Adding And Accessing Resources In Schoology

@LisaBerghoff/@Joe_EdTech

One question that comes up frequently when introducing teachers to Schoology is whether or not their materials will disappear after the school year has ended. Teachers eager to get started also want to know that the materials they create today will be there for them in August. 

The good news is that Resources is cloud based storage within the Schoology environment.  Not sure what cloud computing is? Watch this 2 1/2 minute video to learn more. 

Understanding Resources  

Welcome to the resources tab! This is one of the most important features for organizing your materials within the Schoology environment. As you become more familiar and comfortable with Schoology, you will most likely be creating assignments and activities within Schoology. The resource center is where you can access your personal resource library, a public, world-wide library, as well as groups of resources housed in groups, the school, or the district. 

You access the resource center by either clicking on the resources tab on the top navigation bar on the home screen or, if you are in a group, it will also be located on the left navigation bar. 

My Resources is your digital filing cabinet where you can save all of your courses and materials. You can also create materials within the My Resources section. Anything you save in this section can be copied and transferred to any course. Once it is copied, you can adapt it to fit the needs of that specific class and it will not change the original copy. In other words, what you have in My Resources is used like a template. 

A Collection is like a container for courses, files, folders, and resources that you may want to use in Schoology. Think of it as a master folder that can be used for organization. You can create a collection for an entire course, a semester, or an entire year. 

The Home Collection is automatically created for you. Everything that you create and save  in the Schoology resource center will be added to your Home Collection. If you want to share resources with others, you can create other collections. 

Want to add a collection?  Here are the steps:

1. Click on the Resources tab on the top navigation bar.

2. Go to Personal 

3. Click on the icon that looks like a filing cabinet with a little green plus sign, that is the Add Collection icon.

4. Give your new collection a title

5. Click Create to finish

There is a little triangle next to the Add Collection icon that allows you to reorder, import, or export resources. You can also rename and delete collections.  As you can see from the screenshot, I moved the Resources for 2018-2019 collection to the top of this list.

Learning Objectives Collection allows you to generate custom learning objectives and share them with members of your group. You may want to set up a course team group and share learning objectives so everyone has them available. In Schoology, you can align assignments and assessments to your learning objectives. You can also create custom rubrics that connect to your objectives.

More information about learning objectives can be found on the Schoology Support Page. 

Downloads is another collection that is automatically created for you. This is where you will find any resources that you downloaded from Public Resources. By clicking on the gear next to the resource, you can add it to a course, copy it to another collection, move it to another collection, or delete it altogether.

Public Resources from the resources center is where educators from all over the world have made their materials available for free. There is a lot there so to make it easier, you can filter and search by resource type, grade level, subject, file format, or rating.

The Public Resources tab within Personal Resources shows everything that you have added to personal resources. If you are glad that others have shared, please consider sharing your materials as well. Together, we are much better than in isolation.

Group Resources will show everything that is shared within a particular group. You may belong to course team, department, building level, district level, and/or public groups. They will all show up in this tab. Again, these resources can be copied to another collection, or added to a course by clicking on the little gear to the right of the resource. 

Resource Apps is the last tab you will see as you go down the left navigation within resources. This allows you to integrate third-party content such as Google Drive, YouTube, or DropBox,  directly into Schoology without needing to open additional tabs. If it's your first time adding apps, you will click Install Apps. Choose which apps you want to install and click Install. 

Adding materials in Resources is very similar to adding to a course. Just click on the Add resources icon and choose the resource you want to add.

Templates can be added to any course or course folder. Once added, you can adjust the material without any impact on your template. You can  also adjust the template without any impact on your material. 

Since Resources saves as templates, it works differently from GoogleDocs, which sync and update live. Therefore, they serve two different purposes. Go ahead and start playing around with Resources. This is a great place to start as you think about preparing for next year, especially while we're still in school.

Have questions or want some help working with Resources? Contact your instructional technology supports in your school today.