By: Sydney Kalnay, Training Manager

We hope you have the OverDrive Resource Center bookmarked as the place to get marketing, informational and training materials about Marketplace, the Sora student reading app and more.

If you haven’t visited the site in a while, check it out today. You’ll see some fresh visuals and – near and dear to our hearts as educators – new sections and materials to get staff and students trained and ready for the fall term.

We don’t want anyone confused about when, why or how to use a particular learning resource, though, so here’s a primer that differentiates the formats and learning styles you’ll find in the Staff Training section of the Resource Center.

(P.S. – you’ll see the term TL;DR in a few places throughout this post. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, here’s a quick definition!)

Live & On-Demand Webinars

Our webinars are a chance to get up-to-date information about our products and services with the bonus of live Q&A with our K-12 experts. Each month, we ensure we’re showing off the latest Marketplace and Sora updates, and incorporating any new findings into our presentations such as updated data, partner success stories, new and popular book lists and more.

These sessions are longer – typically 60 minutes with live Q&A throughout – to give us a chance to engage with you through polls, chat, walk-throughs and shared resources.

Once a live session is over, it’s archived on our On-Demand Webinars page and made available to anyone who wants to watch on their own time. Though you won’t have the benefit of responding to polls live or asking questions, you’ll see the aggregate poll data and you can always connect with us through email, your Account Manager or asksora@overdrive.com.

TL;DR: Live & On-Demand Webinars

Frequency: Monthly
Duration: 60 minutes
Benefits: Live Q&A, most current information, certificate of attendance
Suggested webinar: Level Up with Sora for Your Classrooms and Curriculum – Aug. 31 at 2:00 p.m. (ET)

How-To Videos

If you prefer a more structured approach and one that maximizes your time, our How-To Videos section is a great place to begin. We restructured our Sora videos to ensure no single topic is longer than 2 minutes, and we’ve outlined and renamed each video to make it easy to find and follow. Bonus: Marketplace videos are next on the list for a re-org!

While this means our videos no longer have some of the deeper context some of you have come to expect from our recorded assets, each video starts with a brief summary of why you might be researching that topic, and includes clear step-by-step instructions for performing the task at hand. These bite-sized trainings are great for sharing with staff or students, and perfect for when you only have a few minutes to learn.

TL;DR: How-To Videos

Frequency: Updated with new releases
Duration: 2 minutes or less per video
Benefits: Concise, easy to share, topic-specific
Suggested How-To Video: Define, bookmark, highlight, and annotate (Sora)

Self-Paced Training

Want the immediacy of our How-To Videos with the context of a live session and the convenience of asynchronistic timing? Our Self-Paced Training combines text, videos, interactive graphics, linked resources and more into a simple, step-by-step “lesson” using industry standard elearning technology.

Best of all, there are topics to get you started learning about Marketplace, Sora, curriculum and other, varied topics as well as resources you can share with students with a link from your email, LMS or school website.

TL;DR: Self-Paced Training

Frequency: Ongoing
Duration: Varied (most modules take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours to complete)
Benefits: Asynchronous, contextual, options for self-assessment, structured, self-contained
Suggested module: Sora for PK-3 Readers

Training Kits

Perhaps you aren’t in need of training, but your staff or students are. This is where our Training Kits can help! Training Kits are zip files containing presentation materials, marketing resources, lesson plans, how-to documentation and more so you can hold your own training sessions on Marketplace, Sora and more.

Great for classroom or library Sora introductions, professional development or in-service days or when you need some help with integrating Sora into your curriculum, there are kits to help you train students from K-12 and staff of all technology skill levels. Download one today!

TL;DR: Training Kits

Frequency: Ongoing. See a need for a particular presentation, lesson, or kit? Email and let us know!
Duration: Varied
Benefits: Easy to use combinations of materials for all types of learners, one-stop “shopping”
Suggested kit: Staff & Student Learning Kit – Managing Holds

We hope you’ll return to the Staff Training section of the Resource Center again and again to fulfill all your learning needs for back-to-school (for our North American partners), the upcoming summer session (for our friends in the Southern hemisphere) and beyond!

Which materials are you most excited to explore?

About the Author:

Sydney, the Training Manager at OverDrive, is deeply engaged with technology and education as a creator, developer, and instructor. She has designed and delivered classroom training and e-learning experiences for diverse audiences since 2002. She loves pretending she’s already a famous YA novelist, spending time with her cat-familiar, and listening to nothing but Nothing But Thieves.