Archives: We're working on it

Part 2 of our digital textbook for North Carolina history is scheduled to be published on August 22. Called Grand visions, rough realities: The development of colonial North Carolina, it will contain 67 pages of primary sources and background reading, plus guides for using the kinds of primary sources provided. Also included in this module are interactive maps built on Google maps technology, video animations, “zoomable” maps and illustrations, and at least 200 other photographs, paintings, illustrations, and maps.

If you are planning to use the digital textbook in your classroom and would like a preview before the 22d, please contact us and we’ll be happy to send you a temporary guest login and the double-secret URL.

Part 1, Two worlds: Prehistory, contact, and the Lost Colony, is already available and includes an educator’s guide with lesson plans. Part 3, on the Revolutionary period, will be published this fall — we hope, in time for eighth-grade teachers to use the resources when they get to that part of the curriculum. We’re also working on lesson plans and a full educator’s guide for the colonial period.

LEARN NC is making some major changes to its website this month! We’ve been working on the new layout and design for several months, and the new site will go live Friday, June 20.

Why are we making the changes?

We’ve been developing a great deal of content lately that simply didn’t fit well into the current site. It’s hard to find, and as a result, teachers aren’t easily able to use it.

How did we decide what changes to make?

A combination of usability tests, website usage data, user feedback, and informal conversations with teachers told us what teachers use and don’t use and what they like and don’t like.

What new features will be added?

The search tool will be streamlined and easier to use, and the navigation has been simplified. We’ve also tried to make our original published content for teachers and students — lesson plans, student activities, best practices, multimedia, even help — more easily accessible and usable. We’re also providing a full catalog of our online courses. Finally, the new site will be easier for us to maintain — which means we can spend more time developing and publishing new resources for North Carolina’s classrooms.

Are any features going away?

“LEARN NC for Students” will no longer exist in its present form. We found that this part of the site didn’t get nearly as much use as other parts, and we want to focus our energies on serving our core audience — teachers. The “Hot Topics” pages for each grade level will still be available, though, and a single section of the new website will house “Learning Materials,” resources you can use with students or that students can use on their own.

Whenever we watch teachers use the LEARN NC website — at workshops or in formal usability studies — we find that our search tool confuses them because it doesn’t work like Google’s (or like almost any other search tool on the web). While Google looks for sites matching all the words in your search query, ours matches any of the words you type — which can result in a lot of irrelevant search results.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve fixed this problem: Our search now matches all of the words you search for, so that a search for “English language learners” doesn’t find every page of our website with the word “learners” in it. The top hits will usually be the same as before, and so while this is a fairly drastic change to the functionality of our website, you may not actually notice a difference. But if you do notice, we think you’ll see an improvement.

As always, please tell us what you think! Leave a comment here, or drop us a line.