For nearly 20 years (The CCDMD celebrates the 20th anniversary of its founding August 2013), the Collegial Centre for Educational Materials Development (CCDMD) has produced a multitude of educational resources for teachers and students of all programs within the Quebec College network. Textbooks, websites, software, interactive exercises, PDF documents, videos, illustrations, animations, photographs - the list goes on and on, allowing the user to discover, or rediscover, the vast array of quality academic material offered by the CCDMD.
But, how do you get to find what lies within this giant toolbox for teaching? What resources are available for those teaching biology, psychology, or specialized programs such as Nursing or Police Technology for example?
To answer these questions, the CCDMD sought a way to make all the resources it produces more accessible (ie - easier to find).
We know that the video sequences from a specific website such as Hands-on Science, initially developped by and for biology and chemistry teachers might also be useful for other programs or disciplines. Another possibility is that illustrations and photographs from a textbook, like Stationary Machines: Safety First! could also be of interest to teachers of disciplines other than Furniture and Woodworking Technology and Arts and Crafts.
Teachers can spend a lot of time researching products from all disciplines to find an appropriate resource for their teaching. Fortunately, with the development of powerful research tools like Google, it is now easier to find resources using keywords that satisfy specific educational requirements notwithstanding the discipline in which they are classified.
To make the estimated thousands of videos, hundreds of illustrations and pictures, many exercises and multiple learning scenarios produced by the CCDMD since its inception widely available, an effective means of research had to be found. And we found it! For the last two years, all new videos have been deposited in the World of Images website. They are automatically referenced in Eureka, which allows them to be easily located from the Profweb search engine.
We are also entering prints and photographs from the textbooks we produce into the World of Images which are then classified into subject-specific albums. All these albums are accessible from the search engine.
Consider a simple example to understand how this new research mechanism works. Using the keyword "biology" in the World of Images results in over 1400 resources including: conferences specifically linked to the subject, animal cell animations, how-to videos on lab manipulations, albums of pictures on mushrooms, contactology, etc.
Using the Profweb search engine or the one on the CCDMD's new site (available by winter), we find not only CCDMD products related to a specific topic (websites, books), but all the specific resources that are in the World in Images as well as teaching scenarios and various exercises that have been referenced in Eureka in connection with that particular topic.
Collaboration between the various partners working on IT integration in the Quebec College Network is making things easier for teachers and students.
Have you used any of the many resources available from the CCDMD?