Teachers' Centre: User's Guide

Museums are a vital part of Canada's learning infrastructure. The VMC Teachers' Centre is your gateway to the wealth of educational resources they have made available online. You can count on these materials and events to be consistently trustworthy and authoritative, the product of knowledgeable museum professionals dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Canada's rich and diverse heritage. Here you will find three tools to help you engage and inspire your students:   Learning with Museums This one-of-a-kind, bilingual search engine helps you find educational materials available on Canadian museum Web sites. You can use a wide range of criteria - including age, subject and curriculum areas - to locate useful lesson plans, activities, exercises, games, online exhibits and more. If you already have a particular field of study in mind, click on one of the listed subjects on the right of the screen to launch an immediate search. To embark on a more customized search, click on Learning with Museums instead, call up the search form and set your own criteria. You can also browse the catalogued materials according to intended audience, teaching methods, keywords, etc. What's On You have seen what museums have to offer online, now see what is happening offline! Museums are constantly organizing events for their communities, many of them developed specifically with children and teenagers in mind. What's On is a wonderful tool for teachers planning a field trip, providing information about upcoming lectures, demonstrations, special exhibits and other educational events featured at nearby museums. This Week in History This service is provided through a partnership with Parks Canada, the custodian of Canada's national parks and historic sites. Each week, the authoritative summary of a defining event in Canadian history is posted on this page. All summaries, the first of which dates back to January 1998, are kept in an easily accessed online archive. Explore the VMC We have done the searching for you. We have put together some thematic pages based on content-rich areas on the VMC. We have also gathered some related resources from other institutions. Remember, the rest of the VMC constitutes an incredible resource for teachers too! Consider using MY Personal Museum for class assignments, and be sure to keep up-to-date with the latest developments by becoming a VMC friend!