By: Sydney Kalnay, Training Specialist.
Welcome to the new school year, educator friends! Whether you’ve just started back or are feeling like you’ve been in the building forever and a day, we know the fall can be fraught with excitement, delight, and, occasionally, abject terror.

If technology is at the center of your schoolroom dread, we want to support you and reassure you that, while we can’t necessarily solve every issue you may run into, (are the lunch ladies still serving pizza that tastes like cardboard and sadness?), when it comes to e-content and serving your digital natives, we’ve got you covered.

Shopping for Titles in Marketplace

Schools librarians, media specialists, and admins: are you in charge of making sure your OverDrive collection is stocked with compelling, educational, and diverse reads? Join us to learn more about making the most of OverDrive’s recommended lists, must-haves, search filters, and smart shopping carts with our half-hour live webcast, Shopping for Titles in Marketplace, on Monday, September 18th at 3:30 PM (ET).

The Student User Experience

Educators: would you like some suggestions for how to best serve your student population in and out of the classroom? We’re hosting a webcast on The Student User Experience Monday, October 16th at 3:30 PM (ET). This 30 minute session will get you prepped to show your students how to log in, browse, and borrow a title quickly and easily. From there, we will cover some of the more advanced features of our browser-based formats, OverDrive Read and Listen, including instant vocabulary building, exportable notes and highlights, and accessibility aids.

How to Talk to you Community About OverDrive

Faculty or staff in charge of championing digital content to your school community: do you feel challenged by talking about OverDrive with your audience? We have a webcast for you, too. On Monday, November 13th at 3:30 PM (ET), our School Marketing and Training teams will pair up to talk about practical methods for promoting and discussing your OverDrive service to every member of your school community, from admins to educators, students to parents. How to Talk to Your School Community About OverDrive is a 30 minute demonstration of our customizable PowerPoint presentation and how you can use it to incorporate OverDrive into your budget requests, lesson plans, parent conference talking points, activity fair setups, and more.

Join us live or later

We hope you will join us live for one or all of these webcasts but if you can’t make the dates and times, you’ll still have access to the material. Simply register for the sessions you’re interested in and we will automatically send you a link to the recording, a PDF packet of the slides, and – in the case of the How to Talk to Your School Community About OverDrive session – the customizable PowerPoint template.

You can sign up for our webcasts by following the links above or by going to the OverDrive Resource Center, clicking the K-12 Schools tab at the top of the screen, and looking for the Live Webcasts tab. Each webcast is free, fast, and focused for you, our tireless educational leaders.

Plan ahead or catch something you missed

PS, if this time of year is simply too busy, never fear – we hold these sessions quarterly. Just download our 2017-2018 School Webcast Planner today and schedule ahead for next term. Did someone say easy planning for your staff or PD day?

We are excited to work with you and are looking forward to helping you serve your students, colleagues, and school community partners. Happy back to school, everyone!