Infosearcher

Best Library/Librarian Blog!

Congratulations to Joyce Valenza who has won the Edublog Award 2005 for the best library/librarian blog  --  Neverending Search blog!

Check out the winners in all ten categories and while you're exploring, be sure to look at Edublog and think about setting up a free blog for yourself. Maybe next year you'll be the 2006 library/librarian blog winner.

The International Edublog Awards Winners 2005

* Most innovative edublogging project, service or programme 2005

James Farmer: Edublogs

* Best newcomer 2005

Konrad Glogowski:  Blog of proximinal development

* Most influential post, resource or presentation 2005

George Siemens: Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation

* Best designed/most beautiful edublog 2005

D’Arcy Norman: D’Arcy Norman Dot Net

* Best library/librarian blog 2005

Joyce Valenza: Joyce Valenza’s NeverEnding Search

* Best teacher blog,  joint winners 2005

Konrad Glogowski:  Blog of proximinal development

Anne Davis: Edublog Insights

* Best audio and/or visual blog 2005

Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow: Ed Tech Talk

* Best example/ case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning 2005

Thomas Hawke, Thomas Stiff, Susan Stiff, Diane Hammond (YES I Can! Science team): Polar Science

* Best group blog 2005

Rudolf Amman, Aaron Campbell, Barbara Dieu: Dekita.org

* Best individual blog 2005

Stephen Downes: OLDaily

Oprah's National High School Essay Contest

Everyone knows the impact Oprah's Book Club has had on reading in this country. Imagine if she can do that for high school students. Oprah is sponsoring an essay contest; it will be based on the book she plans to reveal on her January 16 television show and will be open to high school students across America. Then, based on their essays, a panel of learned judges will select 50 high school students. Each finalist, along with one designated parent or guardian, will receive a trip to a special Oprah Show taping in late February. To support this nationwide initiative, her website will offer comprehensive study materials for students, teachers and parents. The deadline for entries is Monday, February 6, 2006

Using Google Effectively

Did you know that you can find synonyms on Google by preceding the term with a ~ which is known as the tilde or synonym operator? The tilde ~ takes the word immediately following it and searches both for that specific word as well as the word’s synonyms. It also searches for the term with alternative endings. Of course it works best when applied to general terms and terms with many synonyms. As with the + and - operators, put the ~ (tilde) next to the word, with no spaces between the ~ and its associated word.  Using the query [~kids television] will bring results that include kids, children and child. And in turn  [~inexpensive travel] will return hits with cheap or discount also. Pretty cool. We are always trying to get students to think of synonyms for their search terms - Google can help!

This fall I spoke at the Arizona State Library Conference, Searching Google and Beyond: Tips, Strategies and Resources. The PowerPoint and website resources are under Workshops on this blog. It has more tips to help students use Google more effectively.

Digital Literacy

I recently conducted a workshop on digital literacy for school librarians, teachers and administrators and in my preparation I found quite a few thought provoking articles and research which I grouped by questions:

• How is digital literacy defined and explored?
• Is the Net generation really different?
• Are there digital literacy assessments?
• What is the latest research on the use of the Internet by students?
• What new demands are being placed on students to successfully  "read" digital texts? How are these skills different from those used to read print text?

You can find the full listing under Resources on this blog. If you have additional articles you think are noteworthy, send them to me and I'll add them to the list. Enjoy your reading.