Last Wednesday, we had our second monthly PD day. We spent the day at the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab exploring how to create virtual collections of the Smithsonian’s digitized holdings which include photos, videos, animations, digital interactives, and more. You can also add your own resources such as documents and outside websites to any collection you create. The website is well designed, and it’s easy to navigate the resources and organize them into collections that match a theme, unit, or class. There are also existing collections that you can use, as is, or copy and modify based on your own needs. Check out all of the collections here, and the science-themed collections here.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• Identifying Bird Beak Types through Robert Ridgway's Drawings

• A large Climate-Change related collection

• Nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands

• Ocean Biodiversity

We started the day by learning the organization of the website, and got a chance to talk talked with some folks who create the digital content and run the website. Part of that involved checking out some of the VR resources and games with Oculus Rift and Google VR headsets! In the afternoon, we had some time to create our own collections which will be shared later on this year. I started a collection that deals with nuclear chemistry, Hanford, and the history of nuclear testing. It fits in well with the unit I helped write and which I shared at OSTA (see this prior post).

It’s great to have these opportunities to learn about new resources and the time to collaborate and dream about how they can be used in the classroom. Being an Einstein Fellow is pretty great. :)

Check out of of our photos from the day. As always, click for captions and more info.