By: Emily Balser, Integrated Marketing Specialist

The OverDrive Resource Center is a wealth of no-cost resources that you can use to promote Sora to your school community in all kinds of different ways – and it just got a major upgrade!

If you aren’t yet familiar with our Resource Center (or just need a refresher), this is a great place to start. We’ll walk through what you can expect to find and offer some tips for using everything to its fullest.

First things first, head over to the K-12 Resource Center and bookmark the page so it’s easy to refer back to. Got it? Let’s jump in.

The K-12 home page

This landing page is where you’ll start your journey on the K-12 Resource Center. Here, you’ll find jump points to a bunch of helpful tools to use, grow, and promote your Sora collection. In the upper third of the page, you’ll find six boxes that help you with different areas of growth.

  • Getting Started – Click here to get a bird’s eye view of the Sora platform and learn about its features.
  • Promoting Sora – This section has been completely updated and we’ll dive more into it below. Here’s where you’ll find graphics, printables, activities and more to promote your Sora collection and promote usage.
  • Educator Training – Our Training team is top-notch and they’ve put together free live webinars, on-demand webinars, how-to videos and resources and so much more to get you, your team and your students confident in using Sora.
  • Collection Development – We have a whole team of librarians at OverDrive who work continually to provide title suggestions via curated lists. We know you’re busy, so this section is your easy button for finding titles and to keep your collection fresh.
  • Classroom Tools – Here you’ll find resources for using Sora in the classroom and a lending model reference.
  • Service Enhancements – Stay up-to-date on all of the newest Sora features.

Popular Resources

The next section of the home page is where you can go to quickly navigate to popular resources. You’ll find the navigation on the left, starting with Sora Promotional Resources.

  • The Sora Promotional Resources tab will display all of the sections that you’ll also find through the “Promoting Sora” box in the first half of the page. Here, you can quickly jump to the exact section you’re looking for.
  • The next three tabs on the left navigation panel are quick finds from our Training team. These change periodically, so it’s a great place to check out what’s popular for training at any given time.
  • Finally, we close out the navigation list with quick links to popular Book Recommendation Lists.

K-12 School Blog Posts

The third and final section of the landing page shows us some of the current and most popular blog posts from right here at the Schools Blog.

(P.S., have you subscribed yet?)

Promoting Sora

Now, let’s go back to that Promoting Sora link we talked about earlier. This is the area that has undergone an extensive update (and, dare we say, a huge glow up?). We’ll head there and go through each one of the new tabs that you’ll find.

Sora Must-Haves

Your first stop in the Sora Promotional section is our Sora Must-Haves tab, where you’ll find everything that you need to get started with your Sora promotion. Short on time and can only explore one tab? Make it this one! You can grab general Sora graphics, new-user resources, content-specific graphics to promote your collection, and more.

Does your school have a social media presence? Or, maybe you want to start one, but it’s overwhelming? Well, we’ve got a whole list of starter posts for you here! Simply copy and paste the text and download the corresponding graphic. Easy!

Seasonal

Next up on our journey is our new Seasonal tab – and I’m SO excited to make this one available to all of our users.

Do you like to plan ahead? Then this one is for you! You no longer need to wait for monthly or seasonal updates to grab timely graphics. Now, they’ll live here all year long. If they get updated, you’ll find the new versions here, too.

  • You’ll find our most current campaign on the banner and “Popular Now” sections at the top (right now, it’s showcasing School Stars – have you entered?).
  • After that, you’ll find kits that are appropriate for any season of the year.
  • Then, you’ll find carousels for Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. Are you looking for a Spring Break graphic? Just head to the Spring section. Looking ahead to the 4th of July? Scroll to the Summer section.

Print Materials

Do you need to print something out? That’s when you’ll head to our Print Materials tab. This is where you’ll find flyers, posters, bookmarks, stickers and more. If you can print it, it’ll be here!

Do you like to flex your creative muscles and customize your promotional items? This is also where you’ll find our Canva templates, which are ready for you to customize to better fit your school.

Activities

So far, we’ve talked about materials to promote your Sora collection to your school community but what about engaging your students? Enter the Activities tab.

Here you’ll find – you guessed it – activities for all age levels. We’ve got Sora coloring pages, reading challenges, a Sora scavenger hunt (great for orientation time!) and more! We know that reading itself is fun, but it never hurts to add more fun to the mix.

One activity your teachers will love? Our Book Creator interactive book report template! Everything you need to get started is on this page along with all of the other fun activities.

Global Languages

Do you have students (or caregivers) whose first language is something other than English? Head to the Global Languages tab to quickly see resources available in other languages, plus links to our Global Schools landing page where you can find even more.

Keep your eyes on this tab, as we’re actively working to add more materials in other languages in the coming months.

We hope you have fun promoting your Sora collection! We love providing you with the tools you need to have reading success and hope that these upgrades will help you better prepare ahead and find exactly what you’re looking for.