April 21

Weekly Sting 9

Overdue Library Materials
This is not my favorite part of the job, but a necessary one. I need your support in encouraging students to
return overdue materials. We lose a lot of books each year; the longer they sit at home the more likely they get lost or not returned. I’ve sent the list out in email.
Student Research
If you are having your students conduct research it is important that you select appropriate resources for them to use. I would direct you to our subscription databases as a starting point. If there are websites you want to use, be sure to evaluate them first (authority, bias, timeliness, etc.). There are two tools I use to collect Internet links for use with student research: Krunchd.com and Agglom.com.
In both cases, I am happy to search and collect appropriate resources myself to save you that time (and to fulfill what I think is part of my job description).
At any rate, both of the aforementioned tools allow you to easily consolidate links on one page. This saves
students the time it takes to type in the URLs and also helps to keep them focused. You can see two examples of
what I’ve put together using each tool:
http://www.agglom.com/set/50905/Biomes
http://krunchd.com/animals
If you would like assistance in learning to use these tools, please let me know.
List of Online Drawing Tools
http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/graphicsblog/2008/05/16/online-drawing-tools-free-online-painting-sketching-tools/
13 Ways to save at the supermarket
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/may-2009/food/supermarkets/13-ways-to-saveB/supermarkets-13-ways-to-save.htm
BookRags
http://www.bookrags.com/
from the site: “BookRags is the premier research site for students, with over 8.3 million pages of literature
summaries, biographies, literary criticism, essays, encyclopedias, and eBooks sourced from over 100 respected education databases.”
SciVee
http://www.scivee.tv/
from the site:”SciVee is changing the pace at which science is conducted and communicated. As the first Web 2.0 site that enables researchers to combine video with documentation and data in a media rich format, we enable scientists to make their research more visible, shareable, and accessible throughout the research cycle. Using our patent pending “virtual studio” technology, scientists can easily enhance their journal articles with “pubcasts” by linking and synchronizing video explanations to their published text. Similarly, video summaries can be associated and synchronized with scientific posters to create “postercasts” highlighting the key finding of the research. We also provide easy upload and hosting of videos on topics in all areas of scientific research.”
Twitter in Plain English- video
(may have to watch from home) it will buffer a bit before playing