By: Sydney Kalnay, Training Manager

For most educators, “back-to-school,” isn’t the specific day they return to school after summer break or even a general time of year — it’s a state of mind. And, typically, the state of that mind is busy!

Once the back-to-school mindset begins, it can extend to every aspect of life. That means more time allocated to the duties of the job – teaching, coaching, mentoring, purchasing, grading – and less time set aside for personal and professional development.

OverDrive wants to shift that focus back on you, so you’re able to work with your whole school community – students, colleagues and parents – without sacrificing time spent on your own learning.

Starting mid-August, we are running a weekly, open series of webinars on Sora – the student reading app, Marketplace shopping and browsing, and even ways to use and promote digital content in the classroom. These 30-minute sessions are perfect for teachers, school librarians, media specialists or anyone who works with students and books, and are held at different times of the day and days of the week, so everyone can join us live.

If you’re a school expert who can’t align their planning time with our webinar schedule, fear not! Every session we deliver during the busy, back-to-school season will be archived, along with a PDF copy of the slide deck, on the OverDrive Resource Center, so you can access the content at your convenience and learn on your own time – anytime!

The 30-minute sessions we’ll offer are:

Introduction to Sora, which will include demonstrations on how to: sign in to Sora, browse and borrow digital titles, personalize the app and browser experience, and access additional help and promotional resources.

Introduction to Marketplace, perfect for folks looking to: browse and search for content, build and manage carts, submit a purchase order and assign titles to students.

Using and Promoting Sora at Your School, a session designed for educators more familiar with Sora and who want to increase student awareness of digital content, integrate Sora into their classroom as a learning and discovery tool, and use Sora to develop formative assessments, lesson plans and classroom management strategies.

Register today for any and all sessions that work for your schedule, or bookmark our Past Webinars tab to watch the sessions on your own time.*

Please note: Starting in September, we will offer each session once a month at a later starting time (6 PM ET) to ensure that our educators on Mountain and Pacific Time, and our international school partners, have an opportunity to join us live!

We know you’ll be busy with your back-to-school mindset, but if you give us 30 minutes, we’ll help you reach your school or district technology initiatives and meet the needs of all students with your digital collection.

*Past webinars will post on the Resource Center by midday Friday of the week they air live.