Join us for our next live demo on Thursday, April 4th to get a closer look at the Otus platform

Login

Sharing Bookshelf Resources

Author: Lisa Westman | Blog |

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn

As an educator, this quote really hits home. In fact, in a survey of 20,000 teachers, 76% said that if they had to identify one thing that they wanted more of it would be time.1 Time to plan. Time to assess. Time to instruct.

Lost instruction time is one of the obstacles teachers diligently try to avoid, but inevitably encounter. The lesson plan was succinct. The materials were copied and organized. The lesson should have gone off without a hitch. But, then the notorious timesuckers reared their ugly heads. The copies were missing a page. Johnny and Susie could not remember their passwords. Mikey did not seem to have the faintest idea of how to access the online textbook. That leads us to wonder just how much instructional time is lost due to transitions in the classroom? The answer is (on average) 10 minutes a day. Played out over a school year 10 minutes a day equals a whopping 1800 hours or 6 full school days.2

The Otus Bookshelf gives teachers the gift of time. Gone are the days of taking instructional minutes to direct students to the right webpage or delaying part of a lesson because more copies are needed. Otus streamlines the process of sharing materials and eliminates wasted instructional time due to website navigation and password issues. Students can access third party content (Khan Academy, Actively Learn, Newsela, Raz-Kids, etc.) as well as access shared articles, videos, and any other shared content.

The Otus Bookshelf makes sharing items as uncomplicated and quick as possible. In fact, teachers do not even have to be logged into Otus to share links or resources. The Otus Chrome extension allows teachers to add items (third party content, articles, resources, instructional tools) to the Bookshelf of one, some, or all of their students from any location.

Let us paint a picture for you. On Sunday afternoon, with your last few hours of the weekend ticking away you sit down to lesson plan. You start to surf some of your favorite websites for materials. You find several resources that you want to share with different groups of students. In the past, you would save/email the resource link to yourself to print and copy the next morning (average 7 minutes) or share the link via email or other method with the appropriate students (average 4 minutes). But, now you have the option share resources using on The Otus Bookshelf (average 30 seconds). If you replace printing and sharing via email with the Otus just once a week for an entire school year you gain approximately 3 hours of time. If you do this once a day for the entire school year you gain approximately 5 full school days!

On that note, go unwrap your gift from Otus and enjoy the extra time.


1. Scholastic study “Primary Sources,” Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
2. Susan Hentz, Educational Consultant

Related Articles

Loading