yolink Education in AASL's Top 25!

This week the yolink Education website and team received the honor of being recognized as a Best Website for Teaching and Learning 2011 by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL)! The AASL is a division of the American Library Association whose mission is to advocate excellence, facilitate change and develop leaders in the school library field.

In the ALA press release it was stated that the top 25 sites for 2011 were chosen because they were free, web-based sites that encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.

"These websites are creative, innovative and fun - and the most important - they support the integration of 21st century skills into the curriculum," explains Pam Berger, committee chair. "Together with the two previous year's winners, educators have an effective, high quality toolbox of Web 2.0 tools to support inquiry learning and the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner."

The announcement was made at the American Library Association's 2011 Annual Conference in New Orleans and the yolink team is proud to be a part of such an amazing list.

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Oregon COEDTech Day 2011

COEDTech

This April the yolink education team was pleased to participate in the Central Oregon EdTech Regional Education-in-Technology Day (COEDTech Day), which took place in La Pine, Oregon. Approximately 300 educators from across Central Oregon participated in the full-day COEDTech event. The yolink team presented topics in three sessions, two focused on 21st century research skills, and one session was a round table discussion on popular educational web apps. Both the yolink browser add-on and SweetSearch were well received, and the ability to seamlessly share search results with Google Docs was an added bonus as the state of Oregon is moving in the direction of utilizing Google Docs statewide.

COEDTech Day was a wonderful opportunity to not only share yolink and SweetSearch with new users, but to also provide training and support to schools and educators bringing the 21st century research skills to classrooms across the state of Oregon. For those not able to attend COEDTech Day 2011 see a few Flickr highlights.

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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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