About Topics: Units of Practice Searching for Units Searching by Standards Adding UOP Comments and Ratings Contributing Units My Units Choose Standards Add Attachments About Units of Practice We collaborated with the National Science Foundation and the New American Schools Development Corporation to create a structured curriculum framework for sharing lessons, and named it Units of Practice (UOP). Each UOP is developed by one of your colleagues, an experienced teacher, and exemplifies an approach to integrating technology into the teaching and learning process. Return toUnits Section. About Searching for Units Our Units of Practice area is the gem of ALI so we have created some powerful searching tools to help you find what you need. Search for Units on the main page of the Units area or click on the Search link from another Units page. You can search by state and national standards or locate Units by using any single or combination of these search axis: Subject Level Keyword Language Contributing Organization* UOP ID *We have formed partnerships with several organizations to gathar large collections of Units of Practice. This field is to allow members from those organizations to locate their Units quickly. Here is a basic example of how to conduct a units search: There are two pop-down menus there that allow you to search by Subject, by Level or by Subject and Level. Choose a Subject to search. Choose a Level to search. If you are satisfied with your options click on the button labeled "submit." If you would like to cancel your selections then press reset-- this will cause both subject and level pop-down menus to return to their default position.  -Return to Top-   About Searching by Standards Here is a basic example of how find units by conducting a standards search: Click the graphic to Search by State & National Standards. Choose a Subject/Grade Combinations. Choose a Topic. Choose a State or Organization, If you are satisfied with your options click on the button labeled Search standards. If there are standards listed for all of the choices you made they will appear listed on a search results page. Each standard listed has a button to find units. Clicking that button will return a list of units that correlate to that particular state or organizational standard. *National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are incorporated into every search where relevant and available.   About Adding UOP Comments and Ratings Even though many members of the ALI Team are active teachers, they could not possibly use every unit in ALI, so we thought we would give those who use the units a chance to tell us what they think. Every unit starts with a rating based on our evaluation criteria and assigned by the UOP editors. ALI Members then have the opportunity to comment and add their ratings. The Overall Rating is based on an average of all ratings. To add your comments, follow these steps: Find the Unit of Practice you would like to comment on. Scroll down to the Teacher Comments section of that Unit and click the button to Add Your Comments. Fill out your ALI username and password in the appropriate sections. Enter any brief comments or suggestions for other teachers you would like to make. Choose a 1-4 excellence rating for the Unit. Click the button labeled Save Comment. Once the comment is saved a UOP editor will review the comment to verify that it is not malicious or inappropriate then will publish it. All comments will appear in the Teacher Comments section after they have been published.   -Return to Top-   About Contributing Units From any page in the Units area click on the button labeled Contribute. There are four different steps to writing a unit. Each page of the Unit Contributing section has four graphics. These graphics describe the steps in the process and act as buttons to allow you to navigate to the next step. Steps 1 and 2 are required to submit a unit of practice. Steps 3 and 4 are optional. The text below will describe each step in detail. For a more indepth tutorial, see our page on how to write an excellent Unit of Practice (UOP). Fill in your ALI username and password. Give your UOP a descriptive title. Click on all of the Subject check boxes that you feel apply to your UOP. For example if your unit covers the biographical studies of famous mathematicians in history you would check English/Language Arts, History and Math. Click on all of the learning levels that you feel apply to your unit. Fill in the name of the person or persons that created the UOP in the Author area. Write a brief abstract telling a little about the unit. This abstract will be used to describe the Unit in all search results. TIP: All of these fields help us organize your Unit of Practice and help others find and use it so be thorough! All of the remaining field will be the actual text of the UOP. Fill in the appropriate text for each section of the UOP in the corresponding text box. Select Submit for Approval if you are going to complete your unit and would like it edited. Select Save, but do not Submit if you would like to save your work to come back again. If you are satisfied with your options click on the button labeled Contribute UOP. If you have made an error in the information you have entered you can go back and edit it at any time before you click on the "Contribute UOP" button. If you would like to erase the entire form and start over you can click on the "Reset" button. If you chose Submit for Approval and clicked the Contribute UOP button you go to a page that confirms your entry and provides a link to Step #2. The following descriptions of the UOP sections have been taken from http://www.apple.com/education/k12/staffdev/uop.html. Invitation: The curriculum Question and project overview that the students will be addressing Tasks: The actions that the students will be asked to undertake Assessment: The criteria by which the students' work will be evaluated Situations: The places where the activity will take place, and the amount and specific periods of time that the students will have to work on the activity Interactions: The way the students will work, the ways the teacher will work with the students, and the ways the students will interact with others Tools: The materials that the students will use to approach their tasks URL: This is a space to include one a URLs that is appropriate for this Unit *You will have the option to add other URLs or attached files in Step 4. Standards: The frameworks developed by the school, district, or state as guidelines in the development and assessment of curricula *Standards are entered in Step 3. In this step you will use our menus to compile a comprehensive list of all concepts addressed in your unit. We will use this list to correlate your unit to other state and organizational standards. Choose a Subject/Grade Combination. Choose a topic. Click the Add button. The Subject and Topic will be added to an outline list at thebottom of the page. If you would like to delete any items from this list click the link to Delete listed next to each item. Repeat this process until all of the Subject and Topics have been added to the list at the bottom of the page. If you do not have any State standards to add or extra documents to attach you may move on to another area of ALI or sign out of the site. Your unit will be reviewed by our editors and posted online. To learn more about editing units that have been submitted please read the section below on Editing your units. If you have standards or attachments to add click the link or click the graphic for the appropriate step. Choose your state from the pop-down menu on the left hand side of the screen. An outline of state standards for all of the Subjects and Topics you chose in Step 2 will appear in the left hand column. Topics will relevant standards statements will appear as blue links. Click the first link. All of the relevant standards will appear in the top right hand part of the screen. Scroll through the list and click the button to add any standard you feel applies to your unit. All of the added standards will be listed at the bottom right of the screen. Click the delete button to delete any of them. When you have finished adding standards you may move on to another area of ALI or sign out of the site. Your unit will be reviewed by our editors and posted online. To learn more about editing units that have been submitted please read the section below on Editing your units. If you have other URLs or files to attach you may click the link to procede to Step 4 - Add Attachments. Tell us the function of your first attachment by choosing an option from the Funtion pull-down menu. Tell us where your attachement is by clicking one of the radio buttons. Click the button to Procede. remote link - choose this for attaching URLs to files. upload file - choose this for uploading templates and other files onto the ALI site ALI record - choose this if you would like to include a pionter to an ALI unit, resource, or resource guide. If you choose remote link: Enter a descriptive name for the file. Enter the complete URL for the file. If you choose upload file: Enter the name of your attachment, ie. Project Assesment Guide. Click the link to Put Files. That will pop a new Directory window. Enter the exact file name or click Browse and locate the file. Click the button to Upload. The file should appear in the directory page. Click the link next to the file to confirm it is there. Close the Directory window. Choose the file you justed uploaded from the Choose attachment file pull down menu. Next to File Type, choose an option from the pull down menu, Click the button to attach file. If you chosose ALI record: Chose the type of ALI record (Units, Resources, or Resource Guides) Enter the ID number for that ALI record. TIP: If you do not know the ID for the record you would like to attach, open a new browser window and go the appropriate area of ALI. Search for the record and record the ID number from the record detail. Click the button to Attach ALI Record. Once you have attached one file you will see a button to attach more. Repeat the above steps until all files are attached.   -Return to Top-   About My Units Edit Your Units Once you have entered at least one unit you will always have the option to Edit the units you entered. You can access these units two ways. If you are signed into ALI you will see a link to edit your units on your My ALI page. You can also click the link to Edit My Units on any page in the Units area. You may have to sign in first, but you will see a list of all of the units you have submitted or saved. Click the UOP title to edit the record. The next screen will look like the UOP contribute page with all of the current information listed in the appropriate fields. You can edit or add to any of the fields. The very last option on the form allows you to set the status of your Unit. If you feel you would like to do more work to your Unit click the option to Save, but do not submit. If you feel that your Unit is ready for publication you should click the option to Submit for Approval. That will signal the UOP editing team that your unit is ready to be approved and published. You can always edit Units that are already published, but please note that they will have to be reapproved after edits. Choose Standards   Add Attachments    -Return to Top-