Originally created at the University at Buffalo, NYLearns.org was developed in response to the profound need to assist teachers in understanding and applying a standards-based approach to teaching and learning – and in response to the need to deliver resources to teachers in ways that make the learning standards meaningful and manageable. NYLearns also owes its genesis to the need to bring focused and relevant educational resources to parents and children in an “anytime-anywhere” learning environment.
The overarching thrust of NYLearns is to identify, organize and deliver educational resources that are aligned to learning standards. A second major thrust of NYLearns is to provide teachers with easy-to-use integrated classroom tools that enhance their teaching effectiveness.
NYLearns.org currently provides:
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Access to all NYS Learning Standards, including the Alternate Standards, that are searchable by standard, performance indicator (PI), grade level, subject area, or keyword;
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Access to thousands educational resources and instructional content developed by master teachers and content providers. The content is searchable by keyword or by “drilling down” the standards tree to the performance indicators of the New York State (NYS) Learning Standards;
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Resources are aligned to the NYS standard down to the performance indicator level and have been peer-reviewed using the peer-review protocol established by the NYS Academy for Teaching and Learning (NYSATL);
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Access to NYLearns’ state-of-the-art tools for teachers;
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Access to NYLearns’ admin tool that allows identified district users to access the admin portion of the Curriculum Matrix Tool as well as the User Enrollment Tool. The User Enrollment Tool is used to create teacher accounts and assigning user names and passwords by trainers as they conduct turn-key training of teachers from each building;
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Access to NYLearns’ Featured Content and the Featured Content Archive;
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Updates on all new tools and revisions to NYLearns.org.
Every resource has been aligned to the NYS standard down to the performance indicator level and has been peer-reviewed using the peer-review protocol established by the NYS Academy for Teaching and Learning (NYSATL).
State-of-the-art tools for teachers
ePortfolio - a tool to organize all digital resources for curriculum and instruction that provides anywhere/anytime access from home or school;
Teacher Website Builder – a “point and click” web page builder that easily allows teachers to create their own web pages to enhance communication between school and home;
Curriculum Matrix - allows administrators to develop and maintain district curriculum maps while assisting teachers in accessing and using specific curricula. Additionally, it allows teachers to create personalized instructional maps based on their own pedagogical approach and share those maps with other teachers and/or administrators;
NYS Assessment Builder - allows teachers to produce customized assessments using questions from past New York State Assessments including Regents exams;
Content Publishing Tool - allows teachers to become instructional leaders by creating and publishing their best work in NYLearns.org and, hence, to all other NYLearns.org users.
Services Included in the Annual Subscription
NYLearns Accounts
Every teacher and administrator within the partnering district will receive a NYLearns account with a unique username and password to the registered environment. Within their accounts, teachers will have full access to all of the tools in the registered environment.
Help Desk
It is essential that classroom teachers be supported in their time of need. The Help Desk provides support via a toll-free phone number as well as online support. Activities include, but are not limited to: helping to create accounts, account support such as forgot password, or answering “How do I…” type questions. Most importantly, the help desk personnel track issues and report errors to the technical team. The help desk personnel serve as a liaison between users and the NYLearns team, by organizing and disseminating comments and feedback.
Content Management – Curriculum and Instruction Specialists
Content Management is a critical component of the NYLearns project. Although the project empowers each user as a potential “content provider,” there is, nevertheless, the need for full-time curriculum and instructional specialists on this project. These qualified individuals are responsible for “content management” including quality control, peer review, as well as playing a role as a liaison to publishing initiatives within participating school districts, cultural and government agencies, and/or institutions of higher education. Support staff within content management includes low-level, yet critical, duties such as fixing broken hyperlinks both internally and externally within NYLearns.
Centralized Web Hosting
Centralized Web Hosting allows participating educators to have access to NYLearns, their individual ePortfolios and websites from any computer with an Internet connection. In addition, each user is provided up to 40 MB of storage for the portfolio and website. Additional storage capacity is available upon request at no additional charge to the partnering district.
Technical Maintenance
The NYLearns technical team consists of application developers, graphic designers, and database managers. They are involved in ongoing maintenance, development, enhancements, and modifications to NYLearns so that the project continues to thrive and grow. Much of this work is based on user feedback and direction given by the project manager and the NYLearns team.