Classroom Instruction part of the Education Reform Network

Educational Type

The category of the resource, such as home page, novel, poem, working paper, technical report, essay, dictionary.

1. Activity
   A task or exercise that students are asked to do-often as part of a lesson plan or other larger unit of instruction-to help them develop particular skills, knowledge, or habits of mind. Usually, the goals and outcomes are broad.
2. Artifact
   Objects produced by humans with a view to substantial use. For example art, cultural, or historic objects such as an image of Picasso's Guernica or of a Pueblo Indian pottery bowl.
3. Best practice
   The processes, practices, or systems identified in public and private organizations that performed exceptionally well and are widely recognized as improving an organization's performance and efficiency in specific areas.
4. Catalog record
   Another metadata record with deeper, more complex cataloging of the resource it describes than the GEM record provides.
5. Collection
   A collection of resources or links to other web sites.
6. Community
   Education listservs and other online communities-forums for exchanging ideas around particular education topics or challenges.
7. Course
   A sequence of instructional units, often a semester long, designed by a teacher (or a faculty or other group of teachers) to advance significantly student skills, knowledge, and habits of mind significantly in a particular discipline and to help students meet specified requirements (as set forth in curricula or district or state policy).
8. Curriculum
   Academic standards-the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind students are expected to acquire in particular grade levels (or clusters of grade levels)-and the units of instruction, often with sample lesson plans, illustrative student activities, and essential and supplementary resources that can help students reach those standards. Is often designed at the state or school district level by a team of teachers, curriculum specialists, and other experts.
9. Curriculum support
   The equipment, facilities, tools, materials, and personnel available for the teaching of the curriculum.
10. Data set
    A resource containing only numeric, spatial, spectral, or statistical data. A report of research containing a data set should be assigned the resource type "Research Study."
11. Educator's guide
    A guide intended for use by educator's as a supplement to a lesson or unit plan.
12. Environment
    Any network-based environment intended for simultaneous interaction with one or more participants such as multimedia, games, chat rooms, and virtual reality.
13. Event
    A non-persistent, time-based occurrence.
14. Form
    An online document with blank spaces for filling in information before execution.
15. Image set
    A set of images and photographs of physical objects, paintings, prints, drawings, other images and graphics, animations and moving pictures, film, diagrams, maps, and musical notation.
16. Lesson plan
    A plan for helping students learn a particular set of skills, knowledge, or habits of mind. Often includes student activities as well as teaching ideas, instructional materials, and other resources. Is shorter (in duration) than, and often part of, a unit of instruction. Goals and outcomes are focused.
17. Literature
    Writings in prose or verse.
18. Model Program
    
19. Primary source
    Person, place, or thing that provides firsthand information about something. Examples include oral histories, letters and other original documents.
20. Project
    Activities organized around a particular academic topic or challenge in which students from various parts of the country (or world) participate, using the Internet. Goals and outcomes are broad. (Example: A semester-long effort to observe, gather, and analyze data on water quality.)
21. Reference
    A comprehensive, systematically organized collection of information such as a dictionary, encyclopedia, or almanac.
22. Research study
    A resource that reports the results of research. A resource containing only a data set resulting from research should be assigned the resource type "Data Set."
23. Secondary source
    Secondary sources are written in response to a primary source. Secondary sources are usually criticism, reviews, or are based on another book or journal.
24. Serial
    Publications in any medium issued in successive parts bearing numerical or chronological designations and intended to be continued indefinitely. Serials include periodicals; newspapers; annuals (reports, yearbooks, etc.); the journals, memiors, proceedings, transactions, etc. of societies; and numbered monographic series. (AACR2)
25. Service
    Any online service and/or assistance that functions either as an intermediary between the user and online data and information (e.g., an online question-and-answer service such as AskERIC) or as a non-intermediary service (e.g., an online service that monitors and reports on some aspect of education or other activities having an impact on education.)
26. Story
    A fictional narrative which is shorter than a novel.
27. Study guide
    A guide created to provide students with hints, techniques, or management ideas in a particular area.
28. Tool
    The resource being described is some kind of instrument or tool that may, or may not, be directly accessible over the Internet. In a sense, this category is a special instance of the "Services" resource type.
29. Unit of instruction
    A sequence of lesson plans designed to teach a set of skills, knowledge, and habits of mind.