Alaska Bush Library Service

Today I finished some online lesson for students in fourth-sixth grade on how to use the Alaska Statewide Databases. The first lesson was to introduce the students to magazines and have them answer the questions about why they would want to learn from magazines. The second lesson was on one of the specific databases. This lesson went well, you could tell that I was more familiar with the lesson building software.

The students were told at the beginning that this project had been done as a project for a class for me. The only improvement comments they had for me was to add pictures to the first lesson and one spelling error to fix. I think the students enjoyed critiquing my work.

I enjoyed learning a new software program/language. The online modules are writen in XML language. Somewhat like HTML, but not really. The program that I used was Connexions. Connexions is a non-profit start-up launched at Rice University in 1999 that aims to reinvent how we write, edit, publish, and use textbooks and other learning materials. While it was a rough couple of days to get my brain around the program I think this will be a great format to provide lessons for anyone in my district or Alaska.

Connexions is an open source software program that allows people to write these modules.  You can work in groups.  The material is licensed under Creative Commons license so anyone can share the work and make the modules better.