Create and Share Collections of Educational Resources from the Smithsonian Museums

Richard Byrne:  Free Technology 4 Teachers

The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a a fantastic tool for organizing the thousands of digital resources available through the various Smithsonian museums. The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans.

To create a collection in the Smithsonian Learning Lab you can browse for resources, search by entering a topic, browse trending topics, or explore collections published by other users. Once you have found a resource you can favorite it and add it to a collection of your own. You can develop as many collections as you like. In addition to saving resources already online, you can upload your own resources to add to your Smithsonian Learning Lab collections.

Applications for Education
The Smithsonian Learning Lab's collections feature on its own is great, but the collections are better when you can share them with others. In the Smithsonian Learning Lab you can create a classroom. Students join your classroom by entering the password that you choose for your classroom. Once students have joined your classroom you can share resources with them. You can also distribute assignments to students through your Smithsonian Learning Lab classroom.