Thing 17 - ELM Productivity Tools

I've been using some of these tools for a while. I love the journal alerts feature provided by Ebsco. It's an easy way to keep up on what's new. There are three or four journals that get circulated throughout the GRRL libraries. However, since there are 32 branches as well as several HQ departments, it's not uncommon to get a particular issue six months to a year after it's come out. That's hugely frustrating to me, so I've set up journal alerts for my favorite journals so that I can get the info right away.

I have fiddled with the web page feature a little, but didn't really find it that useful. It feels fairly cumbersome and putzy, especially in contrast to the ease with which you can create text, add links and graphics, etc. in Blogger.

That said, I can see where this could be a useful tool for school libraries and teachers in those districts where there are not sufficient funds for the district to support much in the way of teacher/staff websites. Based on what I see with my partner's school and what I hear from parents at the library, it is becoming an expectation that teachers will have web pages where they list assignments due, suggestions for projects, etc. Parents want to be able to look on a web page to see whether their child has homework due. However, I'm unclear as to whether ELM assists with hosting the page, as opposed to simply creating it. And, I'm not clear why a teacher would prefer an ELM-created web page as opposed to a Blogger-created blog. I suppose it could be as much a matter of what you start with (and invest time and energy into) as anything.

Thing 16 - Assignment & Research Project Calculators

I thought these were pretty cool things, but I'm not sure how many opportunities I'll have to share this with my patrons. In the majority of cases, the students I see are 7th grade and under, and they are looking for one or two articles on a topic. In those cases, Kids InfoBits and InfoTrac Kids or Junior edition are the most helpful.

However, I really like these calculators. I can see talking about them more with teachers and parents. I really liked how the RPC broke the process down into little bits: ask these kinds of questions, find the right kinds of sources, use the correct kind of font sizes and colors for slide presentations, etc. I think the detail could be helpful for parents and students for understanding what the process should be to create an A project.