Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 15.1
An example of an Instructional Architect project about Weather for grade 3 with an
overlay of the online resource linked to from the project
1.
Browse.
Currently, the IA has over 3,824 IA projects made publicly available by
teacher users. Users can access IA projects by performing keyword searches or
by browsing these IA projects by subject area, grade level, author's last name, or
title.
2.
Register.
Users can create a free account, which provides them secure access to
their saved resources and IA projects.
3.
Login.
After the end user logs in, the IA offers three major usage modes. First,
with the “
My Resources
” tool, users can search for and select online resources
available in the NSDL or anywhere on the Web.
Second, with the “
My Projects
” tool, they can create Web pages in which they
sequence and annotate their selected resources in order to create learning activities
(called “IA projects”).
Finally, users can share their IA projects by
Publishing
them and setting per-
missions on them, such as (a)
user-only
view, (b) users and their students (
student
view), or (c)
public
view (anyone browsing the IA site). Users can also add basic
metadata about their IA projects, including subject area, grade level, and core cur-
riculum standard. These are then used to support browse and search of existing IA
projects, as described above.
The design, development, and evaluation of the IA has been ongoing since
2002. From 2002 to June 2009, over 4,000 users have registered, 8,500 projects
have been created, and 37,000 external online resources have been added to
the database. Since mid-2006, IA projects have been viewed over 565,000
times.
