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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