Learn New Technologies in the LRC

Let us help you with your technology needs.

• Would you like to read a book on your Kindle, Tablet or Smart Phone?  We can help you get started using Overdrive from your device.

• Do you have a documented learning disability? We can help set up your free membership to Book Share.

• Can't access Power School, My Big Campus or Google Drive?  We can help

MLA Citations: Tweets, eBooks and More

Occasionally, students will ask the LRC staff for help citing some sources that are not always cited in most citation style guides. These include status updates on Facebook or Twitter, E-Mail,  eBooks, Wikipedia, and YouTube videos. This week I will show you some examples just in case you have to cite them in your own research.

Our citation building program, NoodleTools, can handle these type of citations for you or use the models below for a guide. I have included notes about NoodleTools for each one.

Remember: Make sure to put in the proper spacing and other formatting for the citations (double spaced and indented)

E-mail

Maier, Paul L. "Washington's Crossing of the Deleware." 7 May 2012. E-mail. 

NoodleTools: Choose E-Mail.

eBook

 McCullough, David. 1776. New York: Simon, 2005. EPUB file. 

NoodleTools: Choose Book. Then choose the eBook file tab. 

Twitter

 PocketHistory. "Minutemen. American Revolution soldiers." 4 Nov. 2012, 3:30 AM. Tweet. .

NoodleTools: Choose Microblog. Choose the name of the network under the Name of Microblog option.

YouTube

Green, John, prod. Tea, Taxes, and the American Revolution: Crash Course World History #28. YouTube. YouTube, 2 Aug. 2012. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. .

NoodleTools: Choose Video Clip (Online). 

Wikipedia

"Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Mar. 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. . 

NoodleTools: Choose Reference Source. Then choose the Web Site tab. Finally, choose the E-publication (born digital) option.

Schoolwork on a Flexible Schedule: 3 tools for creating online assignments

One of the great things about technology in the classroom is that it can free you and your students up and give you more flexibility in how to deliver instruction as a teacher. As a student, there is the possibility of being to deal with your schoolwork when and how you want (as long as you complete it on tine).

For today's tech tip, I wan to introduce three tools teachers can use to deliver online lessons to students that also allow the teacher to customize, deliver and collect assignments through the web.

Mentormob is a relatively new website on the educational technology scene. The site allows you to create a learning playlist.A teacher (or student). For each step of the playlist, you add a site, file, YouTube video for the learner to view or read. You can also add a pop quiz for each step with multiple choice or true/false questions. I don't believe you can collect the results from learners (at least for free), but learners can get instant feedback on their progress. Once you create a playlist, you can also embed it on a blog or website for others to find and use it.

 Most WEGO  teachers who use Discovery Education Streaming use it to share video content with their own class. But you might not have known that you can also build assignments around specific video clips. You can add assignment directions and questions, quizzes and other content. Once you create the assignment, you can assign it to your a whole class or individual members. You generate a code that students can use to login to the site and complete the assignment. All the work is collected through the site and dropped into your account for grading.

We introduced My Big Campus this year as a tool for creating a virtual classroom for teachers to post announcements, post class materials, etc. But you can also the Schoolwork feature to  create an assignment or a quiz for students. There are a lot of features for customizing the assignment, such as attaching YouTube videos and other content to questions. If the questions are multiple choice, short answer or true/false, you can even have the the program grade the assignment for you. All results are collected and added to your teacher account.

Questions? Let us know.

Tech Tues: Keeping Time

Sometimes we need a timer whether were keeping a class on task or creating interactive presentations requiring the audience to interact with each other such as “Think, Pair and Share”.  Online Stop watch.com offers a variety of timers such as the classic stop watch, egg timers and even a quirky bomb.

Timers can be embedded into a Power Point slide by first saving the picture of the timer you would like to use and insert it into your Power Point presentation. Next link the picture to the online timer you have chosen, make sure to insert the full screen link this way during your presentation it will only take a second to set the time interval. Try this Egg timer by Online Stop Watch.com.

Many of you are creating Google sites, Blogs & My Big Campus sites to communicate with your students, parents and organizations . Time and Date.com offers a plethora of free clocks and timers to embed on your webpage. After selecting the best clock for your purpose, it can be custom made as the Summer Vacation count down  below. Once your clock is selected and custom designed to fit your website Time and Date.com  provides  the free html code to copy and paste into your website.

                             
 Staying on time and making each day count!

A More Accessible Internet

As everyone knows, the Internet is a great resource for finding a ton of information for academic or personal purposes. But such a great resource has its problems too. Use a search engine and what gets returned? A fire hose blast of information comes your way. And information you do find can be too difficult for some of us to read. There are no controls on reading levels or quality of the information (you know, like books have!).

So this week, I thought I would share some tools for helping to tame information overload and help make web content more accessible.

Sound Gecko
If a website is too difficult to read, or if you just don't have time, there are plenty of sites that will read you the content of a site, but this one is pretty user friendly. Sign up for a Sound Gecko account with your e-mail address. Then copy and paste the URL of a page you want read out loud into your account. You will get a link in your e-mail to an mp3 file that has an audio version of the text. You can also get extensions for your web browser or a mobile app to use with the account so you can skip the whole copying and pasting thing.

Readibility
Most websites have too much clutter that gets in your way (e.g. ads), or a complicated layout or small or unreadable font or other issue. Readibility does two things well. So you find a website you like. You don't have time to read it now and it is to hard to read for one of the reasons mentioned above. Just click the readability bookmarklet that you put in your favorites bar. Readibility reformats the page with a white background, and readable black type and not ads or other clutter..You can adjust the layout, font properties and background. Even better, if you don't have time to read it now, you can click the read it later button and store it in your Readibility account and access it later.

Wiki Summarizer
Wikipedia articles are great timesaver if you want a quick overview of a topic. But if your are not a great reader, the amount of text can be overwhelming and out of your reach.  Instead, type your keywords into Wiki Summarizer. The program distills the article into a summary of the main points and gives you several options for presenting the summaries.

Instagrok
Starting a research project can be daunting. You might not know anything about your topic. That is where Instagrok comes in. If you type your initial topic into the search box and you get a visual breakdown of related keywords on the left. Click on any keywords and get a new set. On the right, results are broken down into categories starting with fast facts about your topic. Use a slider at the top to change the difficulty level of the results  There are a lot of features here, and the interface can be difficult to navigate at first, but this is a powerful tool.

My Big Campus: Setting Up Your Profile & Notifications

If you are using My Big Campus for class, either as a student or a teacher, you will want to take a few minutes and set up your account information, including notifications and a little bit to personalize your profile.

Notification Preferences

If you want to receive a message by e-mail or text message whenever there is activity on your My Big Campus account (or you don't), you need to set your notifications preferences.

Note: You will always get notifications for all of these items at the top of your My Big Campus page.  But if you are not on your account every day, or if you don't want to miss anything, you might set these up.

1. Click the account settings link.
2. Click the Edit Notification Preferences link.

3. Check the items you want to receive notifications about by e-mail.
4. Check the items you want to receive notifications about by text message (SMS). You might want to think twice if you don't have unlimited text messages on your account.

Click Save.

Account Settings

5. Click the account settings link.
6. Click the Edit Account Information link.

7. Type a few sentences about yourself to personalize your profile. Remember that this is a school account profile. Only include classroom appropriate information.

8. If you checked e-mail notification preferences in the notification preferences section, make sure to include   an e-mail address that you check often. If you don't you won't receive any e-mail notifications.

9. If you checked text message notifications, make sure to include your mobile number. Don't worry, your e-mail and phone number won't be visible to others.

10. If you add your phone number, make sure to choose your cell phone company too.

11. If you want to add a profile picture, you can upload it here. Make sure it is school appropriate.

12. If you don't want a photo, you can also choose from multiple versions of the My Big Campus icon.

Tuesday Tech Tip: Getting Organized

Happy New Year CHS!

Did you include a New Year’s Resolution to get organized? Today’s tech tip will help you organize your Desk Top, by creating new folders in My Documents. Toward the end of every semester student files begin to pile up on the Desk Top and My Documents areas. By following the steps below, you can quickly organize your computer. This will leave you feeling great and your computer running more effieciently without breaking into a sweat! (Sweating is for another New Years resolution)

Open My Documents and right click anywhere on the white space and you will see a pop up window, scroll down to New and select Folder. Name your new folder by class or assignment.  Be sure to label your new folders with enough information so it's easy to find later.

Create folders within folders and move your desk top files into your My Documents folder to really clean up!  Here's a short You Tube video with tips to help clean up your My Documents Folder.

 

My Big Campus for Students: An Overivew

Our school recently signed up for a service called My Big Campus. It is kind of like Facebook for schools. In other words, it is a social network that you can use to communicate with other students or teachers, including writing on their wall or message them, create a photo album and other cool features. There is also a calendar where you can keep track of assignments and where teachers can share important dates with you.

But there are a few features that are unique to schools. Teachers can create lessons online, send them to students and grade them all online. There is also a virtual classroom that My Big Campus refers to as a group. Club sponsors and coaches could also use these as places to share information, have discussions, post a class syllabus or upload class handouts. These groups are private by default, so no one outside of your class can see them.

How Can My Big Campus help me here at school?

If your teacher has decided to use the program in your class,, then you probably know some of the benefits. You can send a message to your teachers any time Your teacher can post class notes, important dates, resources you can download if you lose them, just to name a few of the features. If none of your teachers, coaches or club sponsors use the program yet, please let them know about it. 

Here is a quick tour of the menu.

1. Activity Wall: Write on your wall or on the walls of other WEGO students or staff. Please remember that all posts are public to everyone at school.

2. Conversations: Private messaging to other students or staff. Note: Nothing is really private, so please be appropriate.

3. Schoolwork: This is where you will find or submit lessons from teachers.

4. Your Stuff: This is your virtual storage locker. Upload files less than 100 megabytes, but there is unlimited storage space.

5. MBC Documents: Create documents and share with others so they can edit them as well.

6. Calendar: Keep track of important dates or see events sent to your by your teachers.

7. Blog: Create a blog. Others can follow it or you can follow theirs.

8. Profile: Access your profile, create photo albums, see who is following your wall or who your are following.

9. Groups/People: Click on Groups to see groups you belong to. Click on People to see people in your class or to see other people associated with you.

10: My Big Campus Logo / Home: Click on the logo or Home button to get back to your home screen.

11. Search Box: Search through all My Big Campus materials you have access to as a student. Look up school topics, people, groups, etc.

12. Notifications: Anytime someone writes on your wall, send you a message or assigns schoolwork, you will get a notification here.

13. Quick Links: Create links to commonly accessed pages that are not already on the menus.

14. Account Settings: Click here to access your settings and account information.

Getting Started

To get started, go to the My Big Campus website.

Click on the Login link. 

Use the same username and password you use for the school network.

Click on the school field and type in Community High School 94 and select it in the options.

Three New Specialized Search Tools to Check Out

Google is great for doing most searches, but sometimes you need a specialized search tool to get the job done right. Here are three promising and interesting new tools that you might want to try out for yourself. 

Symbolab 
http://symbolab.com/
Symbolab is a search engine that searches for math and science content. Sure, you say, Google does that. But Symbolab searches for equations, formulas and expressions using mathematical symbols and scientific notations. And it can do full text searches as well. In other words, you can look for solutions, exercises and contextual information about a specific formula or you can look up information about, for example, quantum mechanics. Check out their home page for some sample searches.

Kitchen PC
http://www.kitchenpc.com/
KitchenPC is recipe search engine. Yep, there are other specialized tools out there that search for recipes (including Google's recipe search tool). KitchenPC not only searches a bunch of  recipe sites to get the results, but you can also put in ingredients you already have and get matching recipes. Or tell it what ingredients to avoid. Narrow your search using a number of other options, such as skill level, diet, taste and time. Build menus and get a shopping list.

 Art.sy 
http://art.sy/
Ok, you are looking for some art, but you don't quite know who or what to look for. After all, you're not an Art History professor, right? You can search for specific artists, works, movements, techniques, or regions. Or if you don't have something specific in mind, you can use the browse feature. From your search results or when looking at specific works, Art.sy gives you tools and suggestions for narrowing the search or finding related works. They may not have all the works by specific artists, but you can also follow specific artists and get notified when new works are added to their database.

Tech Tip: Microsoft Outlook: Rules For Your Inbox

This week's tech tip explains how to use the Rules feature in Microsoft Outlook 2010 to automatically organize messages as they come into your inbox. Create a rule to automatically delete, categorize, flag or put message sin a folder.

Tech Tuesday: Three Simple Solutions Using Google

Try these three simple solutions to help make your life easier, thanks to our friends at Google.

Need the definition of a word at your fingertips? Try Google’s Define Feature. In the search box type define followed by the word you want to define and Google will provide you with the definition.

Ever wonder what the weather’s like just outside your door or anywhere? Try Google’s Weather Feature. In the search box type weather and add your zip code or city and instantly you will have a weather report for that area.

Calculating simple to complex problems can be done using Google’s Calculator. Use Google calculator to convert measurements and currency. See Nancy Blachman's Google Reference Guide for additional uses.

Tech Tip: Can I Use Wikipedia for My Research Paper? It's Complicated.

You will this statement many times in your high school career: Don't use Wikipedia for your research project! It's not reliable!

What they mean to say is…

What teachers and librarians usually mean is don't use Wikipedia as a cited source in your paper. Because it can be edited by anyone, there is a good chance it contains incorrect or biased information. It is probably okay to use as a starting point to get an overview of your topic, but don't stop there. For a more detailed explanation of why you shouldn't rely on or cite Wikipedia in your project, check The Top Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia on the Finding Dulcinea website.

But Wikipedia  is still a great research tool…

Wikipedia, as well as other general encyclopedias from the LRC, should not be your only source in a paper. Unless your teacher tells you otherwise, use an encyclopedia only as a starting point for your research.

1. Get an overview of your topic. Use an encyclopedia article to get basic information about your research topic. Reading a short general article will allow you get the basic facts and generate a list of subtopics you will need to research. Wikipedia excels at topics that are too current to have made it into a library encyclopedia—up to date information about pop culture, technology current events, etc. A Wikipedia article for a national event might be created and totally up to date within the hour of it happening.

2. Look for keywords It is important to generate a list of words that you can use search terms in search engines, LRC databases or the indexes of books. As you skim the article for your topic, look for names, events, places and other topics related to your topic. These will help you expand your research, especially if you get stuck. More detailed information here.

3. Use the references and external links sections. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias articles are relatively short summaries of information form books, magazines, websites, etc. These articles are intended to be a survey or overview of information about the topic. If you are using Wikipedia or an LRC encyclopedia, make sure to check out to articles references section. This is the equivalent of the Works Cited lists or Bibliographies your teachers have probably had you create for your projects. Also check out the external links (in Wikipedia) or suggested sources (or similar category in other sources). Both areas point you to more detailed in-depth information about your topic. Plus, you can cite most of these sources in your paper).

 4. Look out for flagged articles. Since Wikipedia articles can be edited by pretty much anyone anywhere in the world, there are sometimes problems with articles: incorrect information, biased points of view, a lack of citations for information, etc.

Example of a Flagged Article Section:

Article editors try to flag these problems so that users are aware of possible problems. Books and LRC databases from publishing companies have experts write articles and have professional editors carefully check for errors or biases. If you see an article (or section of an article) with a flag, it is probably best to steer clear of the article.

Tech Tip: New LRC Databases for 2012-13

We are excited to announce a few new additions to our lineup of LRC databases for new the school year. Please take a look. If you have any questions, please ask one of our two librarians, Mr. Bodwell or Mrs. Leahy.

World and I School 

World and I started as a magazine in 1986 and later moved online as full fledged database of educational content. We new subscribe to their database of current and previous articles. There is a wide variety of cross curricular content on the site. The site also has a number of other features besides just the magazine content. A summary of the sections is below.

Articles: Search articles from current issue and archives of monthly magazine.

Curriculum Pages: Arts, ESL, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Spanish

Special Collections: In-depth coverage of topics (cultures, biographies, religions, debate topics, history, etc.

Other Features:

• Headlines in Review
• Teacher’s corner
• World Gallery (images)
• crossword puzzles
• country profiles.
• Spanish and ESL reading and comprehension exercises.
• National standards search aligned to articles with teacher’s guides.

Science in Context

This LRC database has a ton of information for science and technology projects. Projects that have to do with science related social issues would also find it helpful. Here is a summary of what you will find there.  

• 150+ comprehensive reference sets
• More than 22,000 topic overviews, 16,000 images and videos, 170+ detailed experiments. 8,100 biographies, 2 dictionaries.
• 1.5 million periodical articles (e.g. Science Weekly, Science News and The Science Teacher)
• National Science Education Standards links
• Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy links
• Customized links to state standards

Grolier Online 

Groliier Multimedia is  made up of three general encyclopedias:  Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana and  La Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre (Spanish Language).  The articles have associated Lexile scores and there are links to magazine and newspaper articles and selected websites. You will also find the following on the site:

•  online video and images
• clickable maps
• dictionaries
• pro/con articles
• today in history.
• links to world newspapers.

Tech Tip: Finding Blogs to Read

Blogs are a great way to learn about new websites, to get a perspective on the news or even get new ideas for the classroom or a hobby. But how do you find new blogs that might be of interest to you? The easiest way is to use a general search engine. Just put in a topic and add the word blog to the search. For example, if I wanted to find a blog about cats, I would just type in: cat blogs. This method may not yield the best results though.

So for this week's tech tip, I will show you five more ways to find a cool new blog that might be worth your time.

Blogrolls

Blogrolls are lists of blogs that a blogger reccomends to readers. The list is usually in a sidebar on the side of the blog. A blogroll might be divided into categories or it might just be a plain list. Check out the blogroll on Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day.. blog. Scroll down until you see the blogroll on the right column. If you find a blog you like, make sure to check their blogroll.

Webbies & Edublog Awards

People love lists and awards, don't they? We love to rank and rate movies, music, television shows, and yes, websites. Two of the most popular awards for blogs are the Webby Awards and the Edublog Awards. The Webbys are international award reprsenting the best of the web, so they are kind of a big deal.. The Edublog Awards showcase the best education related blogs, nominated and voted on by educators. 

Blog Search Engines & Directories

There are specialized search engines for finding all kinds of content. Directories are collections of websites arranged by topic. They are usually put together by human beings (as opposed to computers, not Internet elves)..These work best when you want to browse for information. Alltop is a great example. Just click on a category or letter to get started. Specialized search engines are good if you want to search for specific content. If a particular blog comes up often in the search results, you might want to explore it further. Google has a specialized blog search interface that just searches the content of blogs.

Be Social

Facebook, Twitter and other social networks have become most people's favorite place to share news stories and cool websites. You can wait for a friend to share something or you can send a message out to your network and ask for suggestions on a specific topic. You might ask your Facebook friends or Twitter followers for their suggestion for their favorite blog about __________ . 

Look in your favorite publication

Magazine and Newspaper editors, as well as morning talk show producers, need to fill up space and time. They want to provide timely, useful information to their audience. The hottest/most useful/best websites or blogs are cheap and easy information to share. Time magazine publishes a list of best website every year. Here is their lsit of the best blogs of 2011. There are plenty of similar year end lists, so watch out for them in December..  

Tech Tip Tuesday Wordle

Wordle could be described as a “toy” that allows users to create a word cloud. A word cloud, also referred to as a “tag cloud is a visual design from the source text. The source text can include but is not limited to:

·         Websites

·         Books

·         Maps.

The design is generated simply and automatically by two ways:  

·         pasting text into a box then click go

·         There is also an option to enter the URL of a blog or website with an RSS feed.

 The cloud that is generated displays the words from the next giving prominence to words that frequently appear in the text. Here is an example Wordle.

Wordle is a useful tool for both educators and students especially in the Web 2.0 World. Wordle fits into the Web 2.0 model because the design of the interface is user centered. The user has the freedom to change:

·          fonts,

·         Layouts

·          colors 

 Another feature of Wordle is that it is a collaborative online tool that is entirely web based. This gives the user the freedom to keep the information published on the web or to remove it if the user chooses.  

If you are an English teacher, starting to read a new text, Wordle could be a great tool for an introductory vocabulary lesson for the text.  The lesson would look like this:

·         Paste the text from the book into the text box.

·         All the words from the text will appear in the cloud. The words that appear most in the text will be the largest appearing words in the cloud.

·         The class could have a discussion about the words in the cloud and have a discussion about new and unique words.

·         Based on the discussion the class could look up unknown words in a dictionary.

·         The class could also try to determine subjects the text might be about.

In a history classroom a teacher teaching a class about current events could paste the URL of a news website that has an atom or RSS feed and Wordle could then display a cloud of the prominently used words within the site.

The class could have a discussion about the words and it could lead to a discussion about the type of information provided on the website.

• The class could have a discussion about the words and then it could lead to a discussion about the type of information provided on the website.
• The class could determine the news stories of the day based on seeing the prominent words.
• The class could go to the site and read the actual news stories and then follow up with a discussion about the actual news stories for that day.    

Down Loading Free Music

Just recently I was asked to build a pathfinder for students that would provide "free music" or sounds that can easily be downloaded from the internet without copyright worries. These sites offer easy downloads and can accessorize any PowerPoint.

Finding music and sounds that are easy to download plus are in the Public Domain or Creative Commons arena are not always easy to find. Here are some of my favorite links that you may find useful: Jamendo  Brainy Betty Presentation Magazine for sound effects and Template Wise Music Loops

Search School: Crafting a Better Keyword Strategy

Last time I talked about how a search engine works behind the scenes to return search results. Please go back and review that post if you haven't read it yet.

Over the next several posts, I want to talk about picking the right keywords for your search so that you get more relevant search results.

Searching for information can be difficult because we often need to find answers for topics we don't know anything about in the first place. The best searchers use focused and specific keywords along with strategies to compensate for what they don't know about their topic.

Over the next several weeks, I will post information about 6 different techniques to help you craft a better keyword strategy.

Here is the list of strategies:
1) Words and phrases, not sentences
2) Use nouns and proper nouns
3) Use unique words
4) Make predictions
5) Start specific and then go general
6) Use your results

Search School: How a Search Engine Works

Welcome to Search School. Today, we begin a series of posts about searching electronic sources more effectively. If you asked around, you would probably find that most people (students and teachers alike) don't know how search engines work. Of course, most folks know how to put a few words in the search box and how to click on results. But they don't know how the search engines or LRC databases do their work behind the scences.

You don't have to be an expert, but having a general idea of how these programs come up with results can help you put together a better search, which leads to better answers. This video from Google gives a basic overview of how their search engine interprets your search and returns results. Although their approach varies slightly from other serach engines and library databases, the concepts are similiar enough.

Video Review

1. A search engine creates an index of web pages that it finds on the web (like a book index). 
2. The index makes note of the words on the page. 
3. When you do a search, the search engine matches the words you type in the search box with information in its index.
4. That means the pages in the search results contain your search words somewhere on the page and the more pages that have your keywords on them, the more results the search engine returns to you.

Next time, we will start a series of posts about how to formulate a better set of keywords.

Tech Tip: Using the Favorites Bar in Internet Explorer

Do you have websites that you use frequently, but when you add them to your Favorites menu, they get lost or forgotten? In today's tech tip, we show you how to use the Favorites Bar in your browser to access sites you visit daily (or more often) with just one click.



Tech Tuesday: Digital Story Telling

Want to mix it up a bit? Try Mixbook.com A creative and fun way to have your students produce and share their final project. Students can select their own images or use the internet for pictures. The add text feature is simple to use and changing backgrounds will appeal to students creativity.
Pros: Easy to use, free, used to enhance writing skills, fun, creative, visual
Students can use their own pictures or internet pictures

Cons: Students must supply an email account and password, no spell check, must pay to print, need internet access to view book

Here's how CHS Book Club created a Mix book and then posted it to our website so others could view what we've been reading.

Illinois CC Standards K-12.W.R.6 Production and Distribution of Writing: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.