Thing 16 My Pick: Novel NY Databases

I attended a one day workshop back in September about the NOVEL NY databases. I am scheduled to present this information to teachers in March during a faculty meeting, but I have not had a chance to organize the information into a 45 minute presentation. I took this opportunity to do so. Novel NY was started by NYS librarians in the 1990's to offer a state wide resource. Since NYS has a state library, we receive grants and funding for the databases. It seems like it is free to NYS residents, but taxes really support the NYS institutions. Librarians across NYS decide what databases are included each year. The first set of databases are provided by Gale Cengage Learning. I have tailored the presentation to my teacher's needs. The General Science Collection will be used for the Environmental Chemistry students to do their Oil Spill research.  The Health Reference Center may be used by Physical Education teachers and Health teachers for articles related to nutrition, health, and exercising. New York State Newspapers and Newsstand may be used by any teachers wishing to find newspaper articles for research or current events. The Social Studies/History teachers may benefit from US History Online, World History Online, and the War & Terrorism Collection. Guidance Counselors may find the Vocation & Careers Collection useful. A new database to the Novel collection is Opposing Viewpoints in Context. To get ideas for research, there is a Browse Issues tab which lists all the topics with information available in the database. There is a tab for Resources which provides resources for teachers, students,and librarians; a tab for Curriculum Standards allowing the teacher to browse articles according to which standard the article addresses; Citation Tools to assist the student in developing a proper Works Cited; and Advanced Search to look for a specific document type. Another new database to Novel this year is the Lincoln Library. This is very easy to navigate and the information provided is basic. Some topics covered are Biography, American History, Mythology and Science. One of the new ProQuest databases is Gannett Newspapers. We have access to 6 ProQuest databases, so by doing a power search all of them are searched at the same time. Click on the Publication tab to see all the publications that are indexed withing the ProQuest Databases. Teachers find this particularly useful when looking for a specific educational journal. The lase database is Grolier. The High School Tab has a News Desk with scrolling headlines, Our World offers interactive maps, Newspapers from all over the world. These international newspapers are useful for looking at different points of view on a topic. Pro Con offers two sides of debate topics. Lands and Peoples offers Culture Cross which compares statistics of two countries. The Educator tab leads to Go Tube which can be browsed for videos; Lesson Plans can be searched by standards, grade level, and subject--offers maps and printable organizers. There are other databases provided by NOVEL NY, but these are primarily the ones my teachers will find most helpful for their curriculum.

Thing 15: App-palooza

I do not have a Smart phone, nor do I have access to iPads. I did, however, read many of the articles and clicked on links to view how the Apps work. I started with "Library in Your Pocket". My students use Destiny, Easy Bib and Gale resources, so those Apps may apply to my students. We do have a Bring Your Own Device program in our school that has been approved for individual teachers/ classrooms. It has not been approved for the library, however, because of the space my students occupy and concerns about supervision. I am sure it would be okay for me to discuss the Apps, but students will not have access to the Wifi to download the apps while in school. I looked at the AASL Best Apps for Teaching and Learning. I passed along the information about Shakespeare in Bits-Hamlet to the English teachers. I printed and shared the Pedagogy Wheel linking Apps to Bloom's Taxonomy. This will help the teachers who do use devices in their classrooms to see what links to the standards. I read 43 Apps, Games and Websites and passed on the info about the Virtual Math Manipulatives Library to the chair of the Math department. I read Tools and Apps for School Libraries. I passed on the information of How to Make a Book Trailer to my district's librarians.I also printed out 100+ Google Tricks for Teachers and plan to use some of them with my classes that are using the library this week. This was not my favorite module, but I did learn some useful ways to use Apps in an education setting.