PRISM Materials

main menu

The PRISM Materials search is found under the Main Menu on the left side of the screen.

search menu

Simple Search:  The search screen contains a simple options menu and search bar.  You can search for materials by typing what you are looking for and clicking the magnifying glass button or clicking the Enter key.  This will return any material that has a keyword match in the title, description, or author.

Standards Restrictive Search:  All of the materials on PRISM are indexed to the Indiana State Academic Standards.  If you are looking for a resource to help you teach a certain standard or set of standards you may want to use a Standards Restrictive search.  Open the standards browser by clicking the menu option "Standards:all".  The PRISM standards browser will pop in underneath the search bar.

standards browser

Here you can begin to narrow down the standards you want to search within.  If you would like to restrict your search to only materials that are indexed to Math standards you can click theadd buttonbutton to add that restriction.  You will notice two things happen.  Theadd buttonbutton beside Math will become a removebutton and the menu at the top will now look like this.

standards: math 

You can remove this restriction by clicking the removebutton or the small minus button in the menu beside Math.  If you would like to restrict the standards at a deeper level, click the row Math in the standards browser instead of theadd buttonbutton.  Below is an example that fully shows the standards browsers functionality.  On the top you will see a navigation bar that will allow you to jump back to any part of the standards browswer.  In the below example, if we wanted to go back to the first menu of the standards browser you could click the "All Subjects" link in the top bar.  If you wanted to select other grade standards you could click the "Math" link and it would take you to the menu where you could select another grade.  There is no limit to how many standards you can select.  The search will return materials that are indexed to any of the standards selected.  If you would like to get only materials that match all of the standards selected you need to check the box marked "Restrictive Search" on the top menu.

full standards browser

In the above example you can see that some standards have substandards, denoted by the inset structure (8.G.1a - 8.G.1c).  Also at the end of every menu item, it will show you how many resources PRISM has indexed to that particular standard or fall under that menu criteria (8.G will show all resources that fall under 8.G).  Also, you might notice that in this instance another icon is placed at the end of these standards.  The common core icon will display on all standards that are Common Core standards.  

Once you have selected all the standards you wish to restrict the search to, you may click the magnifying glass button on the search to perform the search.  You do not have to type any keywords unless you want to further restrict your search.

Technology Restricted Search:  All of the PRISM materials are also indexed to the technologies required to run them.  If you have certain technologies that do not work at your school, you might want to remove the materials that utilize those technologies from your search.  In the top menu of the search, click the "Technology:all" option.  A new menu will open up below the search bar.

technologies menu

Beside each technology you will see a removebutton that denotes that the technology is not restricted.  Once you add a technology to the restricted menu, you have another option.  In the top menu under Technology: you will see the technology you selected.

not included

This search will eliminate all materials that contain Excel as a used technology.

Beside each technology there are to clickable areas.  The minus icon will remove the technology from the top menu.  If you click the menu item that says "- Not including: Excel" it will toggle to "+ Includes or Supports: Excel".  This will change the results of your search to only materials that contain Excel as a used technology.

includes

Professional Development Materials Search

The Professional Development Materials Search checkbox will switch the materials library that the PRISM search looks through.  The search will now look through a set of resources that are not indexed the the Indiana State Academic Standards but we believe are still very useful tools for teachers to use in the classroom.  These resources are indexed to the technologies they use.

Search Results

search results

The PRISM materials search results will look something like the picture above.  If you are not logged in to PRISM, some of these features will not be available to you.

Inside the results you will see these things:

Rating: This is the average rating given to the material by our users.
Title: This is the name of the resource and is also a direct link to that materials website.
Menu button: This button will open up more info about the material.
Favorite: This is a toggle button that will add the resource to a users PRISM favorites list. (logged in users only)
Add to Lesson:
 This drop down list will allow a user who has created a PRISM Lesson Plan to immediately add the material to their lesson plan. (logged in users only)
Broken Link:
 This button allows our users to report dead links for us to review, fix or remove. (logged in users only)

more info under menu button

More detail under the Menu button

Description: A thorough description of the material.
Author: The person or organization that created the resource.
Linked to Standards: A list of all the Indiana State Academic Standards that the material is indexed to. (not available for Prof. Dev. materials)
Technology Used: A list of all the technologies that will be needed to fully use the resource.
Rating: The average user rating for that material. (logged in users have the ability to place their own rating on it)
Comments: Read user comments about that material. (logged in users can add, edit, and remove their own comments)
Scorecard: A PDF scorecard that was filled out by the person who added the material to the PRISM library.

Rating:

my rating

The logged in user can select the star amount they give a particular resource


Comments:

comments
A logged in user can click the + button and add a comment of their own.  They can also click the edit button if the comment they are viewing is their own comment.

Last modified: Friday, 16 September 2011, 9:23 AM