The Smithsonian Learning Lab provides an online toolkit for teachers to discover Smithsonian’s digital resources and create personalized learning experiences for themselves and others.
Educators can visually explore more than 2 million resources from across the Smithsonian, so it’s easy to find something of interest. The website’s tools enable users to easily organize and customize the resources to make them their own.
As teachers share their work with others – whether it’s one person, an entire classroom, or the world – the Learning Lab becomes an ever-richer source of knowledge and ideas and a more collaborative community.
Here are six reasons teachers love using the Smithsonian Learning Lab!
1. Bring millions of Smithsonian resources to your students.
Teachers can help students engage in deep examination of an image by using image annotation. Describe details and highlight notable information from your lesson.
Minimize resource information to just what your students need to know by adding an item to your collection, selecting the information panel, and clicking the description to edit to your liking.
The Hotspot Tool allows you to pinpoint areas on an image or document and provide further information.
2. Digital resources from across Smithsonian in a variety of media formats.
There are now over 2 million digitized resources with new ones being added constantly, including 3D scans which are available for download. Read more about Smithsonian digitalization efforts.
No one is limited to only Smithsonian resources. You can also add resources from your own website, a YouTube video, or any document into your collection for student review.
Check out this 3D replica of Abraham Lincoln.
3. Bring collections to where your students are.
Likewise, instructors can find items from the Smithsonian collection and embed them where learners already like to connect, be that a class website, Google Classroom, Moodle, or other tools.
Embed codes are easily found in the options of the Share button.
This is a collection about the Apollo 11 crew:
4. Teachers build collections, share resources and expand the Learning Lab.
There are a wealth of resources and activities to introduce students of all ages to the Smithsonian Learning Lab, including over 1,400 collections shared by users and the Smithsonian Staff.
5. Adapting collections for instructor needs is easy.
Using another teacher’s resources for your own is great, but adaptation is even better! If you like a collection another instructor has created, but want to add items such as a quiz, that’s no problem. You can also update the language used to better speak to your own students.
6. Test Subject-area knowledge and encourage critical thinking.
Assignments and quizzes are a great way to track student engagement with the content you’ve created.
For more detailed information on getting started with the Learning Lab, click here.
Don’t wait, explore the Smithsonian Learning Lab today!
Interested in how Navigation North helped develop this educational technology tool?
