We are well underway with the new school year.  It’s been a busy start, which is a good thing!  Lots of books are getting checked out and classes are coming in to do research.  My two favorite things 🙂

You may notice some students with a Playaway.  These are relatively new, but are suddenly much more popular with the freshman this year.  A Playaway is an audiobook that comes pre-packaged in an mp3-like device.  You just plug in your headphone and press play.  Much easier than dealing with mulitple cds.  We have about 55 of these, primarily young adult fiction titles.  We also have several Spanish language learning Playaways for those of you that would like to learn some Spanish.

eBooks are becoming more prevalant and our library has begun a collection of titles; in particular, we have several of the core novels.  Currently, we’re using Follett as our only vendor.  Visit the library page, go to the catalog and search “ebooks”.  You can read the ebooks online or check them out to read on the Follett software.  (Don’t check them out unless you really need to; you have to check them in yourself or it’s out for the full checkout period) A new platform for our ebooks will be coming next semester, so we’re not pushing them as much as we could to avoid confusion.  See me for more information and assistance.

We’ve begun the implementation of Google Apps here on campus. Many students, through CTE classes, have already received some training and have accessed their gmail accounts.  Consider integrating Google Docs and allowing student to email you assignments or “share” them to assist in the paper and toner shortage.  If you would like to see your classes set up with Google Apps, see Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Hulcher, or myself.  We’d like to get all students set up with this.

TenMarks a free online Math program with video tutorials. Covers Algebra I, II and Geometry.

SPENT an online financial activity for students. explanation here

TopicMarks summarizes text documents

Virtual Field Trips: http://www.simplek12.com/virtualfieldtrips 

Checking for Plagiarism:
Make Use Of has an article with some info on these
Doc Cop http://www.doccop.com
Dupli Checker http://www.duplichecker.com/
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Article Checker http://www.articlechecker.com/
Plagiarism Detect http://www.plagiarismdetect.com/
Turnitin https://turnitin.com