Teacher's Tools - Create a Class Activity

3. Create a Class Activity

Once a collection of resources related to the planned activity have been cataloged, an activity can be created. The option labeled Activities on the left-hand menu of the main Teacher’s Tools menu permits construction of an activity.

A Digital Storyteller activity consists of a series of resources associated with that activity. A teacher who plans an activity in the library will often pull together a collection of books and resources the day before. These resources can be placed on the table where the students will work. This allows students to productively focus on a selected subset of the library’s collection, rather than attempting to search all the holdings of the library in a limited amount of time.

The activity is given a title. In this instance, the title of the activity will be:

Title: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Once the title is entered, the New Activity button can be selected. This option assigns a unique activity number to the activity. (In this instance, the Activity Number for The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere is 111.)

Teachers can choose to display only the resources that they have. They can also constrain the resources displayed to only those associated with trusted partners (i.e., educational web sites known to be stable) or a given time or era. All of the available resources appear in the top window of the Activity Tool.

The “Add to Activity” button beneath this window shifts the resource to a second window labeled “My Resources.” In this instance, the second window will display only those resources that will be used to illustrate The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

There is also a window for construction of Startup Page instructions. These instructions provide directions for students that appear when they first log in.

Once the resources that will be used for a given activity have been selected, and startup instructions have been created, the activity can be saved by selecting the Save button in the upper right-hand corner of the window.

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