Ahead of the Curve in Alberta

Providing Digital Resources for K-12 Students and Educators

| By Andrea Drouillard, Director, K-12 and Public Libraries, and Martin Petz, Subscription Renewal Specialist |

Education has changed forever e-learning resources for hybrid and remote learning are critical now and will continue to be in the future.

The Alberta Library (TAL) was ahead of the curve in providing access to digital resources from Gale for K-12 students through the Online Reference Center (ORC), including National Geographic Kids, Gale In Context: Science, and Gale In Context: Canada.

During the last year, students in Alberta have accessed those three resources more than 100,000 times and have retrieved more than 50,000 documents.

The most popular resource for elementary schoolers is National Geographic Kids, which includes an exciting monthly magazine full of fun features, facts, and photos, as well as hundreds of eBooks, videos, and pictures. 

Gale In Context: Science is a popular resource for high schoolers. It includes full-text articles from reference sets, journals, and magazines, as well as experiments, simulations, and more. The Advanced Search feature enables librarians and teachers to search by content type:

Lorisia MacLeod, ORC coordinator for The Alberta Library, likes that all Gale In Context databases have the same layout and interface, making it easy for students, parents, librarians, and educators to move from one database to another. Better yet, the Gale databases are available 24/7—from anywhere with an internet connection, on any device.

Gale is excited to partner with The Alberta Library for their Discovery Link Program to offer special pricing for additional Gale resources if Alberta educators wish to add content to:

• Bridge the gap between the library and classroom with Gale In Context: For Educators. To ensure that Alberta teachers can use For Educators tools to align resources to their curriculum, Gale added the Alberta Program of Studies Standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies to the For Educators platform. As those standards are revised in the coming years, For Educators will continue to keep the standards in the platform up to date.
• Enhance professional learning with Gale eBooks collections from top publishers, like ASCD, Corwin, Dave Burgess Consulting, ISTE, NSTA, Solution Tree, Stenhouse & Times 10 Publications.
• Support other curricular areas, like environmental studies, world history, chemistry, English language arts, or social studies. 

Contact your Gale education consultant or email The Alberta Library to optimize The Alberta Library e-learning resources.

Meet the Author



Andrea Drouillard is a sales director for K‒12 and public library markets at Gale. She’s a mom, music lover, lipstick hoarder, gardener, and street art enthusiast who is always happiest by the water.

Follow @AndreaD_EdTech

Meet the Author



Martin X. Petz Jr. is the renewal specialist for K‒12 at Gale. Currently in his fourth year, Martin finds joy in helping teaching professionals grow their resources to assist with all levels of learners. In his free time, he enjoys making songs and playing brass instruments for his church and any jazz gigs he can get his hands on. Martin loves hearing customer success stories after using essential products, like Cameron’s Collection on Gale eBooks or Gale In Context.