REMOTE LEARNING RESOURCES

In the midst of the COVID-19/novel Coronavirus pandemic schools are closing temporarily or are extending breaks. Some are going “online” when it’s feasible, others are using a combination of digital learning and sending home books and work packets so the learning can continue remotely. World View has compiled a list of resources to support educators through this challenging time. We will update it when possible.

 

CURRICULUM RESOURCES AND MORE

The Pulitzer Center

Resources from the Pulitzer Center include free printable, student-facing lessons and activities as well as virtual journalist visits. The Pulitzer Center also wants to hear what resources and programs would be most helpful for you. Please share how they can best support you by taking this brief survey. It should only take 2-3 minutes.

• Printable Lessons and Activities for Students: Students can now explore five of the Pulitzer Center’s most popular lessons on their own using downloadable printable PDFs.
• Free Journalist Visits: The Pulitzer Center can connect your class with a journalist, whether they are in school or at home. They can also work with you to provide customized recordings if scheduling presents a challenge. Email to set up a visit.

 

The Choices Program at Brown University

The Choices Program has a variety of free online materials that are ready to use! Access them immediately (no account or login necessary for videos or Teaching with the News lessons). 

• Video Library: The Choices Program video library contains more than 1,700 short, accessible videos featuring scholars and practitioners discussing a wide variety of topics. 

• Teaching with the News: These free lessons connect students to headlines in the news. Recent topics include global protests, Brexit, the U.S.-Iran crisis, the refugee crisis, asylum and impeachment.  

 

Discovery Education:  For U.S. schools or school systems that are not currently using Discovery Education resources, but are experiencing closures due to the Coronavirus, Discovery Education is offering free access to Discovery Education Experience through the remainder of the school year. To request access to Discovery Education Experience, principals and superintendents of affected school or school districts are encouraged to fill out the Experience Access Request form. 

 

Studies Weekly: Studies Weekly Online is now open for all teachers and students to use. Studies Weekly has extended their 30-day free trial to 90 days to help educators during this challenging time. To sign up click here. This online platform includes all student editions, Teacher Editions, lesson plans, ELA integrations and assessments. 

 

Scholastic Learn at Home: This free resource provides all students with at least 20 days’ worth of exciting learning journeys that span the content areas created by editors to keep students actively engaged in learning while school is closed. Students can access approximately three hours of meaningful learning opportunities per day, including projects based on exciting articles and stories, virtual field trips, reading and geography challenges, and more. 

 

Khan Academy: Khan Academy provides standards-aligned lessons covering kindergarten through early college math, grammar, science, history, AP® courses, SAT® preparation and more. Teachers can easily assign students an entire course—Algebra 1 or AP Biology, for example—a specific unit, or a specific skill. Teachers can also track student progress.In wake of the current situation Khan Academy has proposed daily learning schedules for grades preK-12.Template available here. Khan is also having daily (weekdays) 9am PST/12 EST live streams on Facebook and YouTube for students, parents and teachers navigating school closures.

 

Dr. Drizzle’s Shared Resources: A collection of challenges, web resources and links to films with curated curriculum.

 

Kid Lit TV: The KLTV team has created a virtual library of free read-alouds, podcasts, drawing and writing resources.

 

Additional Resources for Educators: Click to see a comprehensive list of Education Companies Offering Free Subscriptions due to school closings. 

 

Edit 03/18/2020:

The New York Times Learning Network is dedicated to helping people teach and learn with The New York Times by publishing free teaching resources based on using Times content — articles, essays, images, videos, graphics and podcasts — as teaching tools across subject areas. These resources include lessons, writing prompts, picture prompts, news quizzes, student contests, and more. With features like the daily Student Opinion question, thousands of teenagers each week join a global conversation on topics from politics to pop culture.

 

Edit 03/23/2020

The World’s Largest Lesson: Learn more about global issues and how you can incorporate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The World’s Largest Lesson offers a free online professional development course for educators and is currently contextualizing many Global Goals lesson plans to be used during remote learning. There are also comics, animated films, and more all with a Global Goals theme.

Think Indigenous: Led by veteran indigenous educators, who are volunteering their time, the Think Indigenous – Online Indigenous Education K-8 Facebook page currently offers live (and recorded) lessons for K-8 students to support learning during this challenging time. High school lessons may also be added soon. All lessons incorporate indigenous knowledge. The administrators plan is to open the virtual classrooms on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with potential assignments distributed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So far there have been math, science, art, social studies, ELA, health lessons and more in just two days of launching, all accessible through the Think Indigenous Facebook page.

UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education has created a website, Schooling at Home: Resources for Parents and Students that offers advice on keeping children academically engaged. Resources are provided by UNC faculty and other experts.

 

Edit 03/30/2020

Newsela, a source of standards-aligned curriculum content in ELA, social studies, science, SEL and more for K-12, is now offering their services and all online content for free for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year.

The area studies centers at UNC-CH & Duke have developed a comprehensive Collection of Digital Global Resources, organized by world region – Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America & Caribbean, MENA and more. 

Facing History and Ourselves has lifted the login restrictions for students to their large and diverse streaming video collection due to the massive increase in students needing access to digital content from home.

NC Symphony offers a virtual concert and materials to teachers/families to use at home. Lessons introduce composers and share fun facts about their lives and music.

 

Edit 04/06/2020

TED-Ed & TEDEd@Home offer award-winning videos and video-based lessons organized by subjects, themes, grade levels. Customize lessons by adding interactive questions, discussion topics, TED talks and more. Share lessons and track student progress.

Bringing the Outside In: Favorite Resources for Connecting to the World – education resources & activities for that may help to bring the world into your home by Global Ed Conference Network co-founder Lucy Gray.

The Choices Program announces Curriculum Award Program to provide educators with a free digital classroom set of select Middle East-focused curriculum units!

The Friday Institute and NCDPI provide webinars to support remote learning. Sessions will be run multiple times and will change week by week. Recordings of the webinars will be available. See the link above for webinar dates, times, details and registration for the week of April 6 – April 10, 2020.

 

Edit 04/13/2020

NC Zoo: Take a virtual visit! See animals in their habitat, download science lessons and nature arts and crafts activities and more.

Webinar for Students: How Kids Learn Around the World – Weds, May 6 2:00PM ET. TIME for Kids executive editor Jaime Joyce will take us to schools in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp, a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, and one on the U.S.-Mexico border. She will share children’s stories about what motivated them to journey across borders, and what their lives are like now. Open to all students, but recommended for grades 4–8.

Facing History has a new guide, Remote Book Clubs: Nurturing Community and Connection. Resources, strategies and materials for educators to prepare meaningful student book clubs!

Teaching Tolerance: Check out the resources supporting remote learning from Teaching Tolerance, including digital literacy, culturally responsive teaching, responding to Coronavirus racism and more.

 

TECHNOLOGY TOOLS AND INTERNET ACCESS

Google Education: Google recently announced that advanced Hangouts Meet features are available for free to anyone who uses G Suite around the world. This means you’ll be able to put up to 250 people on a Hangouts Meet call—an entire class or group of classes can join a lesson simultaneously. You’ll get live-streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within your domain, so that you can do a virtual school assembly or stream a lecture. Plus, you can record meetings and save them to Google Drive. When students can’t join the lesson, they’ll be able to access the content later.

 

Microsoft:  Microsoft is committed to supporting educators. They have a list of resources and tips and strategies for educators moving to remote learning. Click here to read. 

 

Adobe: Adobe has announced that it will be providing free at-home access to Creative Cloud apps to those students who usually only have access on-campus. Higher education and K-12 institutions that pay for on-campus access for their students simply need to request “temporary ‘at-home’ access” through this link. Once verified, access will be granted, free of charge, through May 31st, 2020.

 

Zoom: Zoom is temporarily lifting the 40-minute time limit on free Basic accounts for schools affected by the Coronavirus. Students or teachers who fill out an online form using their school email addresses and are then verified by Zoom will have any accounts associated with that school’s domain also gain unlimited temporary meeting minutes, according to a site set up for the process overnight. 

 

AT&T: AT&T is waiving data overage fees to all customers so that families and students can stay connected during the pandemic. The company is promising not to terminate the service of any customer over the next 60 days. All AT&T consumer home internet wireline customers, as well as Fixed Wireless Internet, can use unlimited internet data. Additionally, AT&T will continue to offer internet access for qualifying limited income households at $10 a month through the Access from AT&T program.

 

Charter Communications / Spectrum Cable:  Charter will offer free Spectrum broadband and Wi-Fi access for 60 days to households with K-12 and/or college students who do not already have a Spectrum broadband subscription and at any service level up to 100 Mbps. To enroll call 1-844-488-8395. Installation fees will be waived for new student households. Charter will continue to offer Spectrum Internet Assist, high speed broadband program to eligible low-income households delivering speeds of 30 Mbps. Charter will open its Wi-Fi hotspots across our footprint for public use. Spectrum does not have data caps or hidden fees.

 

COMCAST: Comcast announced that they will offer two months of free internet services to low-income households. Speeds will increase from 15/2 MBPS to 25/3 for all new and existing customers, and will become the speed of the service going forward. New families who connect will get 60 days of Internet service for free. Xfinity WiFi hotspots across the country will be available to anyone who needs them for free – including non-Xfinity Internet subscribers. For a map of Xfinity WiFi hotspots, visit online here.

 

VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS

Has your field trip been canceled? The following virtual opportunities are available.

• GOOGLE EARTH: Google Earth’s Education site has many Geo Tools to explore the world virtually, including Google Expeditions and Google Voyager.
• Want to learn more about China, but can’t get on a plane yet? Check out this VIRTUAL TOUR OF CHINA or THIS TOUR of the Great Wall of China! Or check out MACHU PICCHU in Peru here.
• Travel to the other side of the globe with a VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS.
• BORDERLAND: Visit the U.S.–Mexico border with NPR.
• Tour the SVALGARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT from the comfort of your couch!
• GOOGLE’S VIRTUAL ARTS & CULTURE takes you to museums, landmarks, famous sites and additional art collections spanning the globe. You can search by historic event as well.
• Want Asian art specifically? Visit the ASIAN ART EXHIBIT and take a virtual and interactive tour of the Asia Art Museum of San Francisco
• Learn more about the tragic events in Syria with this VIRTUAL TOUR created by Amnesty International or about the plight of refugees around the world with these VR VIDEOS created by Doctors Without Borders.
• TRAVELS OF ODYSSEUS: National Geographic takes you on a virtual journey as you follow the footsteps of Odysseus.
• Walk through a VIRTUAL MUSEUM created by experts at UNC to discover and learn about the archaeology of the ancient North Carolinians.
• REFRAME IRAN: Learn about Iran through this short 360 VR video that takes you into the studios of Iran’s greatest artists who were exiled during the 1979 revolution.
• Better understand the tragic events of the Chernobyl disaster and see what Chernobyl looks like today in this VIRTUAL TOUR.
• Travel with your students on Scholastic’s GLOBAL TREK, keeping a journal along the way.
• Looking for even more virtual tours? Here’s a GREAT LIST in the article Around the World in 80 Ways: Using Virtual Tours to Foster Global Citizenship.
• Travel and Leisure has a list of 12 museums that offer virtual tours. 

 

RESOURCES FOR MARCH GLOBAL CONFLICT AND PEACEBUILDING SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS

The United States Institute of Peace is a national, nonpartisan, independent institute. Founded by Congress, it is committed to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical and essential for both US and global security. The USIP works with partners in conflict zones abroad to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict. The USIP works with civil societies and government to build local capacities for managing conflict peacefully. 

The USIP offers a numbers of educator resources, including

• Peacebuilding Toolkit for Educators: The Peacebuilding Toolkit for Educators is a curriculum guide designed to help teachers incorporate the concepts and skills of international conflict management and peacebuilding into the classroom. It includes a middle school version and a high school version. 
• Lessons and Activities
• Study Guides and Simulations
• Elementary School Resources: Resources include lesson adaptations from the Peacebuilding Toolkit for Educators for upper elementary school students as well as a list of children’s books on peace. 
• Witnesses to Peacebuilding: This multimedia exhibit includes short videos which highlight individual stories of peacebuilders  from around the world. Each video has an accompanying lesson plan. 
• Curve of Conflict: The curve of conflict  helps students to visualize how conflicts typically evolve over time and how different phases of conflict are interconnected.
• Conflict Styles Assessment: Find out your conflict style by taking the Conflict Styles Assessment.

The Institute for Humane Education: Driven by the belief that the world becomes what we teach, the IHE educates people to create a world in which all humans, animals, and nature can thrive. One of the resources they offer is a digital Solutionary Guidebook to support educators in building solutionary practices for themselves and their students. The guidebook offers the rationale for educating people to be solutionaries, and then provides a 14-step process for doing so, along with case studies covering elementary through higher education. You can download the free guidebook here.

North Carolina Council on the Holocaust is an agency of the NC Department of Public Instruction. The Council provides teacher workshops and educational resources across the state. You can find more information about the Council, as well as teaching resources, survivor narratives, workshop information, and other resources by visiting by clicking here.