Realia

Realia is real life objects that have been been brought into the library media center or classroom to be used as teaching tools. Realia is a perfect way to bring the world to the students. It provides hands on knowledge of the concept you are trying to teach. 

Advantages 

-Provides hands-on learning

-It can come from a wide variety of places

-Relatively easy to obtain

-Very beneficial to classroom instruction

-Holds student interest

-Multiple classrooms can use it

Disadvantages

-Some pieces can be very fragile

-Not enough storage space

-Not easy to clean

-Some items are to expensive to handle or obtain

-Some items are not safe to handle

Implications for Collection Development

Realia is a wonderful learning tool. However, more care is required for many of these items. Be careful in what you coose to keep. It needs to pertain directly to the curriculum or have a definte instructional purpose. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of neat clutter. Storage for these items needs to be somewhere where the items can stay clean and accumulate the least amount of dust. Finding realia that directly correlates with the classroom instruction is still hard to beat.

Copyright Considerations

Most of these type items are not copyrighted. However, some may have patents which would not allow you to reproduce or copy the item in any way.