Pond, the Network for Learning portal, is an online environment aiming to unite New Zealand teachers, school administrators and students with providers of educational content and services.
Pond is designed to act as a central hub for digital discovery and participation, where educational resources can be accessed and shared more easily and effectively. It combines the best parts of existing online tools and platforms to create a new, yet familiar, environment.
Pond is independent of N4L’s Managed Network and can be accessed using any internet connection. Access to Pond is free for all school users.
How Pond works
Pond is a place where educators can discover content and services, share knowledge and engage with their peers.
Pond’s comprehensive search function makes it easier for educators to find what they need. But that’s only the start. Once you’ve discovered a new resource (via a keyword search or by browsing the content catalogue), you can adapt and use that content to support your teaching and then share it with others inside the Pond community.
Through the ability to recommend, rate and comment on content and services found in Pond, educators can ensure the most suitable resources can be discovered by other users within Pond and used in the most beneficial manner possible.
By actively engaging in the Pond environment, educators have the opportunity to connect with the whole of the New Zealand education community – not just peers you already know and have contact with, but new people you discover inside the Pond environment who share a mutual interest or speciality teaching subject.
From the wider school perspective, Pond also makes it easier for schools to find and select providers of content and services – not necessarily educational or digital – that meet their needs.
Benefits
Pond provides a safe environment that:
- allows educators to discover content that can be difficult to find
- allows educators to share their ideas more efficiently and effectively
- makes connecting and sharing amongst educators easier
- ensures the most suitable resources can be discovered and used in the most beneficial manner possible
- makes it easier for schools to find and select providers of content and services that meet their specific needs
DISCOVER
- Multi search columns mean more relevant and refined resources surface using the integrated deep search function rather than a standard search engine query.
- This, coupled with tags assigned by educators and providers to highlight relevance and categories, makes discovering resources in Pond easy.
SHARE
- Recommend, rate and comment on resources you have discovered, then assign tags and create learning ideas to show how you found it to be most useful.
- If the resource isn't already listed in the N4L catalogue, add it as a new item as you post feedback, thereby sharing it directly with the community. Doing so helps others identify how they too might use it in their own teaching.
GROW
- Each time someone shares what they have discovered in Pond, and provides constructive feedback on how that resource was (and could be) useful, the value of that resource grows.
- By connecting with and following other educators who share a mutual interest or speciality teaching subject, users have the opportunity to share best practices and learn from their peers, growing their own networks as well as the strength of the Pond community as a whole.
What is SlideShare?
SlideShare began with a simple goal: To share knowledge online. Since then, SlideShare has grown to become the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and other professional content.
You signup for an account/login and then you can download powerpoints from the website and use them for your teaching. If you make a great resource you can upload it for other people to use in the future.
The website has over 58 million visitors a month so there is a massive amount of content on there that is ready to use.
