An Educator’s Guide to Using the BRI Website

0:04 hi my name is Mary Patterson and I’m a senior content specialist here at the Bill of Rights Institute I’m excited to introduce you to the new features on our desktop site my b.org and to introduce you to our new mobile app this demonstration will show you how to use these new features whether you’re in the classroom or on the go let’s check it out we’ll start by exploring the new

0:25 features on the desktop site my.org the first thing you need to do is sign in to create a free account all you need is your email be sure to check that you are an educator I already have an account so I’m going to go ahead and log in you can explore our primary sources lessons videos by going to the resource tab or

0:45 what I would recommend is using the search bar up here you can enter your Search terms and you can narrow your search by content type so essays lessons videos podcasts duration grade level topic founding principle and more if you find something that you like go ahead and click on this plus sign you can save the resource to your library which is

1:06 just like bookmarking all your favorite resources add it to a playlist which just like it sound is a way for you to organize all of your favorite resources I like to give mind fun titles or you can add it to an assignment adding an assignment is a new essential feature on our site so let’s take a look at that I’m going to use the search function to look for something on letter from Birmingham

1:27 Jail I’m going to narrow my results I am looking for primary sources and videos so here’s the primary source I want to add this to an assignment so you can see I’ve already created some assignments here but I’m going to go ahead and click create new give it a title so I’m just going to call it letter from

1:48 Birmingham if you’d like you can add a summary and instructions here for your students and then click save perfect and here it is now the cool thing about the assignments is that you can add to them so I’m going to go ahead here and click add I could add something from outside of Bri so if you have something a website or anything on the letter from

2:09 Birmingham Jail that you wanted to put into your assignment you can do that here but I want to add that video that I saw so I’m going to go ahead and click add from the library I’m going to search letter from Birmingham once again and here it is it’s this video it’s the new primary source Essentials I want to add this to my assignment so I need to find letter from

2:30 Birmingham Jail perfect so now I have an assignment that consists of the primary source and the video if I want to share this with my students I can click share and I’m given a URL code or a QR code to share with my classroom the next new feature that I want to show you are self checks self

2:50 checks are a treasure Trove of scholar reviewed multiple choice and short answer questions that you can attach to your assignments let’s check this out so I’ve clicked on my profile and I’m going to go back down to my assignments and here is one from life liberty and the pursuit of happiness it’s a reading on Native people in North America before the arrival of the

3:12 Europeans I’ve already created this assignment and I’m going to click add selfcheck so here it’s going to populate with all of the multiple choice and short answer questions that go with this reading if you want to preview any of these questions you can go ahead and click on it and it will show you what the question consists of so I’m going to add

3:33 a few of these multiple choice questions and I also want to add these two short answer questions to my assignment so I’m going to select them and click add questions it gives me a confirmation page I could reorder them if I wanted to I’m going to hit create self check now this is super cool you can

3:55 download these questions as a CSV Excel or qti file doing this will give you the answer key and it’s also easier if you want to put it into your own assessment or if you want to copy a question and use as a warm-up you can do that as well one final note on the self checks students can answer the questions when they’re using the app but the site does not record any of their data it does not

4:17 record their answers now that we’ve made some assignments we can build a course I’m back on my profile page which you can always get to by clicking on your initials and I’m going to go ahead and go to courses I’ve already built out a few courses as you can see but we’re going to go ahead and create a new course and we’re going to select uh this letter

4:38 from Birmingham assignment that we created and Brown versus Board of Education video assignment that I built out I’m going to give my course a name you can make courses as big or as small as you want to in my head I kind of like to organize them by unit but it’s really up to you again summary instructions if you want to add those for your students your course has been created so so my

4:59 civil rights course contains these two things and I can share in the same day I would share an assignment I can give students this URL I can post this to my LMS I can also offer them this QR code I’m back on my profile page if you want you can create a section of a course this is a way to give different due dates to courses if you have different

5:20 class periods that are looking at the same sources congratulations you have built out some assignments added self checks and created a course but what if you’re on the go and need to make some adjustments let’s take a look at how this looks in our new free Bri mobile app this app is available for download for both iPhone and Android I’ve downloaded the free brri app onto my

5:41 cell phone and have logged in using the same username and password that I use for the desktop site let’s say I’m at my son soccer game and I need to look for some resources on Brown versus Board of Education I can use the same search bar function in the top right that I use on the desktop site I found what I need a video that will give my students a good

6:01 overview of this Landmark case I’m going to use the plus sign to add it to a new assignment just as I would on the desktop site I’ll hit create new give it a title and save here it is I can click share just like on the desktop version and I’m given a URL and QR code to post to share with my students once your

6:22 students download the app and create a free login with their email they’ll have access to any assignment you share with them through the site or the app they’re always given an option to download assignment so they’ll be available whether or not they have access to Wi-Fi if they have their phone they have their assignment no excuses stay tuned for another video that will walk you through the student view of the app I hope

6:44 you’ll spend some time exploring these new features we’re really excited for you to use them and let us know how they’re helping in your classroom thanks for all that you do and until next time take care