Navigating the IRIS Website

Transcript: Navigating the IRIS Website

Welcome to the IRIS Center, a federally funded, national center dedicated to improving the educational outcomes of all children, especially struggling learners and those with disabilities. We provide free online resources for college and university faculty, professional development providers, and practicing educators or independent learners. These resources translate research into easy-to-understand information that is user-friendly and engaging.

As I scroll down our Homepage, you can see information about our center and links to the most popular areas of the site: our IRIS Resource Locator and the Professional Development section. Below that are IRIS Stories—brief articles that share the many different ways in which professionals utilize IRIS resources to increase their own knowledge and skills so as to improve student outcomes. Further down are links to some of our Featured Resources, such as newly posted products. By scrolling further down, you can see recent center announcements and find out more about upcoming events. Finally, we encourage you to connect with us through your favorite social media and our e-newsletter.

Let’s go back up to the top of our Homepage and take a little tour. As we move around, keep in mind that this IRIS logo link will always bring you back to the Homepage. Moving to the right, you’ll see tabs to the five main areas of the IRIS Website. The first section is “Resources.” In this section, you’ll find the IRIS Resource Locator that I mentioned earlier, which is the search engine that helps you find the resources you need. You’ll also find tools to help you identify evidence-based practices, IRIS resources about high-leverage practices, and listings of films and books that feature characters with disabilities.

The remaining resources in this section, with the exception of the Website Navigation Videos page, have a left navigation bar that contains the same links as the top “Resources” tab. This provides you with an additional navigation option. We have additional products to support the work of college and university faculty members. Here, you can get information on using our modules and case studies in college courses. You can also access resources like Wrap-Around Concept Maps that highlight supporting resources for modules and case studies that allow you to go broader or deeper on the topic, Coursework Planning Forms, including a Syllabus Planning Form, and more. 

Below the “For Faculty” section in our left-side navigation bar, you will see that we also have products to support the work of state-, district-, and school-level professional development providers. You will find information on using our modules and case studies in professional development activities and trainings, as well as Learning Pathways that have been designed to help states and districts develop a structured plan for PD and personalized learning. Here, you can also access resources like Wrap-Around Content Maps, a Sample Professional Development Activity Collection, Planning Forms, and more.

Finally, there are more videos like this one to help you navigate the different areas of our Website, information on new resources and those that are to be posted soon, and a glossary of disability-related terms.

The next  section of our site is the “PD Options” section. We currently have two professional development options. In the first, learners can earn a certificate for professional development hours by completing one of our online modules. This is one of the few places on the IRIS site where you will be required to set up an account with a username and password.

Our second PD option, the IRIS+ School & District Platform, allows groups of educators to earn certificates of completion while providing school leaders with an administrative dashboard. The dashboard has options for monitoring educator PD progress, sorting and viewing results, sending reminder emails, and exporting the data for accountability purposes.

The next section of our site is the “Articles and Reports” section. Here, you can find titles and annotations to over 50 peer-reviewed articles in which IRIS is mentioned. There are also conference proceedings, articles in magazines and newsletters, and more. This section also contains internal and external IRIS reports, information on learner outcomes, and the archives for the “IRIS Stories” and “News and Events” features from the Homepage.

Going back to the top tabs, in the “About IRIS” section of the site is where you can find out more about who we are, what we do, and how to contact us.

The final tab, “Help and Support,” includes various methods for contacting us if you need technical support for both the open access Website and for the PD options. We also provide information on the many accessibility features throughout the site.

At this point, I’ll click on the IRIS icon to return to the Homepage. We have additional videos explaining how to use our IRIS Resource Locator, demonstrating how to navigate an IRIS Module, how to earn a PD Certificate, and more. We encourage you to watch those videos and then spend some time exploring our site and the many resources we have to offer.