EPIC is an initiative between the Ministry of Education and New Zealand libraries. It gives New Zealand schools free access to a range of electronic resources.
Would your students enjoy browsing the latest copy of New Zealand Geographic, or New Scientist magazine? What about daily copies of our major newspapers?
As a teacher you have free access to a range of online resources from around the world to share with your students.
EPIC (Electronic Purchasing In Collaboration) is a consortium of New Zealand library and information organisations managed through the National Library of New Zealand that have joined together to buy collective access to a wide range of quality e-resources.
The Ministry of Education is a member of EPIC and annually subscribes to a range of e-resources through the consortium in order to make them freely available to all New Zealand schools.
What e-resources are freely available to all New Zealand schools through EPIC?
There is a wide variety of high-quality curriculum related content that can be accessed from the 24 e-resources available through EPIC.
These range from full-text magazines and newspapers, to biographies, encyclopaedia and other reference works. The available content also includes books and images, and sound and video clips.
For a full list and description of what’s available, schools can download an EPIC e-resources in 2015 guide(external link)
This is the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica, presented in a safe, up-to-date and age-appropriate manner. Britannica School offers encyclopaedia articles, journals and periodicals, curriculum aligned multimedia learning resources and games.
This resource provides up-to-date, full-text access to most major daily New Zealand newspapers, as well as a huge collection of popular international magazines, including: Time, Newsweek, New Scientist, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated and much more.
This resource includes topical overviews and point of view articles on major contentious social, political and technology issues. It’s an especially useful resource for teaching debating skills.
As the online version of the world’s most authoritative and comprehensive dictionary of English, this is a very useful resource. It also includes a timeline function so that you can chart the history of a word.
These include Science In Context, Scientific American, World History In Context, Literature Resource Centre, Oxford Music Online and Oxford Art Online.
A new addition to EPIC in 2015 is the New Zealand Geographic archive, which provides online access to the entire digital library of this magazine, which dates back to 1989. Current issues are added as they are published.
Your school will need its own login to access the databases.
BY Education Gazette editors
Education Gazette | Tukutuku Kōrero, reporter@edgazette.govt.nz
Posted: 10:42 pm, 7 September 2015
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