About Us

Originally created at the University at Buffalo, NYLearns.org was developed in response to the profound need to assist teachers in understanding and applying a standards-based approach to teaching and learning – and in response to the need to deliver resources to teachers in ways that make the learning standards meaningful and manageable. NYLearns.org also owes its genesis to the need to bring focused and relevant educational resources to parents and children in an “anytime-anywhere” learning environment.

The overarching thrust of NYLearns.org is to identify, organize and deliver educational resources that are aligned to learning standards. A second major thrust of NYLearns is to provide teachers with easy-to-use integrated classroom tools that enhance their teaching effectiveness.

NYLearns.org currently provides:

Access to all NYS Learning Standards, including the Alternate Standards, that are searchable by standard, performance indicator (PI), grade level, subject area, or keyword;
Access to thousands of educational resources and instructional content developed by master teachers and content providers. The content is searchable by keyword or by “drilling down” the standards tree to the performance indicators of the New York State (NYS) Learning Standards;
Resources are aligned to the NYS standard down to the performance indicator level and have been peer-reviewed using the peer-review protocol established by the NYS Academy for Teaching and Learning (NYSATL);
Access to NYLearns’ state-of-the-art tools for teachers;
Access to NYLearns’ admin tool that allows identified district users to access the admin portion of the Curriculum Matrix Tool as well as the User Enrollment Tool. The User Enrollment Tool is used to create teacher accounts and assign user names and passwords by trainers as they conduct turn-key training of teachers from each building;
Access to NYLearns’ Featured Content and the Featured Content Archive;
Updates on all new tools and revisions to NYLearns.org.

Every resource has been aligned to the NYS standard down to the performance indicator level and has been peer-reviewed using the peer-review protocol established by the NYS Academy for Teaching and Learning (NYSATL).

State-of-the-art tools for teachers
Services Included in the Annual Subscription

My Profile

Manage your account information.

My ePortfolio

Store all your digital files, media, and resources by uploading them into your personal electronic filing cabinet.

My Website

Build your own professional classroom website and empower parents and students with access to important information.

My Curriculum

View your district curriculum and build your own customized maps.

Publish your best!

Become an instructional leader by creating and publishing your best work in NYLearns.

Featured Content

New instructional content and educational resources are featured every week to our community of users.

Assessment Builder

Produce customized assessments using questions from past New York State exams.

My Communities

Communicate and collaborate with colleagues in learning communities that are school-based, district-wide, or open to others across NYS.

Admin Tools

Various tools for Administrators.

NYLearns Accounts

Every teacher and administrator within the partnering district will receive a NYLearns account with a unique username and password to the registered environment. Within their accounts, teachers will have full access to all of the tools in the registered environment.

Help Desk

It is essential that classroom teachers be supported in their time of need. The Help Desk provides support via a toll-free phone number as well as online support. Activities include, but are not limited to: helping to create accounts, account support such as forgot password, or answering “How do I…” type questions. Most importantly, the help desk personnel track issues and report errors to the technical team. The help desk personnel serve as a liaison between users and the NYLearns team, by organizing and disseminating comments and feedback.

Content Management – Curriculum and Instruction Specialists

Content Management is a critical component of the NYLearns project. Although the project empowers each user as a potential “content provider,” there is, nevertheless, the need for full-time curriculum and instructional specialists on this project. These qualified individuals are responsible for “content management” including quality control, peer review, as well as playing a role as a liaison to publishing initiatives within participating school districts, cultural and government agencies, and/or institutions of higher education. Support staff within content management includes low-level, yet critical, duties such as fixing broken hyperlinks both internally and externally within NYLearns.

Centralized Web Hosting

Centralized Web Hosting allows participating educators to have access to NYLearns, their individual ePortfolios and websites from any computer with an Internet connection. In addition, each user is provided up to 40 MB of storage for the portfolio and website. Additional storage capacity is available upon request at no additional charge to the partnering district.

Technical Maintenance

The NYLearns technical team consists of application developers, graphic designers, and database managers. They are involved in ongoing maintenance, development, enhancements, and modifications to NYLearns so that the project continues to thrive and grow. Much of this work is based on user feedback and direction given by the project manager and the NYLearns team.