OTAN News
What Is SkillBlox, and Is It Worth Valuable Time To Explore It?
The impact of the multitude of resources, strategies, new or old technology, programs, pathways, funding, shortages, and educational transformation can cause anxiety in the most stoic practitioner.
With too little time for work, life, balance, exercise, eating healthy, meeting friends, family, meeting a new partner, dumping one, cleaning house, car, and bike, updating passwords, the question for this article is, "What is SkillBlox, and is it worth valuable time to explore it?"
To assess the question, take this short personal quiz. If you answer yes, yea, or yeah to any of the following questions, then SkillBlox is worth your very precious limited minutes to explore. If not, then move on fellow practitioner to another task on your "must do" list.
- Do you use Open Educational Resources (OERs)? Free resources?
- Are your resources easily organized and categorized?
What is SkillBlox?
SkillBlox is a way to organize learning for students in one place. This repository integrates publisher, free + open resources, by CCRS standards for adult educators. As understood, not one program fits the needs of all students, so SkillBlox is a way for a practitioner to create a "playlist" of a variety of different resources for a variety of learning modalities.
Since the release of the standards in 2013, we realize the coverage of the standard does not always align perfectly with one resource. So, SkillBlox allows an instructor to use different resources to meet a standard. For more information, view the YouTube video below with Jeff Goumas from EdTech@World Education explains the basics.
Does SkillBlox Save Time?
An instructor can search by Subject, Topic/Subtopic, or CCRS standard. Then, many resources matching the search appear on the screen. The instructor can click to add a resource from the SkillBlox database or add other resources from either published curriculum or from other Open Resource libraries like Digital Skills Library for example.
By clicking, a playlist is created to use for instruction. Published materials can also be added to the system. The shared lessons are already aligned and can be selected and differentiated for students. Once the resources are in the SkillBlox playlist, it is easy to share with students within an LMS like Canvas.
YouTube: Jeff Goumas - Using SkillBlox to Organize OER + Free Learning Resources