Great ideas for school/public library cooperative programs

ALSC, AASL and YALSA have been collecting examples of great school and public library cooperative programs. In this day and age it’s more important than ever to work together creatively! In addition to seeing the examples that have been submitted, which are well organized by categories such as book discussion books, library card sign up programs, and community reading projects, there’s a form where you can submit your own examples. There’s even a section of cautionary tales. Check it out!

School Public Library Cooperative Programs

Judi

Password Panacea!

Have you ever had an experience like the following:

Navigate to a secure site so you can check your bank statement. Punch in your user name. Try to think of your password. You recall it’s one of 3 or 4 you’ve used recently. So, you try the first, most obvious one that makes sense for this site. You quickly get a pop up box: “Invalid password. Try again.” You suddenly remember that you only have three attempts to get into this site, then you will be blocked out for some undetermined amount of time. So, you rack your brain trying to determine the proper password. After much serious thought, you try the second password. Rats!! “Invalid password. Try again.” OK, you’re down to the wire. The next one must work or you will be caught in the eternal loop of password purgatory. You search the entire house/office for that little sticky note that has 6 of your 49 passwords scratched on it. It is nowhere to be found. After using up all of your life lines, you try one last password. “Invalid password. You’re sunk!” Suddenly, red lights flash, buzzers sound, the room starts spinning, and you realize you are now blocked out! You make a desperate call for help, only to be given an automated system that says, “If you’ve been blocked from our website because you’ve forgotten your password, shame on you!” You then begin to surf the web for a good stress management counselor.

If you are like most computer users these days, password management can become overwhelming at best, a nightmare at worst. Not only do you need secure passwords that no one can duplicate, but you also must actually REMEMBER them all. Many of us have a “cheat sheet” with passwords scratched all over the page, otherwise we would be at a complete loss in getting logged into those secure sites where a huge portion of our lives are stored. However, the sticky note method of remembering password is not recommended if you want the world to remain unable to access your information.

Solution: There are tools available to help us deal with all of the password issues we have for our online communications. One such automated password manager and web form filler that comes highly recommended for PCs is RoboForm. This tool remembers all passwords for you, with total security. Here are some of the features of this tool:

• Provides an autosave for passwords in the browser
• Will autofill passwords into the login form
• Will complete personal info into long registration and checkout forms for any website
• Can generate secure random passwords
• Encrypts passwords and personal data
• Will sync passwords and notes to Palm or Pocket PC
• Provides complete data on all passwords upon request of owner
• Allows for multiple users to be set up
• Can be accessed from any computer if you wish to use RoboForm2Go (portable version of RoboForm) using your USB key

There are many other features to this password management system, and cost is $29.95 for a RoboForm License, with discounts for package deals.

Another tool, HandyPassword, sells for $29.92. Password Manager Deluxe lists for $19.95, with a free 30 day trial. There are still other products/sites that provide such support for password recall and protection, and they are proven to be secure, easy to use, and worth the time investment and minimal cost…just so sanity can be maintained!! Happy searching for the automated password manager that is just right for you!

Phyllis R. Snipes,
University of West Georgia

MLA, NoodleTools, and lots of change

Last year, I spent a great deal of time educating teachers and students about our online databases. We are fortunate in Gwinnett to have access to many. But as I walked around and watched kids either look at a computer screen and then write notecards by hand, or copy and paste random text into Word, I realized something was missing. There was a disconnect between finding the articles they needed and then transferring that info into a usable format. And kids were plagiarizing right and left and didn’t realize it.

I looked at colleges around here and every single one had some sort of online support for the research process. That led me to NoodleTools (via Buffy Hamilton’s suggestion). I convinced the “powers that be” to purchase a subscription to NoodleTools out of technology funds for our school this year. I was hopeful that this would ultimately help students research better and understand how not to plagiarize – once I got kids trained.

Little did I know the training would start the second week of school! I had one teacher who was somewhat resistant, 4 classes, 2 of them ESOL, and little time to prep. But we made it through. And though a tool like NoodleTools takes a good bit of one-on-one training, by the end of the week I had won over 3 teachers, students of all ability levels, and myself. I was worn-out, but happy knowing that perhaps I helped kids become better researchers. Even just a little bit.

I still have paper MLA resources in the library and on our webpage- from works cited to an example essay to parenthetical citations – all of which NoodleTools does. I think I’d be remiss to not appeal to the kids who find something like NoodleTools overwhelming, especially during this year of trying NoodleTools out for the first time. However,  I think the majority of kids will want to use this once exposed to it. As the teacher who was resistant at the beginning of the week said, “While I would rather take notes on notecards, these kids would rather take notes on the computer. They are picking it up quickly and working faster than if we were doing traditional notecards.”

And though this sounds like an advertisement for NoodleTools, I really just wanted to share that I’ve found what works for me to help teachers and students with research and the disconnect between finding articles and taking notes. This program gives me an “in” with teachers – something tangible that lightens their load and helps students. And that is a good thing.

Holly Frilot

Collins Hill High School

Live at Noon Today: Web 2.0 Start Pages as RSS Readers and other Ramblings

Classroom 2.0 LIVE! via kwout

Here is a topic of special interest from Classroom 2.0; if you can’t attend live, the session will be recorded, and you can watch at a time that works for you!

Date: Sat., August 22, 2009
Time: 9:00am Pacific/10:00am Mountain/11:00am Central/12:00pm Eastern
Location: In ElluminateI at http://tinyurl.com/cr20live (Links to other time zones and meeting room can be found at http://live.classroom20.com/.)

This Saturday, August 22nd, Kim Caise, Lorna Costantini and Peggy George will be hosting another Classroom 2.0 LIVE show. As an extension to the Classroom 2.0 community, Classroom 2.0 “LIVE” shows are opportunities to gather with other educators in real-time events, complete with audio, chat, desktop sharing, and sometimes even video.  A Google calendar of upcoming shows is available at http://live.classroom20.com/calendar.html. If you haven’t used Elluminate before, we encourage you to view this tutorial to prepare for the Elluminate session: Elluminate tutorial video.

The topic this Saturday will be “Web 2.0 Start Pages as RSS Readers and other Ramblings” with special guest Shamblesguru aka Chris Smith. Please join us as Shamblesguru shares examples of start pages, how to create and ways to use them as RSS readers. More information and session details are at http://live.classroom20.com. If you’ve never participated in a live webinar, don’t be afraid to come and observe. ‘Dip your toes in’ the conversations until you feel comfortable enough to “jump into the conversations with both feet”! We want to encourage “experienced Web 2.0 users” to join us by contributing and extending the conversation by sharing real-life examples and tips/suggestions.

On the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! site (http://live.classroom20.com) you’ll find the recordings for our recent “Exploring AllaboutExplorers.com” show with special guests Gerald Aungst and Lauren Zucker. Click on the “Archive” tab to view recordings.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Elluminate, for providing the forum that allows us to do this!

Visit Classroom 2.0 at: http://www.classroom20.com

LMC One Question Survey

A topic definitely on everybody’s mind these days-thanks in advance for your participation!

Hello friends!

Library Media Connection is again collecting data that librarians want to know. Our question this month asks: How has your library funding been affected this school year?.  Please contribute to our data collection efforts and enter a drawing for exciting new professional materials. Completing the survey should take less than a minute of your time. Visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/AugSept09LMC to enter your response before September 30. Thanks for helping Library Media Connection report the data that you, our readers, have requested.

From Gail Dickinson by way of Judi Repman, Associate Editor