GCF Teacher Guides: How to Use Our Tutorials

Lesson 1: How to Use Our Tutorials

How to use our tutorials

This guide was created to give teachers and service providers a starting point for using our tutorials. You may already refer people to our site for self-paced, independent learning. This guide will help you use our content to supplement your own programs, tutorials, and courses.

How you use our tutorials will depend largely on your organization’s capabilities and the needs of the populations you serve. We’ve found that there are as many ways to use our content as there are organizations using it. Some organizations take a largely hands-off approach; others choose to integrate our tutorials into their own instructor-led classes.

Here are some examples of ways a group could use our tutorials to provide instruction.

Textbook method: These would be instructor-led classes that include original curriculum but use our site as a textbook for both the teacher and students.
Self-paced tutorial method: Students follow a particular course of study at their own pace, either at home or in a computer lab. At class meetings, the instructor checks assignments and offers help to students who need it.
Independent study with assignments: These would be independent study classes or meetings where students read our tutorials and complete original assignments on their own. At an instructor-led lab time, students ask questions and get help starting new topics. This method is a good one to use if you know many or most of your students do not have a computer or Internet access outside the classroom.

These are just a few examples, but the possibilities are nearly endless. Let us know how you use our site by contacting us.

Terms of use for our tutorials:

All of the content on the GCFLearnFree.org website is copyright protected. You may use, print, and download our content for educational purposes, as long as the content is not distributed publicly (distributing in the classroom or privately is fine), content is not altered or transformed in any way, GCFLearnFree.org® is acknowledged as the owner and copyright holder of the content, and a link is provided to our website.

If you are interested in using our content, you can complete the Application to use GCFLearnFree.org Content form.

Still have questions? Check out our FAQs!

Classrooms without reliable Internet access:

If your classroom does not have reliable Internet access, you can print out the lessons. Most lessons have a printer icon in the top-right corner of the screen. Clicking this icon will show you all the pages of that lesson on one screen, which you can then print out for yourself or your students.

Unfortunately, there is no way to print the entire tutorial at once; you will need to print each lesson separately. It’s also important to be aware that some of the tutorials are more than 100 pages long when printed in their entirety, so you may want to be selective about which lessons you print.

Classrooms where YouTube is blocked:

Because our video tutorials are hosted on YouTube, you may not be able to view them from places where YouTube is blocked. If your school or organization blocks YouTube, here are some alternative ways to access our videos.

Use our offline site: We've developed downloadable versions of many of our lessons, including their associated videos. If you'd like access to these, simply fill out our Terms of Use form and someone will be in touch with you shortly!
Access the videos through another website: If you don’t want to download the videos or don’t have Internet access outside of school, you may be able to view the videos in school by typing their URLs into websites like SafeShare.TV and ViewPure.
Try convincing your organization to allow it: Some organizations are able to whitelist, or allow, certain websites. You might be able to persuade them to whitelist our YouTube Channel.