Searching the Gateway

If you are reading this, you have probably already noticed the all-new Gateway. I hope you are as excited as I am about all the new features! Like always, it is free to become a member of the site, and now you can choose to sign in through your Facebook account to make sharing and discussing resources with your colleagues even easier than before. (Don’t worry if you aren’t a Facebook junkie, though. Plenty of teachers are still using the Gateway without it!) Please take some time to explore the site to find some perfect activities for the new year. As you look around, please let us know what kinds of resources and discussions you are looking for. We count on your feedback to make sure we cover topics that are important to you.

I might be biased, but two of my favorite features on the Gateway are the weekly columns published on the homepage. Each week, Joann and I choose a theme and write our columns to discuss tools and resources related to that theme. Joann is the Gateway’s resident librarian and she is constantly searching the web for useful resources to include. As the Gateway’s resident teacher, I strive to use my weekly posts to discuss these resources from a teacher’s standpoint and introduce strategies for teaching on the topic. We are both involved with educational discussions on Facebook and Twitter to keep current on hot educational topics. We include things we learn from these groups in our weekly columns so you can stay current on these hot topics, too.

This week, we chose the topic of urban planning for our columns and social media postings. This topic can be integrated into many grade levels and subjects. Joann discusses the topic and suggested resources more in depth in her post, but I want to use the theme to help you explore the search functions and tools on the Gateway. As a member, you will be able to bookmark, share, and discuss these resources with your colleagues. The Gateway can be a very valuable lesson-planning tool for you.

Let’s explore the Gateway together to see how to search for urban planning resources. When I searched the Gateway for “urban planning,” I got 73 results. Depending on the grade level and subject area you need, you may want to refine your search even further. There are all different ways to filter your search on the right side of the page. For the sake of this example, I filtered the search by subject (science) and grade level (10), and came up with a list of eight resources to compare. The first one, “Urban Runoff: Flowing Blue and Green,” looked interesting to me, so I chose it. It looked like a great fit, but I continued to look at the other results, just to be sure I liked that one the best.

When I changed my search from “urban planning” to “city planning,” I came up with 131 results. I used some different filters to narrow my search to a really well planned 5th grade unit about architecture and city planning and City Planning Designs, a nice example of how you can help your students compare cities that are familiar to them to get a better feeling for how cities are planned.

I hope this little walk-through of the Gateway was helpful, and I can’t wait to hear what you think!