Literacy, Technology and Learning

Research and Early Education

Introduce research skills early Research can be intimidating if it’s not introduced progressively using age-appropriate tools. PebbleGo makes research accessible to the early learner with: Thorough and varied topic areas Expert leveled text Professional narration An interface that inspires the imagination Introducing research early in a child’s education emphasizes the value of research for your students. PebbleGo allows you to reinforce research skills and standards in manageable, student-friendly bites. Information finding (navigation & search) Citation Supplemental resources and text features

PebbleGo offers thorough and varied topic areas that cover standard-based areas as well as interest-driven topics Standards-based topics Science, Social Studies and Biographies address national and state standards Interest-driven topics Animals and Dinosaurs focus on common areas of student curiosity and inquiry. Spanish Language Animales, the Spanish animals module provides language learning opportunities for ELL and English speaking students.

Content Accessibility Text in PebbleGo is expertly leveled to be accessible to K-2 students. Expert leveled text PebbleGo content is accessible for a wide spectrum of students All articles are professionally narrated at a child-friendly cadence. Human narration models pronunciation and prosody. Professionally narrated Narration is paired with word-by-word highlighting to give beginning readers support in learning to read. Word-by-word highlighting Articles feature audio recorded glossary terms, titles and subtitles along with photo and video captions to provide added structure for beginning readers. Text Features

Child-Friendly User Interface Designed to engage the student’s interest and inspire their imagination PebbleGo is designed with pedagogical goals in mind Image-heavy content with tight text-image pairing Images are relatively equal in visual prominence to text in order to engage students. Tight text-to-image pairing provides beginning and struggling readers with alternate routes to meaning. Animation, Color & Illustrations Engaging colors and illustrations along with playful animation of interface elements inspires the imagination and drives heightened engagement in the research experience.

Seeking and finding information Teaching navigation and search skills PebbleGo showcases web-standard navigation interface with a focus on images, allowing pre- and beginning readers to easily find articles. Navigation Prominent search functionality allows students to seek and find articles in the most common method in modern research. Search Throughout the database, students can easily locate themselves in the information hierarchy using an image-based breadcrumb. Breadcrumbs Note, this slide is VERY SIMILAR to a slide in the PebbleGo Next section (slide 16). We don’t recommend you present both slides in the same presentation.

The role of the school library media specialist is one of informed facilitator. It is important for librarians to become aware of information overload and the ways in which students experience it. - School Library Media Research Journal, Akin, 1998 PebbleGo’s content maps are carefully curated to ensure that content is available on nearly any topic, but that students are at ease in their early research experience and are not overwhelmed by article choices. 8

Educator Tools PebbleGo provides a variety of tools to help educators use the database in class and at home Lesson Plans Each module contains multiple lesson plans using PebbleGo to aid teachers in guiding students to explore the topic area Activities and reproducibles One or more activities for each article Database reproducibles such as puzzles and games Games An additional layer of engagement for students Communication resources Bookmarks School-to home letter Librarian to teacher letter Robust school or district usage data to see how students and teachers are utilizing PebbleGo. Note, this slide is VERY SIMILAR to a slide in the PebbleGo Next section (slide 17). We don’t recommend you present both slides in the same presentation.