing you with opportunities that include all of these elements. Check out our upcoming events!

Moderating Student Contributions in CORE - Webinars & Face to Face Events

The student contribution feature will soon be turned on in CORE across the CBE. Contributing to CORE provides an authentic audience for students to share found resources such as videos and websites, gather feedback on work in progress, remix, share, and publish their work in a safe environment.

Each CBE school has designated someone in their building who can act as a the moderator of student contributions. The moderation process is simple and fast. These sessions are for anyone in a school building who may be the moderator of student contributions. We will run through the 2-minute moderation process and show you how to easily transfer moderation duties to any member of your school community. In the face to face sessions, we will also explore how sharing, remixing, and connecting through digital resources can support professional networks and student learning.

• Webinars - Three 30-minute live sessions - Monday, April 28th, at 12:30 pm, and Thursday, May 1st at 12:00 pm, and 4:00 pm. Register now. Link to Join
• Face to Face - Two face to face sessions on Wednesday, May 7th, from 4:30 - 6:00 pm at Samuel W. Shaw School,  and Tuesday, May 13th 4:30 - 6:00 pm at Robert Thirsk High School. Register now. *Please bring your own device.
• Self-service - always available, includes instructions (video & PDF), FAQs, moderation checklist and more in this CORE Bundle. Additional resources are available by logging in to CORE > Guide to CORE > Guide for Contributors

CORE Input Advisory (CIA) Team - Face to Face Event

Are you a teacher in CBE, CCSD, RVS, GHSD or CRPS? Are you interested in using digital resources with students and sharing the best digital content to build your PLN? Want to provide input that will help to shape CORE, an innovative edtech prototype? We are inviting all educators in CORE’s participating districts to join the CIA (CORE Input Advisory) Team. CIA events are opportunities to:

• Chat and experiment with fellow educators
• Pick the brains of the CORE implementation team
• Explore digital resource trends, crowdsourcing, and user feedback for learning
• Learn through creating and sharing content

Our next event:

When: Wednesday May 14, 2014 from 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Where: Nickle Junior High School, 2500 Lake Bonavista Dr. SE, 2nd Floor Learning Commons
Who: Educators in CBE, CCSD, RVS, GHSD, and CRPS are welcome! Snacks will be provided.
RSVP here for this free opportunity. *Please bring your own device.

If you can’t make it to an event, watch for resource posts and future events in different locations around the city via Twitter @core4learning and here on the CORE blog.

Questions? Tweet us or email Stephanie at sdchan@cbe.ab.ca.