This short guide to accessibility in OER provides links to sites that maintain up-to-date guides, tips, directions, and helpful tools for creating accessible materials.

This article discusses the four forms of identifying similarities and differences: comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies and how these strategies can be used in an elementary classroom.

In this multi-day activity, students explore environments, ecosystems, energy flow and organism interactions by creating a scale model biodome, following the steps of the engineering design process. The Procedure section provides activity instructions for Biodomes unit, lessons 2-6, as students work through Parts 1-6 to develop their model biodome. Subjects include energy flow and food chains, basic needs of plants and animals, and the importance of decomposers. Students consider why a solid understanding of one's environment and the interdependence of an ecosystem can inform the choices we make and the way we engineer our own communities. This activity can be conducted as either a very structured or open-ended design.

This screencast covers your initial input of a resource into the Open Author online editor.  Parts II (https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/433) and III (https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/4207/overview )cover the process of publishing, including adding metadata.

This screencast goes over how to add metadata to your resource before you publish it on #GoOpenVA.  There are many choices you have to make and you may want to look over the choices ahead of time.  See the Metadata Planning Document: https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/413/overview This is Part II of 3 videos that help you learn how to use Open Author to add resources on #GoOpenVA.  Part I is here https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/431/overview and Part III is here https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/4207/overview 

This screencast describes adding metadata, most particularly VA SOL correlations, to your resource before you publish it on #GoOpenVA.   This is Part III of 3 videos that help you learn how to use Open Author to add resources on #GoOpenVA.  Part I is here https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/431/overview and Part II is here https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/433/overview

This screencast demonstrates the process for editing resources that you have started or even published on #GoOpenVA. The video is slightly less than 2 minutes.

This document lists all of the metadata (desriptive information) choices that you can use when PUBLISHING an Open Author resource on #GoOpenVA.  It is a helpful reference for those new to publishing resources and can ehlp you plan ahead before you get online to add the resource.  A printable Word document is added.

As students learn about the creation of biodomes, they are introduced to the steps of the engineering design process, including guidelines for brainstorming. Students learn how engineers are involved in the design and construction of biodomes and use brainstorming to come up with ideas for possible biodome designs. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in which students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process, to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems.

This video is part of the Learn and Grow with WHRO TV series. Watch Amanda Knighton teach about creating and analyzing pictographs.

This article provides an overview of podcasts and suggestions for using podcasts in the elementary classroom.

These are the rules and notes all Creators should read before getting started!

This lesson plan is intended to guide teachers on how to direct second grade students to create strong passwords that will help protect privacy of information.   

This document provides explanations and instructions (with screenshots) for using the various functions on the Open Author editor toolbar.  A downloadable Word document is also included.