Beginning in the 22-23 school year, netTrekker is no longer available for use in BCPS.
Direct Linking
Locate and display a vetted webpage.
Click Copy on the top left toolbar, under the netTrekker logo; the netTrekker URL will be copied to your clipboard and ready to paste into Schoology or elsewhere for student access.
Direct links open in the netTrekker frame, allowing student use of embedded learning supports (read-aloud, dictionary, translation).
Overview
netTrekker delivers more than 330,000 educator-vetted, standards-aligned active learning resources that enable students and teachers to explore digital content quickly and learn differently. netTrekker is the leading educational search tool for schools, trusted by more than 1 million K-12 educators and 27 million students since 2000. netTrekker curates the best educational resources from the web and makes searching safe and effective with unique learning tools to reach every student.
Target Audience: Elementary, Middle, and High School students
Access: Username and password information for BCPS staff and students can be found on the BCPS Digital Content Access Page.
Learning How
Tutorials & Guides
Quick Start Guide: Provides a quick overview of the netTrekker interface.
Also available inside netTrekker from the Video Help Icon, which is found in the User Control section at the top of each netTrekker page. This gives you access to a series of videos designed for your specific role (teacher or student).
Help Button: Provides the user with an index rich with support topics.
Educator Resources
Teacher Home Page: When teachers have registered with a username and password, and switched their user type to "teacher", they are able to search for resources by Standard in the Tools tab.
3. Knowledge Constructor- Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
Features & Learning Supports
Search: Users can search for web content, images, or famous people.
Web Content: Access to 330,000 educator-vetted, standards-aligned active learning resources. This includes websites, databases, images, videos, simulations, and learning games.
Academic Level Toggle: Depending on how you and/or your organization have registered as a netTrekker user, your home page will default to Elementary, Middle or High academic level. Choosing a different academic level will change the context of netTrekker to one that provides suitable websites for the selected grades.
Lexiles/Reading Levels:
Content is rated by a netTrekker Readability score (#2-5); click View Details beside the Readability Score to see corresponding readability measures, including Lexile.
See also netTrekker Readability Measures
Use this Reading Level Correlations chart to match Lexile to grade level.
Text Help (see image below): When you turn on the Text Help Feature in netTrekker, it will open a menu bar at the bottom of the window. The Text Help feature in netTrekker provides text-to-speech functions for all information on netTrekker pages, for text on web resources accessed from any Search Result (through the netTrekker frame), and definitions accessed by using the Dictionary Hot Key.
Read aloud using a highlight-to-read approach, users simply highlight a passage of text using their mouse and press the play button at the bottom of the page to hear the text read aloud through their computer speakers.
The Dictionary/ Translation option allows a user to view the definition of a word (and hear it read when they press the speaker icon), view a picture image and a translation of the word into Spanish.
