ERAC Update - September 2012

Deadlines

• Microsoft/Academic Select – September 30, 2012
• Scholastic Short-term offer on Expert Space and BookFlix – September 30, 2012

New For You

Amazing Savings on Adobe Creative Suite

ERAC has established a major new agreement with Adobe providing significant savings for members! With a 3-year license and annual true-ups, you won't want to miss purchasing the Adobe Creative Suite Design and Web Premium Bundle. There are also some optional add-on products. Take a look at the Adobe EA Agreement for all the details and sign in for confidential ERAC member info. Direct any questions on this agreement to info@bcerac.ca.

Made the Grade

Check out ERAC's Online Resource Collection to find out what's new. Click on the titles to go to the evaluation. Log in and see the full product review from your peers!

Title	Vendor	Grades/Subject Areas/Annotation
myBlueprint Education Planner	myBlueprint.ca	Health and Career Education grades 8 to 10, Work Experience 12 and Graduation Transitions. myBlueprint Educational Planner is a comprehensive, interactive graduation planning resource. Through a grade-specific interest survey, students learn about career and post-secondary options, and are able to plan for which courses they will take in high school to meet career and post-secondary goals. There are also sections on goal setting, writing resumes, and preparing cover letters.
Reading A-Z	Reading A-Z	English Language Arts, Health and Career Education, Science, Social Studies, Arts Education and more. Reading A-Z presents reading material, both fiction and non-fiction, in colourful and engaging digital eBook format, along with assessment and support material. The stories cover a wide variety of topics of interest to boys and girls at the elementary level. The books are organized into 27 levels with materials suitable for emergent readers to proficient readers. Assessment tools are provided. This is an intuitive, easy-to-use teacher-based reading resource that allows choice in gaining appropriate leveled reading material for students.
Raz-Kids	Learning A-Z	English Language Arts, Health and Career Education, Science, Social Studies, Arts Education and more. Raz-Kids is an engaging and attractive reading resource for students, from emergent to proficient readers. The resource presents reading materials, both fiction and non-fiction, in a colourful and engaging digital format, with online quizzes, assessment, and support materials.
PebbleGo	EDU Reference Publishers Direct Inc.	Science and English Language Arts, Pre-K to grade 4. PebbleGo is an interactive resource database suitable for students in Pre-K to grade 4. The resource provides extensive information on animals, Earth, and space, and is easily used by young students to research basic scientific information. The information is presented at a very easy-to-read level that facilitates both age appropriate and language appropriate learning opportunities. The database is presented in an engaging way with text, images, videos, and read aloud text. Students would willingly use this resource for cross-curricular integration with literacy activities.
Universalis Junior French Online Reference Centre	EDU Reference Publishers Direct Inc.	Arts Education - grades 6-7, French as a Second Language - grades 11-12, Science - grades 5-9, Social Studies - grades 5-9, Français langue première - grades 3-7, Français langue seconde - immersion - grades 6-9, Français – immersion tardive - grade 7 Universalis Junior French Online Reference Centre is an easy-to-use, general purpose French language encyclopedia that is useful for researching commonly studied social studies and science topics in French. Many articles are enhanced with additional media, such as pictures, timelines, sound files, maps, and video clips, and are useful for a number of PLOs. Navigation is intuitive, articles are cleanly presented with accompanying media in a sidebar.

Apps for You

Numerous FREE apps are available to teachers, evaluated by teachers, through the ERAC Commons in the Mobile Apps Collection. Orbits HD allows users to develop their understanding of how our solar system works. This app also allows the user to change several variables within our solar system. One app that helps make Algebra more interesting is Algebra Explained. With entertaining video lessons, plus study cards, electronic scratch paper and more, this app is worth checking out. Don't forget to leave your own ratings and comments in the Apps collection. Help make this a rich resource for teachers!

Dollars and Sense

BC Digital Classroom – More Bang for Your Buck

Building your digital classroom requires excellent digital resources and that's what we've created for you in our new BC Digital Classroom suite. With lots of Canadian content, thousands of videos/clips and extensive databases, you'll be moving ahead quickly, providing your students with access to tools and content they need. The value of this deal brings you a suite of digital resources that could not be afforded if schools were purchasing them alone.

Spending and Saving Together

One of the greatest benefits of ERAC membership is the unparalleled savings members receive through ERAC's aggregate purchasing power. Several supplier deals have been established through new agreements this year and the savings are tremendous. We are just completing another new agreement with Adobe which will also provide significant savings. Collectively, ERAC members in 2011-2012 have spent $6,042,436 and saved a whopping total of $8,646,767. Superintendents, Secretary/Treasurers, and District Contacts will be receiving your district's individual Spend/Save report during the next week.

ERAC in the Classroom

Need Ideas for the Classroom?

Check out the ERAC Commons and look at over 300 teacher evaluated Apps that support the BC curriculum. For integrating ERAC resources, check out ERAC4U for ideas!

Access Learning Provides Fun Resources for 21st Century Learners

When we ask children where they want to go for a holiday, we almost always hear "Disneyland!". Disney is popular whether it's a destination or a video. Now, through ERAC's new digital bundle (part of the BC Digital Classroom suite), Disney Educational video series can be viewed through our partnered distributor, Access Learning. The Disney series is just a small portion of the 3800 full length titles and 20,000 video learning segments offered which many schools are already enjoying.

"Since subscribing to Access Learning, teaching with video content has never been easier," explains MaryElise, a teacher librarian in Vancouver. "Having access to over 3600 full length educational resources at your fingertips is vital, especially for those 'teachable moments' that often arise in a 21st century classroom!"

Access Learning (a supplier that ERAC districts work through) provides a variety of high quality educational resources that is correlated to match K-12 provincial curriculum and is amalgamated under Magic Lantern Media, a leading Canadian multi-media company.

"We offer many key learning resources such as Canadian Geographic Kids, Daily Planet clips, 4 Real School and Discovery Canada/Exploration Productions," explains Vanda Coles, Manager of e-Learning Sales for Distribution Access, parent company of Access Learning. "Bill Nye the Science Guy is Disney Educational Productions most popular science series and uses interactive and fun learning tools that help bring the excitement of science into your classroom."

Excitement, interactive and fun, are some of the terms that come to mind when using the resources through Access Learning. For instance, '4 Real School' is used in Geography and Planning for Grades 9-12 discussing global and local issues, impressing on students the positive ways they can contribute to their community.

Teachers can also create and share their own bookmarks through a variety of communication methods including email, Facebook, Twitter and Google. Approximately 30 percent of the titles also include helpful, easy to use teacher guides.

As a Canadian distributor, Access Learning has their hands on the pulse of Canadian educational needs, and offer 33 percent Canadian content. "Canadian Geographic Presents is a series offered in English and French for grades 7 to 12," notes Vanda. "The programs are filmed in cities, towns and other locations across Canada, featuring local students, and provide an "on-location" experience for the classroom."

Access Learning has recently added another great resource "Jobs People Do.com" a career planning website, which includes lesson plans supporting Personal Planning 10 and Grad Transitions. For more information about the specific resources offered, check out ERAC's Access Learning Agreement. Or read the press release in Distribution Access News.

Copyright Matters

As digital resources become more available, the question of copyright comes up more often. For instance if a famous BC artist donated a painting for display in a school cafeteria, would they be able to photograph the painting and then make copies of the photo for students? What about storing the image on the teacher's home computer or having it modified to use on school stationery? If you can't answer these questions with full confidence, you may want to take a look at ERAC's Copyright course. Watch for upcoming case studies in the October newsletter!

In the Works:

Planning for District Contacts Meeting Underway

ERAC's District Contacts meeting is scheduled for October 25-26, 2012 and will be held again at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel. With presentations on copyright, privacy laws and some product show and tell (just to name a few), you won't want to miss it. To reserve a room at the group rate of $159/night, make sure to book by September 24th. Details are in this survey, which must also be completed to confirm your attendance.

Did You Know?

IT4K12 – Reconnecting With Your Colleagues

Post conference information on the past IT4K12 event has been uploaded to our website. Check out photos, get a list of prize winners, or obtain the email list of your colleagues as well as sponsors by going to the IT4K12 event page.

Usage Rising on Global Issues in Context

As part of the database bundle in the BC Digital Classroom suite, Gale product "Global Issues in Context" has had a positive growth in usage over the past couple of school years. Looking at the graph, the red bar represents usage in the school year to April 2012 compared to the blue bars for the same period in the previous school year. There are 3 different ways to measure usage, 1. Sessions, 2. Searches, 3. Retrievals. All of these are up significantly. Sessions by 38%, searches by 57% and retrievals by 42% (over the 2010-11 period). Keep up the great work!

EBSCO has a New Interface

EBSCO's new interface is much more accessible and cleaner now and there is availability of several new features. From a brand new mobile version of EBSCOhost for all users, to facets for EDS users, check it all out at EBSCO Support.