NSBA 2010 Technology+Learning Conference

The NSBA 2010 Technology+Learning Conference in Phoenix, Arizona was a huge success as the yolink education team welcomed over a hundred inquisitive educators and administrators to the booth.

Those new to yolink were excited by the technology and shared various scenarios about when and where yolink could help them save time and effort, such as searching for projects on intellectual property or preparing for a doctorate. The most frequently asked question of the conference was the incredulous, “yolink is seriously free?”

People were also pleased to learn that they can add yolink search enhancement to their blog by installing a simple widget that can be found at www.yolink.com/yolink/widget/. Mark Garrison installed yolink to his blog www.GarrisonSites.com/ that afternoon after the conference.

Conferences are a fantastic way to meet and interact with new people on a personal level. A great big thank you to everyone who came by the booth and followed our live twitter updates at @yolinkeducation.
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yolink Open Office Hours

yolink is having its first Open Office Hours at 1pm PST on Thursday, September 16th. Drop in and chat with a yolink evangelist, to learn new ways to use yolink, and to discuss how you use yolink to search, collaborate, and share. We look forward to speaking with you! Here is the link to join the yolink Elluminate room.
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yolink integrates Creative Commons for attributed finding

The power of yolink’s next-generation search technology is now combined with Creative Commons (“CC”) ‘copyleft’ copyright protection to promote the proper attribution of creative work when saving, sharing and creating content. Since 2001, Creative Commons’ goal has been to “increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in ‘the commons’ — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, re-purposing, and remixing” (http://creativecommons.org/about/what-is-cc). CC offers a standardized method for people to share and build upon the work of others, by making it easy to grant copyright permission terms that range from “no rights reserved” to the restrictive “all rights reserved.”

The latest yolink update integrates CC’s licensing support. Now, when a yolink result contains CC licensed content and is saved to Google Docs, the license will be retained and displayed in the document. This newest update ensures that creative work is easily accessible and properly attributed.

Check out the Creative Commons Weblog for more information.
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Classroom 2.0 LIVE! Archived Link

If you missed the recent yolink search technology presentation on Classroom 2.0 LIVE! you may now listen to the archived session. The Saturday, August 7 presentation featuring Brian Cheek from TigerLogic and noted California-based educator, Ken Shelton, was well attended with many interested educators. Brian demonstrated the benefits of yolink as a valuable tool in education and Ken illustrated how he uses yolink to help teach research skills to his students. Brian also introduced the yolink API technology, which when implemented allows website visitors to use yolink to search, save, and share without downloading any software. One great example of our API widget is on the student search engine, SweetSearch, which provides qualified links for K-12 education that have been evaluated by research experts. Mark Moran from SweetSearch surprised attendees by joining the call and describing how the search engine with embedded yolink technology into the site side bar creates an even better research experience.

Other API examples Brian touched on were the Google Alerts feature from our yolink Labs section and Steve Hargadon’s blog. Here is more information on both the yolink API and the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! Saturday presentations.
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Punahou Technology Lab School

A few weeks ago, the yolink education team had the special opportunity to visit Hawaii and participate in Punahou’s Technology Lab School. Punahou is a private K-12 1:1 school in Honolulu which hosts a technology workshop each summer for educators and technology directors from across the Hawaiian Islands.

Both the yolink team and Lucy Gray presented at the Lab School together with other presenters from Apple, the University of Hawaii, and FableVision. Our presentation focused on Google search tools and strategies and how yolink augments the time spent searching online. Lucy Gray also gave a presentation on Global Education and shared an upcoming Global Education Conference which she and Steve Hargadon are co-chairing this year November 15th through 19th. The two presentations from Punahou are available on SlideShare.

During our time at Punahou, we were thrilled to work with many great teachers and students in the Summer School Program. We demonstrated yolink and yolink + SweetSearch during a high school Social Studies class, a mixed middle school and high school Science class, and three high school English classes. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet with educators, see a 1:1 school in action, and experience firsthand technology integration in education.
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yolink returns to Classroom 2.0 on Saturday August 7th

Saturday, August 7 at 9 AM PT, be sure to clear your calendars as Brian Cheek gives an update on the recent events and improvements happening with yolink for Classroom 2.0 . yolink was previously featured by Classroom 2.0 back in May and that archived session can be heard here. Joining Brian will be Ken Shelton, a noted California-based educator, who will discuss the implications of using yolink in classrooms.

One of the biggest updates that Brian will share is the arrival of the yolink API. The API version of yolink will allow users and businesses to incorporate the yolink technology directly into their own websites and blogs. This allows all visitors of these pages to use yolink to search, save, and share without downloading any software. Be sure to tune in next Saturday as Brian shares information about the yolink API, improvements made to the yolink browser tool, and much more. For those who cannot attend check out the article on Mashable as it outlines some of the updates.

To log into the session click here.
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Check-in to WIN

We are hosting a check-in contest at ISTE with Foursquare!

What is foursquare?
Foursquare is a mobile application that is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide, and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. Foursquare lets you "check in" to a place when you're there, tell friends where you are, and track the history of where you've been--and who you've been there with. Foursquare challenges you to explore your city in new and fun ways by earning points, winning mayorships, and unlocking badges and specials for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

So Download the app if you haven't already, come check out the yolink booth, 2419 at ISTE, and check-in to win.

•Visitors #10, 20, and 30 win a $10 iTunes Gift Card.
•Visitors #40, 50, and 60 win a $15 iTunes Gift Card.
•Visitors #75, 100, and 125 win a $25 iTunes Gift Card.
•Visitor #150 wins the grand prize, a $50 iTunes Gift Card!

Find out all the details here and join in the fun. See you at the booth.
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ISTE 2010

We are in Denver and are so excited for ISTE - The International Society for Technology in Education - to kick off tomorrow morning. This is our second year at ISTE and this year we will be:
At booth 2419 with teacher presentations and yolink demos
Giving away USB drives with our teacher lesson plans and new search curriculum from Creative Commons
And hosting a cocktail party with our partners EasyBib and SweetSearch on Tuesday night.

You can find more information about ISTE, our teacher presenters, and creative commons here. If you are in Denver this week, come check out yolink and all of our events!
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yolink Education's First Newsletter

Make sure you sign up for our new monthly newsletter! Highlights include information about our recent Classroom 2.0 appearance, our planned presence at the 2010 International Society for Technology in Education conference, and comments from our featured yolink user, Karen Blumberg, Our premier edition is available here and stay tuned for further updates including a roundup of summer conferences, our new webinar series, and other back to school search literacy initiatives.
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ISTE 2010 Cocktail Party

yolink, EasyBib, and SweetSearch are hosting a cocktail party at the Warwick Denver Hotel on Tuesday, June 29th starting at 7:30 p.m.

Come join us, we'd love to see you there!

Event Registration Online for yolink, EasyBib, and Sweet Search ISTE 2010 Celebration

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Meriwether Lewis Elementary School Pilot

This week the yolink education team worked with fourth and fifth grade classes at Meriwether Lewis Elementary school in Portland, Oregon.

The fourth grade classes have been studying the Oregon Trail. Each of the students had different topics relating to the Oregon Trail they were researching and also preparing to share their research with the class. The fifth grade classes were studying the Mount St. Helens eruption as it was the 30th anniversary. They also were interested in finding information on Harry Truman, a man that had lived very close to the volcano at the time of the eruption.

Yolink was able to help them search the links on a web page about the Oregon Trail, as well as scan Google links. They quickly understood how yolink works and appeared to like it!

Here is what one student said, “Before this I’ve had to search through five Google pages to find what I was looking for.” – Fourth Grade Student

We will keep in touch with the fourth and fifth grade classes to see the other ways they have been able to use yolink.
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yolink featured on Classroom 2.0 Live

On Saturday, May 15th, yolink was featured on Classroom 2.0 Live. We would like to thank our wonderful moderators at Classroom 2.0 Live for their support. We had a large audience and hope to continue spreading the good word about yolink.

If you would like to access the archived presentation, please click on the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/2g2ajad
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Classroom 2.0 Live on Saturday, May 15th

Tune in this Saturday morning at 9AM PST for a special Classroom 2.0 Live session featuring yolink. Learn about yolink's unique functionality and social integrations, and how yolink can be useful in teaching fundamental 21st Century Skills. Talk with other educators and learn more about how yolink is being utilized in the classroom. Best of all, it is FREE! Hope to see you there!
http://live.classroom20.com/
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ED TECH social media campaign May 12th!

Join the Campaign! Tweet and Blog for Ed Tech May 12!

Funding for classroom technology is in jeopardy!

We're calling on educators across the US to tweet and blog for education technology funding on Wednesday, May 12.

President Obama's budget for FY11 provides no direct funding for education technology programs. Instead, it zeros out the Enhancing Education Through Technology program, the only source of direct support for ed tech in many states and districts.

Congress doesn't have to agree to the President's budget recommendations.

Help your senator and representative understand what's at stake!
On May 12 tweet, retweet, and blog your support for $500 million in FY11 ed tech funding. Mark the date on your social media calendar!

Watch the ISTE Connects blog and Twitter stream for more information on how educators can work with innovative tools to make our voices heard.

For more information, contact Hilary Goldmann (hgoldmann@iste.org), ISTE’s director of government affairs.

Our thanks to AzTEA for sharing this information.
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Kevin Honeycutt at WOW 2010

Kevin Honeycutt was the keynote speaker at WOW 2010 in Glendale, AZ last weekend. The local yolink team was there to hear this inspirational speaker and educator talk about the importance of education. He has found amazing ways to teach using art and technology, and to reach out and connect with students. Loved the musical demonstrations using Macs, iPods, and iPads. Visit his art snacks website or view some of his YouTube videos, they are really inspiring.


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Pleasant Ridge Elementary School Pilot

Last week yolink was in the Windy City at Pleasant Ridge Elementary School working with a class of 4th grade students studying Biomes. Mrs. Riskin and Mrs. Juozaitis were great hosts and shared their class with us.

The students had been doing research for their Writer’s Workshop project & presentation on Biomes for a week or so already, and had hit a few road blocks. Yolink was a great new addition to their search toolkits, and many students discovered they could find what they had been struggling to find before. Here are a few things students were saying:

“I just found something during one class that I was looking for all last week!” – 4th Grade Student

“I didn’t even know that Bougainvilleas were a part of my biome before I had yolink.” – 4th Grade Student

Mrs. Riskin also had a great analogy for yolink. She said yolink for the web is like the Table of Contents or the Index for a book, in that you can use it to find the specific location of information you are looking for. It saves you from reading or skimming the whole book or website yourself, and takes you right to your desired information. We thought that made a lot of sense!

The students and teachers particularly loved the EasyBib integration as well. They were just learning about citing their sources and had to include a bibliography for their Writer’s Workshop Biome Project.

We are always learning new uses and applications for yolink and our users are our best teachers. We love seeing yolink in action and will definitely be keeping in touch with Mrs. Juozaitis, Mrs. Riskin and the 4th Grade Class!
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We would like to thank everyone who entered the yolink Technology Education Grant drawing. The winners for the drawing are:



Thanks again to everyone who entered!
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$3,000 technology grant for K-12 Schools

Do you know a school that could use some cash? Enter the online contest at www.yolinkeducation.com. Anyone age 13 or older can enter and nominate a school to win. Hurry, deadline is April 16th.

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without knowing how to read

Recently posted in the LA Times Opinion section:

"Closing libraries is always a bad idea, but for the Google generation, it could be disastrous. In a time when information literacy is increasingly crucial to life and work, not teaching kids how to search for information is like sending them out into the world without knowing how to read."

By Sara Scribner. Read the entire article at this link
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High School Librarian shares her yolink story

Image from: http://www.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/

Sharon Talmadge the Librarian from La Costa Canyon High School wrote about our pilot there! She was a great host and it was wonderful meeting at her library and with her students. Read what she has to say!


Anne and Renee spent an entire day at La Costa Canyon High School demonstrating yolink and helping students explore it. The students were working on a poetry assignment which we had emailed to them ahead of time. Anne and Renee based the demonstration on their assignment.

Yolink was especially helpful for one aspect of the assignment which was to find a quote by the poet they were researching. By using the keywords [poet’s name] and quote or quotation, they could see in the expanded links that YoLink provided which result had all the keywords without clicking and reading each result.

Renee taught them how to do their work more efficiently. The students grasped immediately that the expanded links with the keywords (each keyword being a different color) would save them time. Yolink also has other features which save students time. One of them is an icon that when clicked gives the student the citation for the result in EasyBib, all written out in the correct order with the correct punctuation. Save and share options just require a click. The part of the result with the highlighted search terms can be shared with Diigo, Evernote, Blogger, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter or Wordpress.

Again, it was wonderful meeting with Sharon at La Costa Canyon, another successful pilot of yolink!
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La Costa Canyon High School

Recently, the yolink team had the pleasure of working with teachers and students at La Costa Canyon High School in California. We wanted to share a story from one of those classes.



The assignment the students were working on was to search Popular American poets. The students had to choose a poet, identify the technique, include biographical information about the author as well as quotes, and discuss the influences/motivation/inspiration for that poem.

Yolink came in very handy for this project. We showed the class how yolink's 'scan text' option helped them find quotes related to say - poetry or work or creativity. The students were smart and picked up on yolink really fast. They were soon using yolink to the best of its abilities.

Some really good insights from this trip included a quote that we often end up quoting - "Whenever you get out in the real world, no matter what job you have, you need research. And its not what you know, but how can you find it."


I'm sure that just as they surprised us with their instantaneous liking of yolink, we surprised them with yolink's capabilities.
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Heritage High School Language and Comp Pilot

Pilot at Heritage!

The AP Language and Composition classes at Heritage High School in Vancouver, WA were starting their "synthesis" assignments and invited yolink to participate. Their project consisted of researching controversial topics and then writing an opinion paper. Some of the topics included, climate change, international adoption, plastic surgery, and cell phone laws in schools.

The project began with a discovery of topic ideas and also a discussion of how to find better sources online. Students learned Google search tricks to help them easily find credible sources as well as how to use yolink not only with Google but in their school library online databases. Our integrations with EasyBib and Google Docs were also valuable. Mrs. Zadeh and Mrs. Fryer kept reminding students to "use their tools" (referring to EasyBib and Google Docs) and "remember to use yolink because it researches for you!"

Image from: http://www.evergreenps.org/SCHOOLINFO/Pages/SchoolDetails.aspx?sn=Heritage
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Love this Article

Short blog post today because I've found something worth reading over: we're loving this article by Donald J. Leu Jr. at UConn.
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Marshall Elementary Pilot

Marshall Elementary in Vancouver, Washington

5^th grade social studies students from Marshall Elementary were learning about the Treaty of Paris, Declaration of Independence, Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre. 4 events that are all so different and there’s so much to know!

The goal of the day was to learn how to find credible resources online and to use yolink to find the information within those sources. Students learned syntax tricks to help them easily find credible sources as well as learning how to use yolink in their school library online databases.

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Wall Street Portfolio Manager Uses yolink

Students and researchers of all ages are using yolink to search online and everyone is facing the same problems. In this age of exponentially growing information, students are now finding ways to quickly find the valuable information and send it to others on their personal learning networks. Here’s one example of how a Wall Street portfolio manager is using yolink with Google Docs integration to collaborate on his Personal Learning Network:

‘I do a lot of research on the education industry, particularly the emerging online segment. Recently, I was sent a 350 page report which covered mostly the legacy portion of the industry, but about 5% of the report covered the online segment. With yolink, searching in the “text” mode for the keyword “online”, 20 paragraphs were presented in the yolink sidebar. Next, using yolink’s new click box selection function, I put all these paragraphs in a Google Docs file titled,”schools, online”, which happens to be my 89th Google Doc folder. Lastly, through the Google Docs “share” function, I then emailed the folder to my 5 research colleagues. All this in under 60 seconds.’

After reviewing his search process, I noted that the information to sort through shrank from 356 pages to 53. A little more manageable, right?


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Cherry Creek Pilots

Last week, yolink team members flew out to sunny and snowy Colorado to meet with staff, administrators, librarians and students to teach them about optimizing their search and finding information faster.

We worked with all different ages, learning types and schools. Students were studying everything from current events to online coding. We used our information literacy curriculum to show students and teachers how to better search online and how to use yolink. Now they can find credible information and write their paper faster.

Everyone also loved our free integration with EasyBib!

A yolink engineer came out as well! He talked about how yolink was created and about being an engineer in today’s world. Intro and advanced computer science students learned about what it takes to be an engineer and where they should start.

Quote of the week: "This is the most valuable thing they've [teachers] taught us all year! Yolink and EasyBib will save me so much time." - Anonymous 10th grade honor student

Overland High School - Aurora, CO

Horizon Middle Schoolers were beginning research projects as part of their advanced learners program. Students learned search skills to begin their "Night of the Notables" project, current events podcast and Science Olympiad.

Michelyne Gray is now ready to teach all of her colleagues how to use yolink in the classroom and everyone was so excited to hear about our integration with EasyBib!

Eagle Crest High School was kind enough to let us be a part of their pep rally in exchange for our knowledge of information literacy. Go Raptors!

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Vancouver School District

Thank you librarians! Yolink team members presented at a staff development meeting in the Vancouver School District in Washington State. The presentation and discussion focused on the topic that was in my last posting, information literacy! With so much information available on the internet, how can students sort through it all and find valuable information?

Some of the teachers' struggles were:
1. Students don't know how to maximize the search engine
2. Students' use search engines instead of our subscription databases because they feel overwhelmed. How can we show students the tools to finding credible sources online?
3. My students effectively know how to type in many key words to narrow down their searches but the search engines bring back results with only some of their keywords, not all of them.

Some of the benefits they saw and learned:
1. Using yolink text search can help my students look for ideas and concepts because the words are in close proximity to each other in the article or ebook
2. Syntax can help my students find credible sources outside of databases
3. yolink can help my students find very specific information while saving clicks

We participate in staff development meetings very often. If this is something that you want to set up, let us know! We can do an online meeting or in person.
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Lack of Resources?

I was inspired the other day by something Alan November wrote on his twitter. He referred to the library of congress and the vast amount of resources available. Their website notes that "the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with nearly 142 million items on approximately 650 miles of bookshelves". The problem here is not that we're lacking resources or information, its how do we find what we want? How can we as educators teach our students to find the most valuable information when they're bombarded with so much that is mediocre?
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First pilot...Success!

Ms. Montaperto's computer class at PS 254 in Brooklyn, NY completes the first YEP pilot!

Yolink team members worked hands-on with a class of 4th graders working together to learn how to search better and find valuable information. Students learned how to use syntax, judge website authenticity, find valuable information and how to turn it into a secondary source with integrated tools. In Alan November's words, they "learned that online search is an active skill, not a passive service".

Some of their favorite things were less clicking back and forth, no more skimming long web pages, and the ability to easily pick out content rich sites.

After the 4th graders learned how to use yolink, they then taught the 5th graders how to use it as well.

"I am so glad that we are learning this great new tool. Many times searching can be very frustrating! I am excited that our class is working with Yolink to help kids everywhere obtain better information in less time and with less frustration!" - Ms. Montaperto
Check out more of their comments on the pilot here!



If you'd like to participate in a yolink pilot, click here. Stay tuned to see more pilot stories and ideas as they are completed!



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Welcome to the yolink education blog!

Finally! The launch of yolink's education blog is here!

This is your resource to stay updated on any yolink education news. Our team and guest contributors will be posting stories about where we're visiting and who we're visiting as a part of our yolink Education Program, YEP. Stories and photos are already in the works!

Since the launch of yolink as an educational tool, we've found that most people are begging for a guide to information literacy on the web and we're here to bring it to you with a little yolink on the side. This free guide is developed by educational gurus Alan November and Angela Maiers, both fluent in curriculum creation and information literacy. Its full of lessons, examples, and videos based on literacy levels at your disposal...free! Upon its completion, you will be informed promptly.

We might also throw a few things in that inspire us as well. Our hope is that you will find some ways to make your life and student's lives a little easier.




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