The purpose of the New York State Education Department's Virtual Learning System is to encourage the use of the Internet as a tool for teaching and learning and to assist classroom teachers in locating Internet resources for instruction.

VLS offers the full text of New York State's learning standards with their key ideas and performance indicators, as well as alternate performance indicators for students with severe disabilities. It provides resources that classroom teachers can use to support preK-12 standards-based instruction, such as sample tasks, learning experiences and lesson plans.

Start your exploration of the learning standards by choosing a Standard Area on the home page and move through the standards, key ideas and performance indicators. The performance indicator pages feature sample tasks, classroom-level learning experiences and hundreds of Marco Polo lesson plans tied to the specific performance indicator.

The Resources area on the homepage leads to the New York State Library, Museum and Archives, and the Office of Educational Television & Public Broadcasting and public television stations - with more to come from the Office of Higher Education, and the Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities and others in the educational community.

Use the Search function to locate resources from the State Education Department and/or the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM), which provides access to over 40,000 educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites.

We will continue to enhance VLS' content and technological capabilities. Some activities under consideration are offering access to teacher professional development resources and providing opportunities for educators to share their own instructional materials.

Please complete our survey and share your thoughts. Input from teachers and administrators is essential to ensure that VLS becomes a valuable instructional tool in New York State.